DragonBlade

DragonBlade (2005)
Chinese Title: 龍刀奇緣
Translation: Dragon Blade Romance

 

Starring: (English version) Daniel Wu, Karen Mok, Doug Baker, Simon Broad, Reuben M.
Director: Antony Szeto
Action Director: Antony Szeto, Douglas Kung, Ji Chunhua, Wu Bin, Xu Xiangdong

 

DragonBlade is an interesting failure. On one hand, it is the first 3D CGI animated film to come out of Hong Kong (and China and Taiwan). Moreover, it is the first martial arts-centric CGI animated film as well, predating Kung Fu Panda by several years. There was an honest attempt to get the martial arts right for the most part, but the film flounders in enough areas that it’s little more than a curio.

We open with our main character, Lang (voiced by House of Fury’s Daniel Wu), training in kung fu under the tutelage of an absurdly buck-toothed old master. Know what they say about beating one’s own children? In any case, we do get some Drunken Master callbacks in this scene, but we really don’t learn anything about our main character other than he knows kung fu.

Jump ahead (some time) to a small house inhabited by a pretty young lady, Yingying (Black Mask's Karen Mok, acting in English), and her good-for-nothing younger brother, Ari. Ari spends his days skateboarding around on a converted sawhorse and doing nothing of interest. Meanwhile, Lang is at school studying under Master Wu (Mike Szuc), an old scholar whose pet bird (voiced by Grant Thatcher) is a mystical fairy creature from the mythical land of Arcadia. According to legend, there is a temple in Arcadia that houses a legendary Dragon Sword, guaranteed to make anyone the strongest warrior in China.

A few days later, the town is attacked by a giant humanoid boar monster, who terrorizes the popular and is more than a match for Sheriff Masu (Reuben M.) and his claymore-class weapon. At the same time, a mysterious turquoise-haired thief is stealing money from the rich to give to the poor. The local magistrate, Lord Ko, is upset that Masu can stop neither the thief nor the monster, so he organizes a martial arts tournament to find a new Sheriff. The winner ends up being Lang, who takes it upon himself to find the thief first. He does find her and duels with her, but she is ultimately rescued by the Boar King. This is when Master Wu’s bird, Bali-Ba, informs him that only the Dragon Sword can defeat the monster.

Much like the kung fu movies of old, the story, written by Sze Yeung-Ping (Tai Chi II and Born to Defence) and Karen Mok’s brother, Trevor, has an odd structure that really pushes the plot into the second half of the movie, while the first half feels more like the story is just spinning its wheels. While that is forgivable in some of those earlier films, a modern fantasy adventure should not have that sort of approach to storytelling.

The story itself could be interesting, but it lacks internal cohesion. If Arcadia is a mythical realm, how does nobody know how to get there when Yingying and Ari can access that place simply by falling down a local cliff? Moreover, how does Lang find is way there so quickly and easily? This particular story hiccup is extremely detrimental to the story, since it robs the film of any sense of wonder or whimsy that it needed to be a good adventure. In A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), there’s a scene in the final act when Joey Wong’s character is abducted and taken to hell. Wu Ma’s swordsman character declares, “We have to storm hell,” and they do so. Immediately. DragonBlade does something similar, where they tell Lang to get the sword from Arcadia and in the very next scene, he’s standing in front of the ominous temple-structure-thingie where the sword is kept. It was forgivable in A Chinese Ghost Story because that detail was a) introduced late in the film and b) it wasn’t an integral part of the story on the whole. Here, the characters have been talking about Arcadia—a strange name for a place in Fantasy China—since the beginning and the character’s arrival there is…casual. It’s like making a Lord of the Rings adaptation where Frodo is told to take the ring to Mordor, and then in the next scene, he’s already halfway up Mount Doom.

The story has pacing and logical issues, and is further underserved by the animation. Well, I won’t diss the animation too much. It’s on the level of a late 90s Playstation 1 cut scene, sort of like a Chinese version of the game Brave Fencer Musashi. There are worse and more infamous animated films out there, like the notorious Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa. The animation isn’t very expressive, but it does the job. That said, the technical issue that really sinks this film is the awful sound mixing. The English dubbing is played too loudly, the sound effects are probably a few decibels lower, and the background music—not very dynamic to begin with—is played so quietly you can barely hear it. Godzilla fans used to moan and complain about that being done in Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, but this one takes the cake.

Stuntman-turned-director Antony Szeto (who also directed WuShu - The Young Generation) did do his best to make the martial arts sequences believable. He is given credit for “staging” the film’s fight sequences, although Douglas Kung (Chinese Heroes and King Boxer) also lent a hand. Moreover, three Mainland Chinese wushu stylists with film experience themselves—Ji Chunwa (Fong Sai Yuk II and New Legend of Shaolin); Wu Bin (Revengence Superlady and Cutthroat Struggle for Invaluable Treasure) and Xu Xiangdong (Holy Robe of Shaolin Temple and The White-Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom)—were hired as consultants, probably to make sure that the styles being performed looked authentic. The Night Thief character fights using Baguazhang, which looks neat. Master Wu reveals himself to be a master of Taiqiquan. The tournament sequence has a bunch of styles and weapons on display, including one guy who uses the elusive Emei Piercers and another fighter who sports Wolverine-esque claws. I liked those details. All of the fights look nice, the mediocre animation notwithstanding, and they are generally played straight. But really, all things considered, if you need animated martial arts so badly, just watch the Kung Fu Panda movies, or the Street Fighter anime, or Fatal Fury II, or The Jackie Chan Adventures, or some incarnation of the Ninja Turtles series.