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Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
My family were pretty excited about the movie, mainly because they're big fans of Xiao Zhan. We're from the same city, so there's pretty fierce local pride. I managed to watch it yesterday so I could talk about it with my family.
First up, I must comment on the translation. I watched the movie in Mandarin with English subtitles, and the translation was shockingly poor. The subtitles were overly simplified and lost so much of the nuance. The translation itself was very stilted and unnatural, and didn't flow very well. I noticed some grammar and consistency mistakes that could have been caught with some quality checking. I'm not sure which studio is responsible for the translation, but I suspect that MTL was involved, which is very disappointing.
Fortunately, I'm already somewhat familiar with the story, so I was able to understand the movie despite the poor translation. Furthermore, the movie cut out huge parts of the story, so having some familiarity absolutely helped with understanding what was going on. I'm not sure how the movie would be for someone with no knowledge of the story, but I can't imagine them having a good time.
For what it's worth, I thought they did a decent job of attempting to condense the story by focusing on the romance between Guo Jing and Huang Rong and tying their romance to the Mongol conflict, though the Mongol parts really suffered by leaving out a lot of the politics and background.
Ironically, the story fell flat for me because of the romance. There wasn't any chemistry between Xiao Zhan and Huang Rong, so the romance didn't work on me. When the story relies so much on the romance, but there’s no chemistry for the romance to work, the story just becomes dry.
I wasn't too impressed by Tsui Hark's directing in the movie. As far as the directing go, it's an average blockbuster. At least the fight choreography was excellent, and I really enjoyed the fights.
I don't think I would recommend watching this in theaters, but it's not a bad watch to pass time if it's on streaming.
First up, I must comment on the translation. I watched the movie in Mandarin with English subtitles, and the translation was shockingly poor. The subtitles were overly simplified and lost so much of the nuance. The translation itself was very stilted and unnatural, and didn't flow very well. I noticed some grammar and consistency mistakes that could have been caught with some quality checking. I'm not sure which studio is responsible for the translation, but I suspect that MTL was involved, which is very disappointing.
Fortunately, I'm already somewhat familiar with the story, so I was able to understand the movie despite the poor translation. Furthermore, the movie cut out huge parts of the story, so having some familiarity absolutely helped with understanding what was going on. I'm not sure how the movie would be for someone with no knowledge of the story, but I can't imagine them having a good time.
For what it's worth, I thought they did a decent job of attempting to condense the story by focusing on the romance between Guo Jing and Huang Rong and tying their romance to the Mongol conflict, though the Mongol parts really suffered by leaving out a lot of the politics and background.
Ironically, the story fell flat for me because of the romance. There wasn't any chemistry between Xiao Zhan and Huang Rong, so the romance didn't work on me. When the story relies so much on the romance, but there’s no chemistry for the romance to work, the story just becomes dry.
I wasn't too impressed by Tsui Hark's directing in the movie. As far as the directing go, it's an average blockbuster. At least the fight choreography was excellent, and I really enjoyed the fights.
I don't think I would recommend watching this in theaters, but it's not a bad watch to pass time if it's on streaming.