#Mojin the lost legend review series

However, they get lured back into their old trade by a mysterious businesswoman (Liu Xiaoqing) who offers Kaixuan a large sum of money to locate an ancient tomb. Seasoned grave robbers Hu Bayi (Aloys Chen), Wang Kaixuan (Huang Bo) and Shirley Yang (Shu Qi) hail from a long line of tomb raiders whose trade dates back for centuries, but the trio have decided to hang up their boots. Having honed his skills on the period fantasies Painted Skin: The Resurrection and The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman, director Wuershan rounds up the all-star cast of Aloys Chen ( Flying Swords of Dragon Gate), Huang Bo ( Dearest), Shu Qi ( The Assassin), Angelababy ( Rise of the Legend), Xia Yu ( Wind Blast) and Cherry Ngan ( The Way We Dance) for this visually stunning, action-packed tomb-raiding thriller. The Ghouls) turned into one of the biggest Chinese films of all time.

#Mojin the lost legend review series

More problematically, the performers lack the necessary charisma to fully involve us in their charactersвЂ™ fates.Based on Zhang Muye's immensely popular online novel series Ghost Blows Out the Light, the 2015 action adventure fantasy Mojin: The Lost Legend (a.k.a.

The paper-thin characterizations and hackneyed dialogue (the latter especially painful since non-Chinese speakers are forced to read it via subtitles) serve as little more than narrative lubricant between the breakneck action sequences. There are plot elements, to be sure, including a budding romance between two of the more attractive members of the group, but theyвЂ™re not exactly given substantial treatment. Director Fei Xing stages the violent mayhem in exuberantly giddy fashion, although it all has the feeling of a group of randomly assembled film clips rather than a coherent narrative. The feature is essentially comprised of one action set piece after another in which the group engages in battles with the aforementioned creatures, including the blade-toothed вЂњviperfishвЂќ and deadly вЂњflamefliesвЂќ that look much more harmless than they are, all rendered in alternately impressive and godawful CGI. Among the group is Professor Sun (Cheng Taishen), because every mission of this sort requires an expert who can answer all the questions, of which there are many. There they intend to search for the Tomb of Emperor Xian, which supposedly houses a mystical orb that can lift the curse. ItвЂ™s a skill that will come in handy for their latest excursion, which involves heading deep into the heart of Worm Valley, located on a remote island. Among those afflicted are a group of adventurers, led by Hu Bayi (Cai Heng) and Shirley Yang (Gu Xuan), whose specialty is tomb raiding. The latter aspect is obviously the most disturbing, since the mark looks like a really cool tattoo. The story, such as it is, is set in motion by an ancient queenвЂ™s curse whose sufferers bear a large mark on their shoulder and face the prospect of an early death. To make things even more confusing, thereвЂ™s another unrelated pic, 2015вЂ™s Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe, based on the same source material. although it features an entirely different cast. This film, like its predecessor, is based on Zhang MuyeвЂ™s best-selling, eight-volume fantasy book series Ghost Blows Out the Light (donвЂ™t go looking for it, itвЂ™s not available in English translation). But whatвЂ™s truly strange about Mojin: The Worm Valley is that there doesnвЂ™t seem to be a worm in sight.

ItвЂ™s enough to make you hungry for sushi after the movie. The monsters include killer fish as well as giant lizards, crabs and snakes. In the sequel to the 2015 fantasy adventure Mojin: The Lost Legend, a band of intrepid explorers battles a series of fantastical creatures.