This is the 25th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.
It's the third day in the festival that has begun with an animated film. "New
Gods: Yang Jian" is by far the best of the three films. It's overwhelming,
from beginning to end. It's based on a 16th Century Chinese novel, which
itself is based on old Chinese myths. It would be interesting to sit with
someone from China to discuss the myths. I assume I would have been better
able to understand the film if I'd known the background.
Yang Jian is a God who's lost most of his powers and now works as a bounty
hunter. He's hired to retrieve a magic lamp from a thief called Chenxiang. He
soon finds the thief, but others are also searching for the lamp. The events
escalate, and Yang Jian discovers that he has a connection with Chenxiang.
"New Gods" (shortening the title) is the best film in the festival so far. I
almost gave it a five star rating, but I deducted half a star for the simple
reason that I didn't understand it all. There are too many characters who are
barely introduced. Their names aren't enough to explain their motivation, and
I was confused when some of them changed sides, fighting first on Yang Jian's
side, then against him.
The film is two hours long, but I found it was overly compressed. An
additional half hour would have helped to explain the story to western novices
like me. Added to this, there's a mid-credits scene that confused me even
more, because it featured characters who didn't appear in the film itself. I
can imagine that Chinese audiences would have watched it and said, "Ah ha! That's who we'll see in the next film".
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