Jue ji

L.O.R.D. the movie is a pretty confusing situation. Whereas many stories in the action/fantasy category get tied down because of their lack of plot, L.O.R.D. has a great plot, but tells it poorly. There are actually a lot of things going for it, but in the end it's a bit of a muddled mess. For example, The acting was better than expected, especially with the amount of screen presence of Cheney Chen who I love to bits but has never been the strongest actor. The visuals are great (when the technology is working the way it should be). The general plot is interesting and creates a lot of room for character development and relationships.

The biggest issue is the way the story is told. There are many characters, and if you've read the books they are easy to identify, but if you haven't the movie will leave you confused about who hates who and why. The animation, though more advanced than most films, is really hard to watch sometimes, especially in the fight scenes. The English subtitles, are manageable but by no means palatable.

Despite all this I'm giving it at 7/10 because I did actually enjoy the movie as a reader of the books. I just feel bad for people who haven't.

Guo Jin Ming has muddled his books with sub-par direction and screen writing. If you've seen the movie and you like the premise of the story, I'd strongly recommend reading the book which you can find in English online. To find them translated you will probably have to look on fansites.

First of all, I really want to like this movie, I do. I like the casts. I love animation. And seeing it was produced by two China giants, Wanda and Tencent, I was hoping at least it could be tiny entertaining.

The CGI was fine, but the story telling is totally none. Some reviewers said you should read the book before you can understand the movie. That is totally rubbish. A movie is another powerful telling medium. If one had to read a book to understand a movie, then at the least it should provided some written reading to those who were going to watch the movie. To put it into comparison, people who do not read Tolkien's still can understand his Middle Kingdom in LOTR, although not fully.

A waste of resource, casts and time.

This could have made for a decent 45 episode drama, but in just two hours there are too many characters and concepts, too much world-building, for anyone's head not to spin. I have no trouble keeping the dozens of characters in lengthy dramas straight, but the dizzying speed of this movie was beyond my abilities to maintain.

If it were a TV series I'd probably be whining instead that the graphics are terrible. As it is, by turning the entire film into CGI they managed to make the monsters look natural to their environment, a decision for which the filmmakers do deserve credit. The scenes that ought to have captured the viewer's attention and imagination the most would have looked quite corny, no doubt, were this a live-action film, so I am willing to tolerate the animation. It does work quite well in this regard.

The film ends with two random characters whose role I only faintly understood discussing what just happened. This oughtn't have been necessary. The viewer ought to have known more or less what was going on as it happened, but at least we do discover the plot before the credits roll.

Probably one thing that most American viewers found refreshing is that this does not feel Chinese in the slightest. The architecture, the mannerisms, even the eyelids, seem rather European. I was expecting a more Oriental experience, something more like Fights Break Sphere or Tribes and Empires or Ever Night, but instead it seemed almost like I was watching a Disney movie.

In the end, the most redeeming quality of this film is that it is entertaining. There are far, far too few fantasy films being made to begin with, much less really good ones. This, while not particularly amazing like Lord of the Rings, is good and at least an entertaining option for the would-be fantasy viewer who is otherwise distraught by lack of choices.

A lot of people give this movie a very low rating despite its appeal. Honestly, I've seen worse movies. Just to be clear, I found it pretty awkward at first to watch because of the attempt to use realistic CGI which does look real enough at first glance but then also looks animated enough which causes the movements to be a bit stunted. You do get used to it, and I think that in the end, it worked well. The acting could definitely have been better, but I think that's just the actors themselves finding the new medium difficult to adjust to. I know multiple actors that were cast in the movie, and it's not their acting skills that fail. I do believe it's just that in the transfer of the motion capture into the final CGI product, that that's where most of the little nuances of acting were lost. The movie moves through its story really quickly, so you need to be able to keep track of many characters and many different plot directions at the same time to enjoy this movie. The plot itself was intriguing to me, but I found that the last fifteen minutes of this almost two- hour long movie is where most of the background information is explained. I've heard that there is a book to go along with this that helps to explain a lot. I did not read it, yet I understood what was going on in the movie okay. People are just used to a more straightforward plot line. I've also heard that it resembles other previous movies. I have no knowledge of these, so I don't know how much it resembles them or if it's truly plagiarism like this movie has been accused of. The ending definitely leaves off as a cliffhanger, but I don't know if there are any plans for a sequel. As of this time, I have watched this movie twice; once in Chinese with English subs, and once in English. I personally liked it better in Chinese because the dialogue matched with how the mouth moved, but if it's easier for you, the English dub isn't bad. And after watching it twice, I do appreciate it more the second time. If this movie was American, I don't think it would've gotten as much hate as it did. That being said, I am only going to give it a seven out of ten because of what I mentioned earlier in my review. I do think it's worth at least one watch, and after that then you can decide for yourself whether or not you liked it.

Outstanding animation, haunting score and a fantasy world I cant wait to return to. Yes I agree with some reviews that the plot was a little confusing at times and I wasn't sure who the good protagonists were. The film felt a little more like a sequel, a bit of world building at the start might have helped rather then having to piece it together but it all does come together at the end and the journey was worth it.