Die Legende des Tigers

A woman wants a "Phoenix" egg McGuffin (because she is "bad"), and twelve Zodiac human-animals need to protect it's new Guarding. That's it! The characters are introduced, they fight and the movie ends.

While it has some good environmental and visual effects, the contrast between the overly-designed characters with the lack of personality or likeability, is really noticeable.. As if all their effort was put into making the trailer first! And the rest is a rather-shallow-production that lacks in everything non-visual. There's also a lack of world building, flat and boring voice acting (not to mention the boring dialogue), generic action, rushed development, uninteresting story (with some very slow parts), poor music choices.. and constant slow-motion shots.

Sadly, I don't think this offers anything at all as a movie.

Here's The 4K Lowedown on "Tiger's Apprentice" (PG - 2024 - Paramount+)

Genre: Animated/Family

My Score: 6.7 Cast=8 Acting=5 Trailer=7 Ending=7 Story=7 Visuals=7 Direct=5 Sounds=7 Genre=7 Sub-genre=7

After the death of his grandmother, a Chinese American boy has to be apprenticed to the talking tiger Mr. Hu and learn ancient magic to become the new guardian of the phoenix.

"Your grandmother was a guardian...sworn to protect humanity." I liked this, but it was not well written. It was like Wish Drago and Kung Fu Panda had a baby but it was born in captivity. This movie plays better to a younger audience...with its colorful animation and simple dialogue. But unfortunately, animals born in captivity are generally not as exciting as those in the wild. If you have a season pass to the Paramount+ Zoo though, this is worth seeing.

This movie had so much potential: it had actual writing as base material, it had a great cast, the animation team was decent and it was released in a period of not much happening. It could have been like a new (old) Pixar movie release. Instead, it was a lazy, formulaic, brain dead production, more focused on making female characters look cool and superior than actually telling a story.

I have not read the book, but from the synopsis, it was completely different from the film. Also, it features the most rancid clichés ever: the boy who doesn't know who he is because someone sheltered him, but he's totally special because of his blood, with a wonderful all knowing mentor that dies just before they impart their wisdom and the adolescent American who can't stop and think for a single minute, doing dumb thing after dumb thing, but with a lot of people around him to tell him it wasn't his fault and finding excuses for him, because feelings.

The ending was the worst part, though. After failing miserably in doing ANYTHING, the hero finds in himself - without any effort, really - the one thing he has to do to defeat the evil overpowered opponent. A stroke of luck, followed by a lot of boasting about how he saved the day.

The story was beyond childish. Just think for any amount of time at anything in the film and it either makes no sense or it completely invalidates what it supposedly indicating. The cast was criminally underused. There are basically four characters with actual roles, Michelle Yeoh stealing the show, even with the sorry dialogue they gave her, with the others having a few lines each. I think Patrick Gallagher just says something about slobbering shower, once! The pacing was all over the place, with everything either feeling rushed or glacial. Even the editing, which should be quite fixed and done before any other work starts in animation, was poor.

I had to end the review because I felt like I had to remove stars the more I thought about it. They just appropriated (badly) elements of Chinese culture, turned them into a show even 7 year-olds would probably find nonsensical, then released them as a feature film that cost 300 million dollars. How is that even possible?

Bottom line: stupid.

I thought this movie was decent. The visuals were nice. I liked the textures and the character designs were pretty good. It's designed off the newer age 3D animation, and I think it's pleasant visually.

Plot is generic, and has a lot of tropes, but they move past them quick enough that it doesn't drag.

The music brought me out of the film. It's just a lot of pop culture music, it wasn't annoying, but it didn't fit. I think they were trying to make it feel like the character's music choice, but it really stuck out. Like at a sad scene you just have him crying, and some rapper is in the background going "ey yo", killed the vibe, but was very funny.

All the characters are underdeveloped, but they aren't unlikable. I enjoyed what bits we saw from the zodiacs. I think the 12 have potential to be a fun cast of characters if given the time flesh them out. Loved their designs.

Overall, put this on if you want a simple pretty movie and like a movie with shapeshifters. Honestly, the movie should've been about the zodiacs.

Nowadays we rarely see something new, yeah stories about the end of the world is like mainstream now and isn't going away Sooner than later, bare witness that when I saw this animations trailer I was like okay maybe it will be worth my time as it is coming from a studio like paramount like seriously who wouldn't be hyped but honestly I forgot to keep my sweaty fingers crossed until I had to jump in and realize that God forgive my trespassing for this mediocrity won't just cut it, if I were to compare it to something like kung-fu panda then am guessing someone out there might understand how bad this is, it wasn't my intention for comparing but i just had to make an understanding out of this boring nothing catchy just animation for a 5 year old cause i couldn't enjoy nothing.