風雲 II

Watched

today, with Wan Chao and Kit Kat.

My rating: 3/10

I think Wan Chao and I disturbed all the rest of the cinema-goers. Greatly.

Firstly: I was sort of apprehensive because this says 風雲 II. Okay, so what happened in the beginning? Did I miss anything? Am I supposed to know all the characters before hand? Is there something BIG which I should know before watching the movie?

Apparently I should have at least looked it up online, because this just seems like a action flick with a seriously weak attempt at a decent storyline.

The movie starts out with our heroes in chains. This Evil Lord is threatening to take over China, and he did, suppressing all those with good enough kung fu to fight, but somehow he manages to defeat Cloud, Wind and their sensei, and a bunch of other people (killed off the first five minutes into the story, what luck.) whose names are not even mentioned. How this Evil Lord defeated them, forced poison into their system, bind them in chains, capture the Emperor (this is only known three quarters into the movie) and do all the I-Shall-Conquer-the-World mambo we will never know.

We also will never know how our heros apparently got an antidote from this kid, unless we watch 風雲 I. Maybe.

Also, their sensei leaves them 10 minutes later, after failing to defeat Evil Lord because he was still weakened, and parting with the words, "It will take me a long time to heal these wounds." he is never seen again.

Secondly: the characters. Half the time I couldn't tell apart Cloud and Wind, and their senseis all have flowing long hair... Okay, have they never heard of conditioner before?? And I do not understand what the two girls are doing there.

One, the more annoying one (I think her name is Chu Chu), is apparently Cloud's love interest, and this is made apparently because in the whole movie, she says FIVE sentences, three of them which are, "云大哥~" and one of them begins with "云大哥...".

The second one is Second Dream (what kind of stupid name is that?) and she appears out of nowhere (but apparently has a past with Wind), catches Wind's eye (OMG THERE WAS CHEESY MUSIC PLAYING) and proceeds to persuade this elusive "Evil Lord" (that's his name, no relation to Evil Lord mentioned above.) to fight Evil Lord, because you can only fight evil with evil, OH THE LOGIC. Then later in the movie she nearly gets herself killed, gets Wind to rescue her with disastrous consequences, which I will later elaborate on.

"Evil Lord" once learnt the Dark Arts to make himself all-powerful, but apparently he went was overwhelmed by the evilness of it all and went on a killing rampage and killed all those poor villagers and innocent people. When he came to, he was so guilty he chopped his own two arms off to make sure he never hurt anybody else again. Er, okay..... Dramatic much?

"Evil Lord" then decides to let Wind learnt the Dark Arts like him, since he was more 'calm and steady', because he caught a bunch of rocks without breaking it to bits, unlike his brother Cloud.

He is since then never seen again.

Then we get to see Cloud in training with heaven knows who, I didn't bother to know, and for the better part of the time I thought he was Wind, and I kept asking Wan Chao, "I thought the sensei cut off his two hands? Why the hell does he still have his hands?" to which Wan Chao replied, "That's Cloud lar!" Of course, this crucial piece of information eluded me maybe because someone didn't buy the popcorn and then dragged me out to buy it. In the middle of the movie.

Then Cloud's sensei praised him on his awesomely godlike kung fu and created this character to name Cloud's new techniques and calls it "Ba." Does he have any idea how stupid it sounds, especially when he say it with a straight face and this awed tone? The whole cinema was laughing...

There is also this person who eats a lot and this guy who sweeps the sand. I think he's retarded, and I have no idea why they're in the movie. Comedic relief, maybe? There is also this weird looking bat-like thing with flaky green skin which I am also apparently supposed to know, but don't. Okay, we'll ignore that.

Moving on to Evil Lord and his Evil Son.

Evil Lord is weird. He wears this armor thing which apparently makes him invincible. He has fire growing out of his metal gloved hands. He has an ugly mustache. He has an ego the size of... well, something big.

Evil Son is sort of more villiany in the typical sense. Rather good-looking, evil smirk, thinks nothing about breaking people's neck, you know... Just slightly less powerful. (I honestly do not know what his power is.) He is one of the characters which I think, could be more fleshed out and memorable, but sadly fails.

Thirdly, the story.

Great emphasis here.

I'll recap. Evil Lord takes over China, Wind and Cloud tries to find a way to defeat him. Wind goes to the Dark Arts while Cloud trains under an unknown sensei. Cloud has hugely improved, apparently creating 23 new styles all by himself. Yay Cloud. (note lack of enthusiasm.) Wind has succumbed to the Dark Arts and now has freaky yellow eyes and greenish blue skin.

Because Wind saved Annoying #2, a.k.a. Second Dream from dying, he didn't finish the Dark Arts, thus rendering him SUPREMELY EVIL and unable to control himself.

Evil Lord and Evil Son, at the same time, forces the Emperor to take them to this "Dragon Tomb" where they can find this thing which is 'the root of all China, and without it the entire nation will collapse'. The emperor refuses to tell them which entrance is the right one, and Evil Son just uses his sand/air controlling technique (they are apparently gods and can do anything.) and checks every entrance. Why didn't he do that in the first place, I do not know.

