Once Upon A Time

Aug 12: Saw the movie with my mom and uncle today. Had no problem following the story line, even my 80 year-old uncle could easily tell which parts were flashbacks. It's a well made film and we thoroughly enjoyed it, though adding a few scenes to tell of the love between Mo Yuan and Si Yin will make the story more complete. Very touched towards the end and have to admit I teared up. Will definitely go see it again!!

Aug 20: Watched it 3 times already, today with my husband who doesn't speak Chinese. Although it's not his type, he thought it's pretty good as it fulfilled it's purpose as a movie...well made and good entertainment. Couldn't understand all those extremely negative reviews, seemed to have an agenda to prevent this movie from attaining greater success.

Sep 2: My 4th view today. Saw the standard version with several friends. Without the "visual busyness" of 3D, my focus was fully on the story and characters, and the richness of both are amazing. I like this movie more and more.

I watch this movie because my friend who was already read the web story and watched the series. I on the other hand have not heard much of the story except knowing this series or novel is quite popular. I kinda enjoyed the nice cgi and beautiful scenes. As always Chinese fantasy movies usually do produce nice artworks.The costumes were fantastic. Love all the intricacies and beautiful details of each costume. The actor and actress both beautiful and handsome and their on screen chemistry were wonderful. The only thing about this movie is the editing of the story for me is that it's jumping from one scene to another without much explanation. For my friend who already knew the story line , can grasp the whole who, why and what it's happening .But for me it's a bit disjointed, and after she explained to me 'the summary' of the story that i can understand fully what really happened . I would say if the director spend a bit more time of slowly unfolding the story from the beginning i would enjoyed it far more. This movie is like a fan service "summary" of a popular story where the fans already knows the story well to enjoy it more on a big screen with elaborate costumes, stunning cgi and scenery.

I haven't watched the entire movie, but only trailers on Youtube. I was deeply impressed by the story and the effect was fantastic, and I almost cried. Based on the review from my friends who already watched it in China, it is quite good, not only the performance of actors and actresses, but also the effect and music. I know that the novel based on which the movie was made was accused of plagiarism, however I don't think it is the movie's fault because at that time the movie already finished shooting. According to my knowledge, the movie has deleted all the plots relevant to plagiarism and tells a different and better story now. I am OK with people not go to see the movie if they are anti-plagiarism, but it seems quite irresponsible to rate the movie low, since now the movie and the novel are completely different and independent. Actually, you should go to rate the novel which is still on sell. The movie team spent around 3 years on making the movie and it is worth watching. Every effort deserves respect.

My friend told me that when you watch the movie for the first time, you might get a little lost since the rhythm is fast. But if you do the second time you will find yourself completely understand the plots and they are very logical.

Anyway, this is only my opinion. I wish more people can go to see the movie and give more objective reviews. I am looking forward to seeing the movie.

I went to watch the movie twice today, it was really touching. The first time when I was watching, I felt the plots jumped a little fast at the beginning. However, as the story moved on, the emotion went so smoothly that I found myself in tears unconsciously. Then I gave it a second try, and this time the plots seemed much more coherent (probably because I already knew the story?) and I still couldn't control my tears. The love story is classic and euphemistic. The most important, I really like the ending as it completed the story and explained reincarnation---the core of the movie . For me, it is as good as the ending of La La Land.

Finally, big applause for music and visual effect, big applause for the director and all actors and actresses, and all the people that worked together for such a beautiful movie. Once again, it is worth watching.

Although there are quite numbers of negative reviews on this movie (mostly about the novel plagiarism which I don't think it should stop people from watching this movie who already bought the copyright legally from the author), I choose to walk into the cinema as I only trust my own eyes and listen to my own hearts. Overall, this movie is worth watching with very beautiful scenes, costumes, BGM, CGI, good looking actors and actresses. The acting skills of Yang Yang and Crystal Liu are also impressive especially on those sad scenes. However, some of the scenes jump a bit sudden without good transition. Audiences who have never read the novels or series might not be able to enjoy the movie much. Hence, some points are cut because of the film editing.

The movie is like taking the best scenes of the TV shows having the same name. The TV show is much better. This one is so broken. It doesn't have the important parts which it really needs to have, such as why Bai Qian ended on the place where she met Ye Hua? It's like if you haven't watched the TV series version, you wouldn't even get the whole story. The four stars I gave is for video effects, not for story. Finally, I would highly recommend to watch the TV series version first before watching this one. If you watch this one without watching TV series version, you wouldn't understand the whole movie completely.