Tag: Tian Jing

A few years ago, Oscar Winner Guillermo del Toro directed a fun little giant monster movie named Pacific Rim, that was meant with not real acclaim, but most people admitted it was at least a bit fun.

I remember going to the opening night release, a theater full of guys, and my now wife being the only (presumed) lady in the audience. It was a fun experience. It had a lot of fun characters and great actors, some of which hammed it up sure, but they put an end to the goddamn apocalypse.

This next film, Pacific Rim: Uprising, has no del Toro directing it, was put off of the line up indefinitely a year back, and is just now finally coming back. It is set later, so we can have a mostly new cast, and uhhh, I dunno. I guess it is about monsters and robot stuff still.

I think I will just refer to them now as battlebots.

Set ten years after the first film, the humans have won the war, no more alien sightings, and they are just living their lives. Some areas have never been rebuilt on the coast, others are back to normal. The Jaeger program is still kicking around, building a few machines and training new recruits just in case another attack comes. But for the most part, they don´t do a lot.

Jake Pentecost (John Boyega) thought about living up to his father´s legacy, but instead he would rather live in an abandoned city, stealing Jaeger parts and other items for junk food and dollar bills. Hey, YOLO and stuff.

But during a theft gone wrong, he ran into a younger girl, Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny) who built her own very tiny Jaeger on her own stolen parts, small enough to be run by a single person, not two! They get into trouble, arrested, and now Jake has a choice. Join the Jaeger Pilot program (again!) or, you know, jail. His older ¨sister¨ Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) is sort of leading the thing again, so she gave him that totally not forced option.

Long story short, this movie has a lot of cadet training, and worrying about the future of the Jaeger program. Will they switch to drones? Why waste money at all? What did the Kaiju want? And why is there a rouge Jaeger running around, kicking ass and killing people? Oh wait, what?

Also starring Burn Gorman and Charlie Day reprising their roles, along with other newcomers like Tian Jing, Jin Zhang, Adria Arjona, and a loaf of bread. I mean Scott Eastwood.

Well, if anything Eastwood is an incredibly attractive looking loaf of bread.

¨Hi, my name is Pacific Rim: Uprising! Allow me to make a film full of boring cliches and not a lot of fun action!¨

Boring cliches you say? Well, we got a son who doesn´t want to associate with his dad´s trade beside his knack for it. We got in general, cadet training programs of teenagers (with attitude!) who aren´t doing as well as hoped. But you know by the end, those same kids are going to have to be the ones who save the day. The band of misfits who struggled and grew together, not only learning how to be heroes, but to…love.

Other mistakes this sequel wanted to make was killing off old characters in dumb ways just so we can focus on the fun spunky youths more. It took WAY too long to get to some goddamn robot versus monster fighting action, which is what we signed up for in this film franchise. We had to see robots fight for each other for awhile, and obvious plot twists instead. Timing was very strange throughout the film, with the implication they did a lot of things fast that felt like weeks of work, despite having a huge time crunch to do it.

But hey, I won´t completely shit on it. Here are some pros. 1) The final fight was long (and really our only robot/monster battle), but entirely during the day, so you know, you could mostly understand what happened. 2) The Jaeger battle armor to control them didn´t have boob plates for the ladies. And, 3) There was a bit of talk about geology! Not a lot of it, and not necessarily accurate, but still, geology, what fun!

I find it very odd to see a lot of hype for the movie Kong: Skull Island. King Kong has happened over and over in film’s history, and given everything I know about the internet, they hate reboots, reimaginings, and remakes of other films, so they shouldn’t care about this one.

But alas, here we are. I don’t have too many fucks to give about it of course, after King Kong 11 years ago. Overly long and it didn’t really do anything different.

I guess this one is bringing in some hardcore CGI and bigger acting names. Maybe that is it. Or people are freaking out over the potential of a Godzilla and Kong showdown in the future. Needless to say, if this film doesn’t do anything different, I will probably be mostly annoyed.

I don’t care about context, these two people are not dirty enough.

Kong: Skull Island makes sure you get to see a giant ape really early in the film, when two crashed World War II pilots land on the island, start to fight, and then he shows up. But this isn’t set during that war, this is actually set in 1973, during the end of the Vietnam war.

Bill Randa (John Goodman) is some sort of scientist, who believes there is a lot to discover on this skull island they have found in the South Pacific. Ancient civilizations have talked about it, there are constant storms that surround it, but he wants a mission to explore what has never been explored. Let’s call it a geologic mapping mission. With a military escort.

He is able to gather a team. He has his own crew, a geologist (Corey Hawkins) and a biologist (Tian Jing), along with some extra scientists from another company (John Ortiz, Marc Evan Jackson). They have a legendary British explorer to help explore the jungles, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), who is in it for some money. A prize winning photojournalist, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), who helped show the truth about Vietnam to the public. And of course a helicopter team lead by LTC Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and Captain Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell), straight out of ‘Nam.

