L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties

In terms of this movie’s artwork and animation (yes, there is CGI, although it may not look like it in the preview gallery), it is definitely something worth seeing! Our communist comrades from P.R.C. (since we are using acronyms...) really tried hard to make an impressive movie and they succeeded. It was really good, the fight scenes were pumped, and even if some things looked out of place at times (almost like as if Legolas was riding Oliphant's trunk in Return of the King, I guess), at least it could be justified by the fact that the characters have superhuman magical powers. However, I fail to see the point of having nice looking artwork if you just cannot get what the narrative is about, even though it is kind of going pretty well most of the time… Imagine if you will, a pretty attractive girl who is on a date with you and talks and talks and talks, even though you just do not get what the hell she is going on about, and it is only towards the end of your time together (after almost two hours) that her endless chattering (although quite compelling) starts to make some sense... Most of the time, I essentially could not understand most of the characters regarding their motivations and intentions! Moreover, it is set in quite an interesting fantasy world, although I only got a chance to briefly understand how it all works on a basic level, and casually learned only a few things on the fly, and nothing had enough depth to properly engage me. Maybe if there was less fighting and more exposition --- then perhaps it may not have been such an interesting and action-packed show, even though it would have perhaps made more sense to me... The soundtrack was like that too --- on the one hand, I liked it. The songs and musical motifs were pleasant to listen to, however, they just did not seem to fit the mood of some of the scenes very well --- in other words, they were not in tune with each other… This is a contradictory albeit quite an interesting movie - on its own I would award about 5.5/10, add to that the fact that I would like to see the follow-up (to be released this year), because perhaps then this would all start to make sense, and it will be even what the movie’s creators intended - an epic and wonderful fantasy… (24/07/2018)