A Legend

But good luck getting to it. Prior to the final 25 minutes, you get to watch a mostly awful film. Little of the first 96 minutes of the film take place in the present, maybe 12 minutes of it does. The modern day bits within the first 61 minutes are passable with good moments but not that interesting. The scenes in the past are mostly crap with some decent bits of choreography. Don't even get me started on how terrible the deaged Jackie looks that they use for the scenes in the past.

Bizarrely , the final 25 minutes of the film are excellent. Jackie gets a great finale fight that is extremely rewatchable and rewarding to a fan like myself. This great fight easily is better than any action scene in The Myth and better than most of Jackie's fight scenes in his films from 2005 to the present day. Also, Jackie's Archaeological team members are actually entertaining in this part of the movie. Don't lLet this fool you. Jackie splendidly gets the bulk majority of the finale fight to himself with only minor help from the group of young people. This in stark contrast to Kung Fu Yoga and Vanguard, where his teammates constantly get in the way of Jackie's action and engage in their own uninspired melees.

So, yeah ,the four stars which I give this film, three of which are for the final 25 minutes. I would love to get the film on Bluray just for the stuff at the end and one can't deny the beautiful, well shot locations throughout the film.

Set during the Han dynasty era, general Zhao Zhan (Jackie Chan) and his friend Huajun (Lay Zhang) save Princess Mengyun (Gülnezer Bextiyar) from a ruthless Prince Hu Duna (Aarif Rahman). Zhao Zhan and Huajun fall in love with Princess Mengyun. In the present world, archeologist Professor Fang (Jackie Chan) starts dreaming about Han dynasty era, particularly his past self and soon his student Wang Jing too starts to have the same dream. With these lives interconnected across eras, it is upto Fang to find the proper closure to all these characters spread across two different timelines.

Stanley Tong has tried to milk the sequel factor to The Myth but sadly, A Legend simply doesn't have anything going in it's favor. The Myth had it's entertaining moments, merging two different timelines in a better way. This is exactly where A Legend fails as there is no sync between Han dynasty era and modern times segment nor does the love story from the flashback work. Worse, the flashback takes majority of the screen time with a de-aged Jackie Chan and it only ends up dragging the story. The usual Jackie Chan fun elements are nearly non-existant till the climax fight which by then is way too late. The screenplay is dated and tries hard to recreate the same template of The Myth. In that attempt, the film fails to entertain and the decision to fill in majority of the film with the flashback was a blunder.

Watching any form of modern Jackie Chan film comes with its fair share of challenges but A Legend hits a new low for the ageing martial arts star, in this so-called legacy sequel to The Myth. Sure, the film is lavishly produced, with plenty of sweeping landscapes, and suitably epic set pieces, however, it commits the cardinal sin of being unmistakenly boring and a slog to sit through thanks to some abysmally erratic pacing. The film tries to cram in way too much for its runtime and feels like two distinctly different movies crowbarred together, it's rather sad since I know Stanley Tong has been capable of so much better. The elephant in the room is of course the horrific de-ageing job done to Jackie Chan during the scenes set during the Han Dynasty, it looks like someone just got a picture of his face and slapped it on the body of a younger actor, it can be genuinely disturbing at times. If you're expecting Jackie to throw a few moves, then you'll have to wait till the last act before he finally gets down to business. Although it sadly stands as a consolation prize and comes too little too late. I will say however, I did like Nathan Wang's musical score despite the very cheesy and stereotypical soundscape. There's a noticeable lack of adventure in A Legend, it falters with a largely self-serious tale of action fantasy and a central romance that feels more cringey than it does profound. I highly doubt Panda Plan is gonna be much better.

Even the first movie "the myth" was not critics' favourite. This one has however has so many improvements because of the 19 years worth of technical developments. The cinematography and fight scenes are spectacular. You will feel like you are watching old school Wuxia dramas since this movie has more flash back ancient scenes than the modern ones unlike the myth. May be Jackie Chan is too old to do so many fight scenes in his modern form. That's where the uncanny CGI young face of him comes in. It completely can't show any emotions at all. It's like a slap in the face towards Jackie's acting ability. Overall, if you can neglect his funny face and especially if you are a fan of crazy ancient battle scenes, you will enjoy it like I did. A little problem is that It felt like I am watching two movies at the same time between flash back story and modern story especially also because the movie is 2:09 hours long. So when the long flash back scenes are over, you are exhausted to continue watching the modern era final scene although we got to see the classic Jackie's comedic fight scenes in the end.

Beautiful shots and cinematography on amazing nature locations. The actors especially the female protagonist is awesomely beautiful. I warched this movie on the new CMGO Celestial movie app at high resolution on a 4K Smart TV. You don't need to buy very expensive Blu Ray disc to watch this movie with today's early 2025 technologies according to some other commentators here. Streaming apps quality is at par with Blue Ray these days. So, the experience is exceptionally captivating. The intro soundtrack of the predecessor, The Myth, Endless Love, brought back fond memories. The storyline is mediocre. I gave more stars for the beautiful landscapes.