Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

I don't know how they could take a masterpiece like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and destroyed it. This sequel has nothing of the first movie except for the title.

Maybe i am too harsh, but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was an epic movie, with good story line, legendary character in Li My Bai, great chemistry between characters and epic ending. So based on that my expectations for this movie were high. Plus if you put Donnie Yen, and Jason Scott Lee on top of that you would expect nothing less than the previous movie. But, no. In CTHD 2, the story is terrible, the characters are weak, empty and shallow,there is no connection between them, the directing is bad, and the worst part is, it's in English. The only good thing are the fighting scenes and they are average at best.

So to summarize this movie is an average Chinese kung fu movie with some decent action, sword fighting scenes. As a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel its a big disappointment and not worth watching.

Amazing action scenes and beautiful cinematography. The fights are choreographed beautifully and even had the added benefit of a little cinema magic to get the superhuman agility of the samurai. The plot was easy to follow and I didn't feel like it relied to heavily on the first crouching tiger so that you could follow along even without having seen it. Enjoyed watching.

Note: Check me out as the "Asian Movie Enthusiast" on YouTube, where I review tons of Asian movies.

The first Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was released 16 years ago. I think it's a solid film and I enjoyed it quite a bit. There are other swordplay films that I enjoy more than that one, but overall I think it's deserving of its accolades. Now, after watching the trailers for Sword of Destiny, I gathered the impression that this would be a more generic period action movie that's less dramatically effective than its predecessor . . . and that's basically what I got. Over the past few days I've noticed that it has become instantly fashionable to bash on this flick, but I don't think it's as bad as its initial reputation suggests. It has its flaws, but I found it watchable.

For example, it actually looks quite lovely. It's nicely shot and has some impressive locations. The natural environments are captured well and have a bit of a variety; there are pretty forests, mountains, snowy locales, bodies of water, etc. It's nice to look at and looks professionally made. I feel like I need to say this because some people think that Netflix produced this film. I don't think that's true at all, actually. Unless I'm missing something, Netflix is just distributing it in conjunction with its theatrical release.

Unfortunately, the scriptwriting is significantly weak element here. The characters and the story are very generic, which makes this feel like a "by-the-book" genre movie. I almost feel like it's pointless to even discuss the plot in any detail. You have some martial arts masters who take in younger trainees with questionable morals, and some bad guy (who's bad . . . just because) tries to steal a special sword. If you've seen a number of wuxia films, there's nothing new that you're going to see here. The conflicts do not have a lasting dramatic impact, which means that you're basically just waiting for the next action sequence.

But fortunately, there are a number of good fights that are peppered throughout. The director here is Yuen-Woo Ping, who previously directed a bunch of entertaining action films in Hong Kong – a few of which include Iron Monkey (1993), In the Line of Duty 4 (1989), Tiger Cage (1988), and Drunken Master (1978). More recently he's been known for his action choreography in films such as The Matrix trilogy, Kill Bill, and the first Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon film. In terms of action, this guy knows what he's doing. Also, Sword of Destiny has some legitimate action movie stars with Donnie Yen and Michelle Yeoh. So you have some serious talent both in front of and behind the camera here, so the fights are generally good. The best of which involve Donnie Yen on an iced-over pond and Michelle Yeoh in a dark room (fighting a witch). There is use of wires (as expected) and some use of CGI (but not too much). Sometimes it does look a bit cartoony. There's nothing here that will rival the Ip Man films or The Raid films in terms of sheer awesomeness, but I found the action to be generally entertaining. And there was enough of it to make up for its dramatic flaws.

Your humble reviewer believes that the destiny of certain very special sequels is not merely to entertain, not merely to make money, but to strike a chord within the viewer that makes you realize how much you enjoyed the original and want to see it again.

So it was that at the halfway point of this movie I decided to go to the Amazon site and order the original CTHD. Only with the perspective of this lop-sided followup can the beauty, the genius, of the original be appreciated.

That said, a lot of top talent try very hard to salvage this title but aside from some amazing fight scenes -- scenes which by themselves are almost worth the price of the ticket -- it just keeps letting you down.

Yen's performance here made me appreciate his restraint in the 3 Ip Man movies even more. And watching the increasingly heavy Jason Scott Lee reminded me that when he first debuted on the scene, he played a very svelte Bruce Lee. And any film with Michelle Yeoh is always worth a look.

Have a glance here, but cherish the original.

Sword of Destiny (2016) tries to pick up several years after the events of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) holds again in her hands Li Mu Bai's legendary sword, known as the Green Destiny, and here is where the forced elements starting to emerge... A ferocious villain and his clan is after the sword. A conflicted young couple is needed to enrich the plot and to give a feel of Zhang Ziyi who is missing from the cast. A character who I wont spoil you who he is, played by Donnie Yen, and who has an unbelievable connection with the first movie. And of course the usual revenge sub-plots etc etc.

Unfortunately, the feel of the movie has nothing to do with Ang Lee's multi-awarded film. It feels like a generic wuxia movie. Too much cable-flying, most of it unnecessary if you ask me, uninspiring fights, over-processed and unnatural imagery... and the music, despite the reprize of Tan Dun's original theme from 2000, is not a perfect fit.

Overall: Yuen Woo-Ping, the grandmaster of kung-fu choreography makes a sub-par movie with CTHD2. You might want to check it out, out of curiosity if you liked the original more than 15 years ago. But honestly, despite the return of Michelle Yeoh don't expect much...