8/10
Chinese productions getting better all the time
6 April 2021
If you think about it, Chinese folklore has millennia of content, refined for centuries, to inspire movie makers. All they need is some computer graphics, decent acting and some experience and they are set to build fantastical worlds that the Western World hasn't even dreamed of. This film is part of a sort of thematic series, with another Yinyang Master movie from 2020 having absolutely no connection to this one, but set in the same world of Chinese mythology. And it was good!

Now, the scenes were not really polished, the actors and their dialogues not to the standards that we've come to expect from Hollywood productions, but that's as much a good thing as a bad thing. The CGI was a bit clumsy only with the "Red Devil" character and maybe the final fight, the rest being pretty spot on. But what I liked more was the story, which had complex characters, hero journeys, a big baddie and tons of fun fights that kind of made sense.

Bottom line: this is one of the most entertaining and accessible Chinese films I've seen in a long time and, what's best, it felt natural, not an attempt to clone a particular Western genre. It felt authentic as well as interesting. Keep up the good work, guys!
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