The Warriors Gate

The word on the street was that this was a riff on one of my all-time favorite films, Forbidden Kingdom 2008, so I could not resist checking it out.

(Word to the wise, if you have not already seen FK, and you like MMA and/or Wushu and/or Fantasy and/or Adventure, check it out. FK has humble beginnings, features two of the greatest cinematic martial artists of all time - Jackie Chan and Jet Li -- a killer script, great scenery, and solid performances. Some reviewers, including this one, think it is one of the best of its kind ever done.)

Let's start with what Warriors Gate was intended to be, and work from that.

The production team clearly thought they would "improve" on FK by adding more "teen humor." Presumably they also felt this would more than compensate for the film's considerably lighter "feel" and the awkward void formed by not having ANY famous film martial artists at all.

Also, Forbidden Kingdom had a certain edge of malice and unpredictability in the script which, oddly, only increased its impact and its fan base. This film lacks those features as well and, on its best day in its best suit, comes across more as "Forbidden Kingdom Lite," or perhaps even a Disney knockoff of the original.

Which is not to say it is not worth a watch. A lot of effort was put into the humor aspect (as explained above) and this does keep things moving along.

(For example -- if you are film buff, you will remember fondly the famous tag line from Airplane 1980 - "Don't call me Shirley" which became a sort of iconic inside joke for years afterwards. This script contains a number of attempts to mimic that sort of dialog, my favorite being -- "KILL HIM! -- slashing noise -- "NO, NOT HIM. HIM.")

Bottom Line: One hour and 45 minutes of reasonable entertainment. However, it suffers from the "curse" common to all knock-offs. Unless you see the original, you will never know what you are missing.

Especially like Dave Bautista as the villain in this movie. Bautista's proving to be a very entertaining guy. Not on the level of The Rock just yet when It comes to wrestlers turn actors but definitely someone I will look out for if he's in a movie.

The warriors gate is the wishful fantasy of all gamers. That the skills they required while putting in long hours in front of a game screen could possibly pay off in real life. Of course we don't want gamers going around mimicking Grand Thief Auto or thinking combat from your couch playing Call of Duty is as real as real combat.

Which is why the movie used a backdrop of ancient China (That and the movie was backed by Chinese mula). It's a classic game plot of a young hero having to though the Terran, battle an army of warriors, and get to the last master in order to save the princess and free her world, and the movie plays out like a group of geeks talking about the stereotypes of video games on some YouTube video.

Aiding this gamer is a Chinese Kung Fu warrior breed Form birth to protect the princess and a wizard who gives you special potions and stuff along the way. Both of these characters are actually greatly underused in this film to. The movie holds a resemblance to 2008's the Forbidden Kingdom, which also under uses it's primary characters(Those characters being played by superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li). I would actually recommend seeing that movie over this one.

The best part of the Eneters the Warriors Gate is the relationship between the gamer and his Kung fu master guide. The gamer is suppose to be a fish out of water, but mostly the movie is about the gamer trying to loosen up his uptight warrior friend. Like I said the film's whole persona is basically geeks talking about the basics of every game.

Just OK, but Jackie Chan and Jet Li did do it batter a few years ago in The Forbidden Kingdom. The action and adventure escalates perfectly like a game getting more difficult, but at times it does get far too long as it's a lot of talk that does not seem to end when it should, but it's worth taking a look just to see Bautista's perfect cartoon villainy.

http://cinemagardens.com/

I saw previews for this movie and it originally caught my interest but I came with no high hopes of it being significantly good. While it's not the most amazing movie I've seen to date, it is an original story that includes martial art elements, comedy, action and overall fun. I thought the fight scenes were very well choreographed and they threw in some lol moments throughout the movie to keep the tone light and easy going while still having enough action to keep the pace going. I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. The lead actress is also stunningly beautiful and the main kid actor did a very good job holding his own with actors like Dave Batista also in the movie. Overall, a fun, lighthearted, interesting and original movie.

It's pretty obvious that the makers of this French-Chinese co-production were really trying hard to make this movie appealing to major Hollywood studios, what with most of the dialogue being in English, the casting of David Bautista in a key role, and the hero being an American youth. However, no Hollywood studio was apparently willing to release the end results to American theaters, and it's pretty clear why. Quite often the enterprise doesn't have the "oomph" of a major Hollywood studio production; it's not seriously cheap-looking, but all the same it's missing something many times. I could have overlooked that fact had the movie compensated in other areas, but the movie falls short in some key areas. The whole "American kid transported to a fantasy land" angle has already been done to death, and this telling doesn't really have many new ideas to add some freshness. It's more humorous this time around, though quite frankly I found most of the humor to be juvenile and embarrassing. The main problem with the movie, however, is that its storytelling style is often not very clear. The script seems to be missing key explanations in several areas, and also the direction/editing in other places makes it hard to follow what is happening. Kids may be more forgiving towards this movie than their parents, but why subject them (and yourself) to this movie when there are plenty of superior family movies that will entertain both kids and adults?

Definitely more of a kid's film but still could have been better.