Most of them assume it is just a real exploratory mission. But really, Randa has an agenda and believes to be giant monsters on this island, and he wants to bring an end to them. They’ve got weapons of many sizes. Unfortunately, when setting off seismic blasts to detect the crust, they wake up these beasts on the island, and they do not like having explosions all over the place. Spread out over the island, the crew has three days to make it to the north side before they can be rescued.

Also featuring John C. Reilly, and a whole lot of soldiers: Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, and Eugene Cordero.

Turns out this Kong film has a lot of Japanese influence.

At its heart, Kong: Skull Island is an action adventure flick that wants to show us giant animals fighting some dudes with bombs. Which on its own could be enough for most of the people who want to see it. I will say there are some scenes that look a bit awkward based on CGI usage. It doesn’t always mesh well. But the more pure CGI scenes like Kong fighting with the giant lizards look amazing.

The film also doesn’t pussy foot around Kong. We get to see him in the first few minutes. Within 15 more we are on the island and Kong totally fucks up the helicopters putting our characters in a perilous situation. We get a lot of Kong and they don’t tease him out.

You know what we don’t get a lot of? Character development. Basically every character in this movie is weak on that level. There is no gain. They don’t change. Well, some of them die. We have exactly one character who people will care about and does change and that man is played by John C. Reilly. His character is wonderful, an amazing addition to the film, and worthy of praise.

But Kong: Skull Island is just going to be a interesting film that could have been a lot better. With its post credit scene trying its best to imitate The Avengers it leaves some hope for the future. But have to hope they improve the scripts first.

Timing is everything. And I don’t think that Yimou Zhang, director of The Great Wall, intended for his alternative fantasy epic to tie in at all to American Politics.

But here we are, soooo.

The Great Wall has nothing to do with America. Just an American stars in it, because the Chinese director wanted him. And again, it is an alternative universe, so it isn’t taking place in Modern current China. What I am really getting at is there are people angry about a white guy starring in a Chinese setting film. Well, the director is Chinese. And he is telling a story he wants to tell. And they are playing Europeans who end up in China. So there is no reason to cry afoul. Unless the movie is terrible.

Then? Then we can cry afoul together.

Boom, racism over.

Set somewhere before now and sometime after, I don’t know, the year 1,000, we are introduced to a few white Europeans. William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal), two mercenaries, working their way to China in hopes of acquiring some of this black powder they have heard about, a destructive weapon and powerful force. They are the only two remaining members of their group after a few set backs. And hey, they get attacked by some big green creature they have never seen before too.

While running from some locals, they find themselves at a wall. A GREAT WALL! With thousands upon thousands of Chinese soldiers. Now they find themselves prisoners and in a war they had no idea even existed.

But good news, there is another white guy! Ballard (Willem Dafoe), a monk looking guy, who came here decades ago also in search of the black powder, but was unable to leave based on what he learned. And he can fill them in on the stories. There is also a female general here, in wonderful blue armor, General Lin (Tian Jing), who helps fill in our story.

The Chinese are being attacked by the Tao Tie, a large swarm of monsters. Every sixty years they attack, evolving and learning tactics, in order to get through to the other side. There is a Queen that controls them all, with every beast working for her in order to feed her. If she eats enough, she will be able to create an army to take over the world, so they have to prevent her from getting to their capital. Easy enough!

But can two extra soldiers really help? Sure, if they have some new ideas and have fought in many wars before this. Like mercenaries. Hooray!

Also featuring Andy Lau, Hanyu Zhang, Kenny Lin, Eddie Peng, Xuan Huang, and Lu Han.

We straight up got the Chinese Power Rangers leading this army.

Th Great Wall is a weird movie. Bizarre, really. It is a film that stays true to its roots and gives us a unique story.

When I say it stays true to its roots, I mean that it definitely feels like a Chinese movie. It fits the directors style. It is not overly Hollywoodized despite the Western cast members and writers (of which there was six)! The dialogue is shit, some build up scenes are rushed, but most of the focus is on the action, the mythology, and the colors.

The colors Duke! The colors! I loved that the outfits were stylish and seemingly useful. Each faction of the army with specialized weapon styles and tasks had a colorful cloak and armor to tell them apart to help with formations and look spectacular on the screen. I am especially impressed with the Crane Corps, all female fighters wearing blue. Their speciality was exciting, and it reminded me fondly of a Final Fantasy class system.

The ending was unfortunately a bit rushed. Moving the climax of the film to a new location put a damper on it for me. The CGI felt a bit weaker then too, with a lot of strange character actions.

Most of the characters were pretty two dimensional. But the film is weird. And it is pretty. So it has its uses.