Anyhow, they found the right chamber, only this "Dragon Tomb" is apparently hidden. The Emperor still refuses to talk and Evil Son breaks the neck of his daughter and wife. Cloud suddenly appears out of nowhere, does the heroic save thing, everybody else leaves the place, then Cloud and Evil Lord have a massive show-down. Evil Son, at this time, is off-screen, apparently gone.

Cloud's massive show-down breaks a hole in the wall, which just so happens to be concealing the "Dragon Tomb". Here we learn that this special item 'which is the root of all China, and without it the nation will collapse' is... wait for it....

A spinal cord.

I know, epic, right?

Out of the blue Wind appears and the three of them fight. Evil Lord loses, breaks into pieces of black marble, Wind grabs the spinal cord and leaves. Here we see Evil Son peeking out from behind a pillar (which, apparently is the only one standing, because I distinctly remember a move of Cloud's which involved destroying most of the pillars in the vicinity.)

Scene change to Wind meditating with the spinal cord. Annoying #2 does all those oh-look-you're-tired-I'll-wipe-your-brow-for-you things and Wind still ignores her. (I would, too, but maybe I'll kill her.) She reaches for the spinal cord and then suddenly Wind is choking her. (You could see the resentment rolling off him, man it's all no touchy, it's mine!) Why Wind wants the spinal cord is beyond me.

The army was sent by the Emperor (who's Emperor again, since Evil Lord is dead now, right?) to retrieve the spinal cord. At the same time Evil Son jumps out of no where and snatches it. The army and Evil Son struggle for a while and we see a crack in the middle of the bone.

Let's hold up a minute here, shall we? As far as I know, spinal cords are made up of a lot of little bones, so the way it was being carried around like a whip was by far unimpressive and illogical. But even if we ignore that large flaw, I want to call to your attention one thing: This spinal cord is 'the root of all China, and without it the entire nation will collapse'. It was also recently being wielded around as a weapon by Evil Lord and endured Cloud's sword swipes and Wind's insane kung fu. Now two guys are pulling at each end like how you pull at licorice and it snaps.

Yes, it snaps. It snaps, Wind suddenly goes berserk, and the spinal cord is never mentioned again. We do not know if 'the root of all China, and without it the entire nation will collapse' really did make China collapse into chaos, and that is that. The movie does not need the future to China to think about. All it need it Wind and Cloud and the choreographer to choreographs the fighting scenes. (Evil Son is also forgotten, by this time.)

After the spinal cord breaking thingamajig, Cloud chases after Wind and engages into a mind-battle. This is when they use their minds to imagine themselves fighting each other while not really moving a muscle. After that long, long scene, they suddenly jump up and return physical blows.

Of course, fighting on a log atop a lake is not a good idea, so they jump up onto a ginormous cliff, apparently situated in the desert with no sign of lush greenery, which they were just seconds ago.

They fight, again, and Annoying #1 runs out (where the heck did she come out from?), begs Wind to stop fighting, turns around to face Cloud, and gets killed. Apparently Wind deemed her too annoying and was enjoying fighting his brother too much to stop.

Cloud goes into shock, while Annoying #2 tries to talk some sense into Wind. (Obviously she failed, if the next part is anything to go by.) While Cloud goes into shock, he remembers the handkerchief Annoying #1 gave him eons ago, and then we have the whole I-will-avenge-my-girlfriend thing and then they get thrown into another fight.

Wind becomes this scaly, ugly monster which reminds me disturbingly of Orochimaru and Cloud does the whole angsty angry person-who-just-had-his-girlfriend-killed-so-DIE!! thing very well.

They fight, Cloud cuts Wind on his forehead, right at the place where he's already got a cut before (and turned him irreversibly evil, apparently) and Wind comes back to his senses.

Unfortunately, the cliff chooses this time to crumble, and Cloud heroically again saves his brother and Annoying #2 by jumping after them (I honestly thought he was jumping after his sword, which unfortunately is not as kick-ass as the Cloud from FF7's sword), pulling them up, and letting himself fall into the unknown.

Wind and Annoying #2, now safe, starts with all those '...where am I?' and '...what did I do?' and finally end with an anguished cry of 'Didn't I tell you kill me if I turned evil, Cloud? Didn't I??'

With this, we are left hanging, and waiting for 風雲 III. I think I'll pass.

After this disappointing movie, however, the three of us went to Giordano where I bought two shirts and Wan Chao bought one. Since Kit Kat always wore that stupid blue polo shirt of his, we dragged him over to Body Glove (Giordano shirts were rejected by him with the utmost cruelty.) where we picked out some nice shirts and forced it on him.

I had no idea he looked so good in normal white tees.

So remember, peeps! Next time you see him in dark blue polo tee with a white stripe 'cross the middle which looks vaguely familiar, yell at him.

If you really did finish reading this insanely long post about a movie you may or may not watched, about a movie you may or may not have liked, just keep in mind that I appreciate your time.

If you skipped everything, well... *shrugs* You missed quite a lot. So I suggest you scroll back up and start reading.

Cheers!