After watching The Storm Riders, I was expecting the same delights from A Man Called Hero. However, I was to be sorely disappointed as this film just looks like a rush job to capitalise on the back of The Storm Riders' success.
A Man Called Hero is made by basically the same team as that behind The Storm Riders, with many of the original cast making a return (with the noteable exception of Aaron Kwok). The style of the original story, however, is really very different from Storm Riders, but the back room team failed to acknowledge this and tried to copy exactly what they did in the earlier film and in a hurried manner.
What we've ended up with is a film that lacks any continuity and pace. The bulk of the film is slow and arduous to watch as you're dying to get it moving. There are gaps in the story, leaving questions in your head that are never answered. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen Hero, there is the "But what happened to...?" question at the end of the film.
Where there is comfortable pace in the film, that turned out to be in the action sequences, but these itself was very lacklustre. The scenes were way too short to give any significant enjoyment, and relied too heavily on the special effects capability of the film, which in itself didn't excel itself as well as The Storm Riders. One example is the rendering of the Statue of Liberty compared to the Giant Buddha in the earlier film. The Giant Buddha had amazing attention to detail, making it look very realistic, whereas Liberty looks very artificial. And in Hero, all the action scenes rely on the SFX, as opposed to the SFX adding to the scene.
In Hollywood animation studios, it usually takes many years of painstaking work to render and animate a film. I somehow feel that the production companies involved here felt more concerned about bringing in revenues quickly than to really pay attention to detail, which I feel is a big shame. But having said that, that is something that can be rectified, and a future film that features the real achievements of The Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero
A Man Called Hero is made by basically the same team as that behind The Storm Riders, with many of the original cast making a return (with the noteable exception of Aaron Kwok). The style of the original story, however, is really very different from Storm Riders, but the back room team failed to acknowledge this and tried to copy exactly what they did in the earlier film and in a hurried manner.
What we've ended up with is a film that lacks any continuity and pace. The bulk of the film is slow and arduous to watch as you're dying to get it moving. There are gaps in the story, leaving questions in your head that are never answered. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen Hero, there is the "But what happened to...?" question at the end of the film.
Where there is comfortable pace in the film, that turned out to be in the action sequences, but these itself was very lacklustre. The scenes were way too short to give any significant enjoyment, and relied too heavily on the special effects capability of the film, which in itself didn't excel itself as well as The Storm Riders. One example is the rendering of the Statue of Liberty compared to the Giant Buddha in the earlier film. The Giant Buddha had amazing attention to detail, making it look very realistic, whereas Liberty looks very artificial. And in Hero, all the action scenes rely on the SFX, as opposed to the SFX adding to the scene.
In Hollywood animation studios, it usually takes many years of painstaking work to render and animate a film. I somehow feel that the production companies involved here felt more concerned about bringing in revenues quickly than to really pay attention to detail, which I feel is a big shame. But having said that, that is something that can be rectified, and a future film that features the real achievements of The Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero