San sheng san shi shi li tao hua

The movie is like taking the best scenes of the TV shows having the same name. The TV show is much better. This one is so broken. It doesn't have the important parts which it really needs to have, such as why Bai Qian ended on the place where she met Ye Hua? It's like if you haven't watched the TV series version, you wouldn't even get the whole story. The four stars I gave is for video effects, not for story. Finally, I would highly recommend to watch the TV series version first before watching this one. If you watch this one without watching TV series version, you wouldn't understand the whole movie completely.

Terrible ending!!!

I had a high exception earlier because of the unbelievable superior image quality in the beginning of the movie.

Yet storyline is terribly incomplete. The storytelling rhythm is crazy fast, plot driven in a hurry, like a millions dogs chased behind. Too much montage screen switch, and confusing characters recall methods. People who never read the original novel would never figured out the story, or either feel tire to a cheesy romantic story.

Storytelling is the basic foundation, amazing CGI can't save a bad storyline! It is call quality awful movie. The incomplete ending is the worst, totally bum me out. Beside, this movie is edit based on a copycat's novel. The movie failed is predictable because of the plagiarized work, it is empty and bombastic from the copycat because her character and setting were built on the others base. Then how can the director recreated a better piece from an empty work?

Updated: Chinese paid internet army please leave me review along, we all knew those rave reviews from this movie were artificial. Who else will interested to read the alibaba company copyrights news, and rated it high. Maybe idols fans will commend their idols acting, I don't have so much words on that. As long as they keep claim and be logic, it is welcome to describe movie and actor in IMDb. But just behave, stop ShuaFen. I thought I was very gentle to rate 6/10 base on the CGI already.

Finally I got to watch this movie yesterday. I like how Director Xiaoding Zhao and Anthony LaMolinara built a very unique virtual world of ancient Chinese land for this movie. Qingqiu country, where the leading actress lives, is so lively and beautiful. And the war scene towards the end is breathtaking. It's very interesting to understand the two main roles' relationship all through the story, more complicated than I expected. I could always feel Ye Hua's pain and I cried when the mystery got unfolded. Beautiful 3D scenes and beautiful music. Highly recommended.

I watch this movie because my friend who was already read the web story and watched the series. I on the other hand have not heard much of the story except knowing this series or novel is quite popular. I kinda enjoyed the nice cgi and beautiful scenes. As always Chinese fantasy movies usually do produce nice artworks.The costumes were fantastic. Love all the intricacies and beautiful details of each costume. The actor and actress both beautiful and handsome and their on screen chemistry were wonderful. The only thing about this movie is the editing of the story for me is that it's jumping from one scene to another without much explanation. For my friend who already knew the story line , can grasp the whole who, why and what it's happening .But for me it's a bit disjointed, and after she explained to me 'the summary' of the story that i can understand fully what really happened . I would say if the director spend a bit more time of slowly unfolding the story from the beginning i would enjoyed it far more. This movie is like a fan service "summary" of a popular story where the fans already knows the story well to enjoy it more on a big screen with elaborate costumes, stunning cgi and scenery.

Chinese movie "Once Upon A Time" (2017) has blockbuster budget special effects and production values, with epic wide shots, huge armies, acrobatic fight scenes, a gorgeous color palette and exotic costumes, as well as insanely attractive actors (Yang Yang) and actresses. I am not familiar with the copyright scandal or the books "Once Upon A Time" is supposedly based on, but there was even a hint of a good story to draw from: humorous, tragic, heroic, villainous, a broken kind of humanity on which to savor. But with all this surefire appeal, even a comical animal sidekick akin to Disney films, "Once Upon A Time" quite definitely missed its mark.

The vast armies had no clout, the fight scenes held little meaning or surprise, the attractive actors became generic-in many ways, there was more splendor than distinguishment. The story had mystery, but it fell apart. One scene skipped to the next, one location became another giving the audience no sense of context or sequence. The story of so much grandiose complexity (300 year heartbreak, 70,000 year missed connections) revealed itself as flimsy. Everything which seemed meant to be epic had little significance, much like a special effect move in a video game with puny attack damage.

Major potential, but not a major let down because I didn't expect much when after forty minutes I still didn't feel any story progess or emotional investment. At this point I just finished the remaining hour and twenty minutes to be able to write this review. Too long, if you ask me and not really worth it.

For starters, the title actress Yiu Lifei who plays the forgetful immortal Queen is sorely uncharismatic although a few drinking scenes almost held hope. Her romantic interest played by Yang Yang is much more appealing and even might have acting chops, but his character had next to no dimension. The extent of their romance seemed only to be to cry on cue in a single, solitary tear across their porcelain cheeks. Boring, after a while.

Many of the side characters however do have a lot of charisma and some emotional depth. One feels there were some casting mistakes for the leads with favor for beauty instead of ability to emote. Luo Jin plays Yiu Lifei's drunken Phoenix friend and his part is small but his expressions sympathetic. Chun Li has a larger part as Yang Yang's consort and Yiu Lifei's jealous rival and she is appropriately evil and vulnerable. Others also play minor roles but do a well enough job. One feels as though with different casting and leadership this movie could've soared.

I'm giving "Once Upon A Time" a 6/10 because truly, the color palette and costumes are next level. The lighting at times was beautiful, and I liked most of the set designs. But for an almost two hour run time, beautiful colors can't sustain a momentous cliche of a film without even basic storytelling skills to back it up. Whoever this director is, they must have missed a few film classes because too often exposition shots are sorely missing and vital exposition in terms of the rules of the world is forgotten until it is much too late. Some backpedaling helped things but by that point I had given up.

6/10 for this weird mix of utterly remarkable visual effects and utterly amateur storytelling. I mean seriously who hired this director and where did they get the editing team from? Intro to film class?