Silly Chinese Historical Fantasies

TRAILER THE GLAMOROUS IMPERIAL CONCUBINE
MNCVisionID

These are all set in ancient China, like a thousand years ago. These first two might be aimed at children. They are pretty silly. We watched the first two episodes of The Glorious Imperial Concubine, they're like 45 minutes long. We have a princess and a prince from two separate clans who want to run away and be happy. Good luck with that kids, you're royalty and you are saddled with royal obligations. Two episodes was enough.


征途 (Double World) Official Trailer 1 (HD)
헨리 Henry Lau

This two hour movie doesn't make much sense but the special effects are spectacular. 

There is a murderous competition to select the next Grand Marshal of the army. Just getting to the competition is an ordeal. Our trio of competitors must first cross a desert. They run into a couple of giant scorpions hiding just below the surface of the sand, and a vicious sand storm that kills one of their trio. They meet a young girl who becomes his replacement simply because she survived and for no apparent reason latches onto our two remaining heros. 

The stadium where some of the competition is held is this huge stone thing reminiscent of a Roman colosseum. There are a dozens of giant chains stretched across the central arena maybe 50 feet in the air. Underneath are large upward pointing spikes. The contestants must cross the arena on the chains. Falling from the chains is likely to be fatal, if you aren't impaled on a spike, the height alone will probably kill you. There are two sets of chains, each mounted on an independently rotatable ring. The rings rotate randomly depending on the whim of the treacherous Grand Tutor. Who dreams up these things? I wouldn't be surprised to see this show up in a video game, or maybe that's where it came from.

There is also The King of Beasts, a giant dragon headed snake that chases our heros through a labyrinth of tunnels.


rthdal Chronicles | Official Trailer | Netflix [ENG SUB CC]
The Swoon
This one seems more like a take off of Avatar, except no space travel. We have two races, one apparently human and one with superman-like abilities. The humans want the superman's land and when they won't agree to let them farm it, the humans embark on a war to exterminate the supermen. The story is vague and jumbled. There are half breed babies, but no explanation for where they came from. Lots of action and people being snarky, but the plot is sparse. It's like there might be a coherent story underneath, but they skip over most of it only touching down occasionally so you need to fill in these huge holes by surmising what must have happened to get us here. Kind of a pain. Episodes are an hour and a half long. We watched one. I don't know if we will watch another.