Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)

Why so much hype?

People are voting emotionally.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

A Brilliant Conflict

Not even close to the original.My motto is dont try unless its got the same director.whICH It didn't!!

The usual good performance from Michelle Yeoh and a decent supporting cast cannot make much out of this rather dull martial arts sequel. The main problem is in the butchered story and so there are lots of spoilers here, all in the last-but-one paragraph.The acting is reasonable enough, Jason Scott Lee looks good as the bad guy, the simple plot at least makes sense and things move along at a good pace. Cinematography is fine, though it doesn't match the original. The characters are less interesting here though and Donnie Yen, while better than Chow Yun Fat in the fight scenes, has never been much of an actor. The great problem is the storyline. Supposedly based on Wang Dulu's Crane-Iron Pentalogy, actually the script bears little relationship to the novels and has clearly been written to accommodate Yen as a star name (his character dies early on in the book series). There is a kind of symmetry about wuxia fiction which should not be disturbed. A westerner's butchering of a Chinese story is never likely to work in this genre and this particular carve-up feels entirely wrong.At the end it's stated that Vase avenged her teacher. This is what should have happened but she wasn't allowed to. Wolf fighting Dai was inappropriate. So he had earlier thrown a fight against him – what kind of reason is that for revenge? Vase should also have been the principal in the pursuit of Wei Fang, as she was the one to lose the sword to him, and Wolf could have supported her with this. Meanwhile, Wolf should have been allowed to take his own revenge on Mantis who, in the course of the movie, had killed every one of his friends. Shu Lien, throughout the crescendo and climax, is left with nothing worthwhile to do and the strand about her teaching Vase leads nowhere. Vase should have mastered some skill which allowed her to defeat Dai and make sense of his earlier instruction to allow her to become 'worth killing'. Instead we see Shu using the skill she seems to have failed to teach to Vase. I did however like the switching of weapons in the fight and Dai's final line.Those who prefer westernised versions of Chinese martial arts to the real thing, may find this entertaining enough to be worth the time, but don't hope for anything nearly as good as CTHD.

Greetings from Lithuania."Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny" (2016) is a guilty pleasure. It's predictable and kinda cheese flick, but i enjoyed much more then i taught i would - just don't compare it with the first one, it lacks the magic of the original or any deep. Nevertheless as a 1h 40 min escapism flick it does it's job well enough to recommend it. There are some pretty weak stuff, like some flashbacks to characters at the end who have died - that didn't work, or romance which is a more like "meet-cute" then real thing (nothing so deep and poetry like it was in the first one - not for a mile). But this movie is excellently paced, i wasn't bored for a second, characters are more or less two dimensional but well drawn so you can separate one from another - and Natasha Liu Bordizzo (aka Snow Vase) is very gorgeous young woman - that was her first role ever - not that's a plus for a movie itself - just saying...Overall, "Sword of Destiny" is totally different movie then first one. It lacks any poetry, it is a very straightforward and kinda predictable flick, but very enjoyable one for a one evening.

Netflix strikes again! This time they chose to ruin the memory of a the 16 year old classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with a sequel that shines in being utterly boring. The film is only 100 mins long but it seems to last so much longer. The story is poorly constructed and there so little happening that halfway through the movie I hardly knew what is was about. Something about the titular sword, but it seems so unfocused and aimless. You never have the sense that the story is going anywhere or that the characters have some clear purpose. Also the characters are dull and the dialogue utterly uninspired. They did an effort to make it look good but strangely enough this film looks like a TV movie (well it actually is) that has this strong 'shot in a studio' look (much like War Horse for example). I didn't check the director before watching it but was very surprised Woo-Ping (action choreographer Matrix films) was at the wheel. So the action should at least be good right? Wrong, the fight scenes are slow and dull, not fast and furious. So I would recommend to skip this film entirely, certainly if you liked the original and want to keep your memory of it intact.