Heavenly Sword

This animated adaptation really falls short in a lot of parts, the worst being the animation itself; it tends to become choppier in some moments and appears very stiff in others, it really ends up looking outdated even for its time. The folks that made this seemed to just not care about certain details, seeing as how Bohan's damaged eye seems to switch sides multiple times or how Nariko's sleeve would suddenly be on the opposite side for 1 scene.

It may have been better if this movie was a little bit longer because believe it or not, I truly believe that this movie suffers from too much action and not very good action at that. All the action left barely any room to build up the story or its characters, it really felt like nothing but action scene after action scene. Unfortunately this led to the characters just becoming bland, due to a severe lack of character development, when they were much more interesting in the video game. Bohan felt like an exceedingly bland character compared to his video game counterpart who was quite sarcastic and funny in some moments. Some changes they made to the story actually ended up ruining some very good character development that occurred in the video game, especially changes made around the character named Shen. They also added a new subplot which ultimately went nowhere and changed nothing at all. The majority of the acting performances also felt quite wooden compared to the game's, even Nariko's VA who did a much better job in the game than she did here.

I really think you'd be better off watching the cutscenes of the video game, which should be just about 2 hours.

Loved this Heavenly Sword movie & it has a great storyline to boot that is easy to follow, I totally enjoyed it all the way throughout, Though I do hope that they do make a Heavenly Sword two.

I came to this film because of the games, which I think are good. But this film has only that, a name. When I watch an animation film I expect, nowadays, the graphics will be good, the animations will be smooth, and the faces will show at least some emotion. I have not found any of these in this film. Graphics are very cheap, even pixelated sometimes. Animation seems to come from 10 or 15 years ago. Characters faces are empty of any kind of emotion. So, the technical issue is really bad. I suppose producers thought that with a famous name would be enough, so they decided to spend ass less money as possible here. When we talk about the story or the character development things are only slightly better, but just because it cannot be worse than animation or graphics. Plain characters, no development, plot full of tropes, absolutely predictable. This film is not worth your time.

In fact, it is an absolutely awful movie, with very few obvious redeeming qualities , outside of the somewhat rootable and empathetically voiced protagonist Kai.

Technically, Heavenly Sword ranges from weak to dreadful., constantly looking a movie or video game that came out 20 years too late. The editing is confused, the characters lack emotion and move stiffly, the colours are very flat , there are very obvious continuity errors and the backgrounds while the least bad of the animation are unimaginative and lack detail. The music sounds very random in placement, and stylistically it's either an ill-fit or completely misplaced.

With the writing, Heavenly Sword fares every bit as poorly and even more so. The writing sounds incredibly awkward (almost like gibberish) all the time, very shallow, very on-the-surface and there is a complete disconnect emotionally. The story had some decent, if rather clichéd, ideas, but executes all of them messily, with laborious pacing, unexciting and incoherently edited action , a constantly jumpy feel and a complete lack of depth as a result of not doing anything with the ideas it had.

Outside of Kai, the characters are flat in personality and fail to remotely engage, and voiced with little emotion, some of the voice actors don't even fit their roles. Not even a talented actor like Alfred Molina can save this., one of my biggest bugbears regarding films/movie/television is waste of talent, which this movie manages to do.

All in all, very poorly done. 2/10, and that is only for Kai. Bethany Cox

Must watch in Blueray. Amazing action sequence. Great Visual. Great Story.