MovieChat Forums > Chi bi: Jue zhan tian xia (2009) Discussion > So many Asians and Chinese people hating...

So many Asians and Chinese people hating on this


I daresay, people are too concerned with historical accuracy, realism, and whatnot.

We should be judging the movie by its overall effect, its brilliant plot, its intensity, the beauty of the explosions/battles (fire ships scene), effective usage of cliche plot devices (Piggy and Pit), excellent subtitle translation, not nitpicking silly "flaws" like how the woman spy was able to pass as a male soldier or how they released cao cao.

Also, wasn't it awesome how the guy was able to hold the torch in the model of ships and simulate the wind blowing the fire with the actual wind from the environment? You can't do that with a hologram or on-screen model.

It was very clever how the lady left her husband four words "your child Ping An" in which the first two words converged to one word meaning "pregnant"? I'm sure that people well-versed in Chinese were probably thinking "this is cheesy" but the rest of the world, including myself, a Chinese American who can barely read/write Chinese, can appreciate that scene's brilliance.

The point is, Red Cliff 2 deserves an 8.5/10, and would have achieved such a rating were it not for all the Chinese know-it-alls.

http://www.maxloh.com/

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It's based on the 3 kingdoms period, and nerds of the books are not easy to please. Like any group of "hardcore" fans in general they have lousy taste as well. I have also seen many asian moviegoers trashing other good asian movies, and praising some really terrible ones. Some of these fans are of the celebrity-obsessed type of fans, that spend a lot of time looking for photos of Zhang Zhiyi, and reading hong kong tabloids.

In other words, don't pay attention to them.

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I'm Chinese and I don`t hesitate giving this movie a 1/10.

It is true that viewers unfamiliar with the source material are spared from the sheer vomit inducing emotions that most educated Chinese feel when forced to view this trash.

In fact, I have not seen a more extreme case in the history of cinema of the director's vision clashing with the spirit of the source material TO THIS DEGREE.

Woo's take on Chi-Bi is like playing Bach's Goldberg Variations in the style of Michael Finnissy's English country tunes. and if you don't get this reference, too bad, I don't feel like explaining.

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I'm Chinese and I give this movie a 10/10.

This is very beautifully shot film. Those who don't appreciate it are just too narrow-minded. They either haven't watched many movies in their life, or consider Stephen Chow's A Chinese Odyssey a masterpiece. Foreign friends who truly understand cinema art can trust their own judgement.

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Well you don't necessarily have to be a sucker for historical accuracy in order to dislike this movie. I'm typically not very thrilled about John Woo, but in this movie he felt like a Chinese Michael Bay - stupid plot, stupid characters, big explosions.

The thing that bothered me the most, which is also discussed on another thread on this board, was the stupidity of the "bad" guys. Starting with that "labyrinth" war scene from the first movie, which is as believable and awe inspiring as a game of dominoes. I don't necessarily care about historical accuracy, but darn it man, unless it's meant to look like a puppet show or to be a parody, at least make the bread-and-butter of the movie - the fight scenes - look like fight scenes, and between sane people.

Then here, we have a good football player made an army captain, we have the leading bad guy kill his only navigation specialists without even thinking of what he's doing, we have him receiving the enemy's wife and not even thinking about questioning her on her husband's plans (not to mention torture her, rape her or at least hold her hostage). And of course, we have the generals relish a huge amount of arrow supply without even knowing what they were shooting at. Or wondering how come that the ships they had been shooting at were turning around and leaving, when everyone on board should have been dead.

Then the good guys. They see a huge pile of dead soldiers floating down the river - hey let's get their weapons! No way should we check the cause of death first! Ah wait that was in the first part, sorry. Now, we have two princesses going over to the bad guys' side, for various reasons, without ever thinking that they could provide the enemy with hostage material. One totally manages to infiltrate the enemy army and pass as a man, while making friends, spying and drawing maps. And the bloody wife, who has a spontaneous moment of idiocy and goes over to - stop the war? stall the battle? even though she was pregnant, and she even tells that to her husband before leaving - you know, for encouragement.

And finally, the same good guys in the end just - let the baddie escape, because they ruined his hair and the shame of it is gonna keep him from ever doing bad things. Because, you know, this war was supposed to be a moral lesson for everybody. For the good guys - stay united or else, and for the bad guy - stop doing bad things.

The first part did have some nice scenery (such as the fleet on Yangtze) and even a few good fights (like the intro), and some nice scenes - like the musical dialogue. Perhaps the main fault of this part was that it contained too little to distract one from the silly plot.

there's a highway that is curling up like smoke above her shoulder

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The point is, Red Cliff 2 deserves an 8.5/10, and would have achieved such a rating were it not for all the Chinese know-it-alls.
People will score it what they want to rate it whether they be Asian or Occidental. The film was a commercial and critical success in the east, so I'm not quite sure how you can blame Asians for a rating that that you happen to personally believe is not appropriate.🐭

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