Avoid this like the plague

As an ardent fan of the source material, avoid this crap. I've liked the numerous tv adaptations of this novel. This movie bad. The 1994, The Maidens of Heavenly Mountain was way better. That concentrated on a different protagonist (there are 3 in the story).

The costumes are hit and miss. Some are clearly inappropriate for the age of the artist and there were lost opportunities to make the female lead look prettier. She's always sad and half dead looking. There's no chemistry between the leads.

Most of the lead characters aren't great actors, the best were probably random support cast.

The dialogue is padded out cliche cringe lines which is repetitive. There's perfectly good dialogue in the source material but they decided to disgard that.

The action is the best part but it's a mixed bag. There's a couple of good fights in it. The one with the horde of heroes trying to kill him is generally good but there's a scene where he is gravely injured with swords hacking away at him but they don't seem to do anything.

You will not know what is going on even after they explain the plot at the end. You won't know what is going on with the explainer. They don't introduce many of the people so you need prior knowledge to work it out. The problem is even if you are familiar, they change up characters and plot points so you will still be confused at the details.

I love Donnie Yen but he peaked in the 90s. Great at action and acceptable despite his acting being like a plank of wood. His production and direction are horrific. How could he have accepted this script? They kept some plot points but they could have been skipped as they didn't add anything to this movie as it concentrates on the story of just one protagonist. They had no idea of their own narrative.

They had a decent budget for this so it is disappointing. For those waiting for a wuxia movie revival, I think Wong Jing and Donnie Yen are making sure to kill it before it appears.