War for a woman(Troy),the clever general with tricks(Ulysses)...I don't know.I still hope that the history of the Chinese was treated better by John Woo than my history was treated by Wolfgang Petersen and Oliver Stone...
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yea, the woman part was definitely not true. i don't know why john woo insisted on inventing this part. the story is grand enough without it. but the 'clever tricks' were certainly a big part of three kingdoms. in any case, it was ok, but woo felt compelled to 'dumb down' the story, so im sure quite a few out there would be saying he butchered the source material
shareWell, at least John Woo didn't let Xiao Qiao join in the fighting together with Sun Shangxiang.
shareI was disappointed with John Woo, for the whole Xiao Qiao Cao Cao obsession. just as i was disappointed with John Woo's decision not to have a fake surrender with Huang Gai.
shareJohn Woo is a romantic dude. Watch his older films, most of them border on melodrama. Though I really liked the new angle with Xiao Qiao in this film. It adds a really tragic aspect to Cao Cao's character, and really humanizes him. He's just a irredeemable character, that this angle really helps ground the character with ultimately makes him a more enjoyable character to watch.
shareBut the fact of the matter is, the Greeks didn't invent those themes and concepts and plenty of myths and legends all over the world incorporate them. The fact that Woo wanted to integrate the themes into these two films is not that he wanted to "Westernise" the story. You will find these themes in China too. I think that if anyone did even a little anthopological study, or just read about the idea of the "monomyth", there would be far fewer of these "it just took an idea" threads and debates.
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