Iceman: The Time Traveler (2018)

Iceman: The Time Traveler (2018) Chinese Title: 冰封俠時空行者 Translation: Frozen Man, Time Walker

Starring: Donnie Yen, Eva Huang Shengyi, Wang Baoqiang, Simon Yam Tat-Wah,Yu Kang, Wang Wenqi, Lam Suet, Pau Hei-Ching, Chen Kuan-Tai, Yasuaki Kurata, Maggie Jiang Shuying, Wu Junyu

Director: Raymond Yip

Action Director: Donnie Yen

I commented in my review of Iceman 3D that the last few minutes of that film were especially confusing and asked more questions than it answered. Iceman: The Time Traveler tries to answer some of them, but ends up doing so in such an incoherent manner that the final product is worse than its predecessor. If Iceman 3D was Donnie Yen’s The Medallion, then I guess Iceman: The Time Traveler is his Bleeding Steel. Gosh.

The Brazilian cut is only 83 minutes long, the first ten of which are recap of scenes from the last film. I can see Terror of Mechagodzilla in 1975 starting off with scenes from the previous movie because home video wasn’t really a thing. But doing this in the 2010s? It’s a testament to how incoherent the first story was and how bad this film is bound to be. That also means that in this cut, there is barely 70 minutes of new material. And it shows.

The movie proper starts with Commissioner Cheung (a returning Simon Yam) visiting the morgue where He Ying’s body resides. The pathologist points out that He Ying is actually still alive, despite having “drowned” in the previous film. Cheung kills the doctor and makes off with the body. Cheung then kills several police officers while storming the jail where Nie Hu is being kept and rescues him, too. Yes, Cheung is also a Ming Dynasty general and one of He Ying’s brothers from the Jinyingwei. He wants to return to his own time and take over the failing dynasty, armed with knowledge of the future.

Okay, wait a second. We learn that Cheung—his real name is Yuan Long—was unearthed and thawed out 18 years before. Is it really possible for a man from the Ming Dynasty (who probably doesn’t know Cantonese) to wake up in pre-handover Hong Kong with no identification to join the police, climb the ranks, become a commissioner and a super-rich crime boss in less than 20 years? Sorry, I call shenanigans on that!

Anyway, the time travel device is discovered in a cave outside of Beijing. Yuen Long and He Ying go there, where He Ying proves to be reluctant about activating the time machine, especially after learning that Sao-Ao died after the climax of the first film. Nie Hu shows up at the cave with May in tow to use as a bargaining tool. Yuen Long and Nie Hu end up traveling back to the Ming, with He Ying and May eventually following behind.

He Ying decides to use this trip to try to save his village from Japanese pirates, who destroyed it and slaughtered his family before his encounter with the royal guard in the snow mountains. He Ying and May return to his village and are well received by everybody, including He Ying’s long-time admirer (and betrothed), Jade (Hidden Blade’s Maggie Jiang). Thus starts a love triangle that goes…well…nowhere. He  Ying also finds Sao-Ao—before he got frozen in the ice—and the two are still friends.

And thus we get one of the film’s biggest plot holes: the Ming Dynasty portion is set before He Ying’s being framed for the murder of the Minister. So, technically, there should be “local” versions of He Ying, Sao-Ao, Nie Hu, and Yuan Long running around. The story only acknowledges Sao-Ao’s “younger” version. I suppose you can use the argument that He Ying’s self is still in India or Tibet at the time. But flashbacks from the first film—re-iterated in the recap—show us that Yuan Long was present at the slaughter of the Minister’s family—his wife was the minister’s daughter. So, logically, both versions of Yuan Long should be geographically in the same place. But the film ignores the existence of the younger Yuan Long.

Long story short: Yuan Long was behind the massacre of the Minister’s household. Or at least he is in this iteration of the Ming Dynasty. Yuan Long has conspired with the head of the Japanese pirates, General Hojo (Yasuaki Kurata, who played practically the same role in both Ninja in the Deadly Trap and God of War), and a Eunuch (Chen Kuan-Tai, of Dragon Tiger Gate and 14 Blades) to usurp the throne of the Ming Emperor using the time machine…somehow. I really don’t know how he intends to do it. And he will use his newfound power to help General Hojo topple of the Tokugawa Shogunate and make him the new Shogun. Uh, okay. And Hojo’s pirates will attack He Ying’s village because…uh…reasons?

He Ying tries to stop the assassination of the minister, but like Terminator 3 and the 2002 Time Machine remake, the past cannot be changed. Events will still happen, even if some of the details are a bit different. But, if He Ying cannot prevent tragedy that is now “determined” to happen, he can at least stop Yuan Long and General Hojo from further tampering with time. That said, do not ask me to explain what happens in the last 15 minutes of the film, because I am at lost to make sense of whatever it is that I watched.

Both the director and writer of the film changed from the first film to this one. Manfred Wong wrote the screenplay, whose career went back to the old school era with wuxia films like Return of the Deadly Blade and later to the infamous Young and Dangerous films. Manfred also worked a lot with Andrew Lau on his late 90s/early 00s CGI fantasies like The Duel and The Storm Riders. What the man is not qualified to do, however, is write science fiction. I have pointed out the most grievous flaws in the story, but there are lots of smaller lapses of logic and character motivations to be found, too.

Director Raymond Yip had a fairly undistinguished career in Hong Kong, at least by genre standards. He did a lot of comedies and dramas, like Beauty and the Breast. The only martial arts films he made were Anna in Kung Fu Land (more of a comedy) and Bruce Lee, My Brother. Interestingly enough, the man has not had a directing credit since this film, which makes me wonder if Donnie Yen’s lawsuit and general backlash to the final product sunk his career like a Destroyer occupying A1 and A2.

There is little action in this film, once again staged by Donnie Yen himself. There is a brief fight between Wang Baoqiang and “future” Yu Kang, which is more hand-to-hand fighting. At the end, Donnie has an extended sword fight with Yasuaki Kurata, which is fun to watch. Yes, there is lots of wire assistance, but I’m glad that Donnie got to fight Kurata at one point in his career. Jackie and Jet had already gotten to do so. Zhao Wen-Zhuo did. Gordon did. The Venoms did. Ti Lung did. Even Vicki Zhao and Karen Mok did. So, I’m glad those two got to throw down. I just wish it had been in service of a more coherent film, and not CGI clusterf*** of a climax that was what we see in Iceman: The Time Traveler.