(no subject)

[skygiants]

I have now seen both Untamed tie-in movies!

The Living Dead is the one in which Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui go on a ghost-fighting adventure and, unfortunately, I did not think it was much good at all.

Some facts about The Living Dead:
- the town in which Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui find themselves were apparently famous for making lanterns for the Wen clan ... last year. The film takes place postcanon. The Wens have been defeated for sixteen years. Nobody finds this at all confusing but us.
- the most prominent NPC has an elaborately tragic tale to tell about his beloved sister. Wen Qing's name is not mentioned one single time.
- relatedly, Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui do not have a single conversation about their shared history or any of the things that tie them together
- the most prominent NPC has like half an hour of extensive backstory flashback
- Wen Ning has two minutes of character development in the film in which to be mildly sad about being a zombie
- Lan Sizhui has no minutes of character development, none at all

- except maybe at the very end when Wen Ning tells Lan Sizhui to keep the cool piece of Yin Metal he found, as long as he's pure of heart surely nothing will go wrong
- definitely good advice from someone who lived through the entirety of The Untamed
- honestly not entirely sure what the point is of this film

Fatal Journey is the one where the Nie brothers go on a road trip to fight their ancestors' bad decisions and it is significantly better in that the characters we know a.) act like the characters we know b.) have significant emotional development based on, in fact, their characters and c.) occasionally form a gratuitous human pyramid!

I actually really enjoyed many things about this film, including:
- the fact that Nie Huaisang does quite a lot of things that are useful and absolutely none of them are fighty
- genuinely adorable and emotionally affecting Small Nie Brothers flashbacks
- it's very funny that the Nie tomb inexplicably opens up into the Mines of Moria
- truly amazing special effects
- seriously I'm not sure I've ever laughed so hard during a fight scene
- WHEN MINGJUE'S HAIR SPONTANEOUSLY UNBRAIDS ITSELF AND EXPLODES IN A TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE POOF
- I DIED

- speaking of death, sorry about all the friends you accidentally murdered between the two of you, Nie brothers, but the events of this film all make really interesting additions to Nie Huaisang's development!
- like I'm fascinated by the glimpses we get of the dynamic between Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao before Nie Huaisang figures out what's going on; the genuine early trust that he has in him makes Nie Huaisang's decision to aggressively self-parody that trust in later years both sadder and funnier ...
- also not that Huaisang ever had a lot of investment in his image as a clan leader but I'm sure the fact that his 20 best Nie bros all just got murdered in a tomb, leaving literally nobody around whose opinion he might possibly care about, didn't hurt
- anyway I've decided that scene where baby Nie Minjue gets himself and babier Nie Huaisang a pair of matched fans means that Nie Mingjue also secretly loved fans and brushes and The Arts the whole time, and just spent a lot of time living vicariously through his little brother before deciding he had to completely excise that part of both their personalities

things I did not enjoy about this film:
- Nie Huaisang's wig for this movie has no braids in it? I don't understand?? costumers why

Comments

[sovay]

- WHEN MINGJUE'S HAIR SPONTANEOUSLY UNBRAIDS ITSELF AND EXPLODES IN A TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE POOF

GIFS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

[skygiants]

YOU ASKED



(Sadly from this angle you can't actually see the elaborate side braids that hold his hair in place, but you can see the moment his hairpiece literally explodes into the air)

[sovay]

YOU ASKED

I DID AND I'M DELIGHTED.

[lannamichaels]

That is amazing.

[bookblather]

AMAZING

[umadoshi]

I still CANNOT BELIEVE that a movie ostensibly centering on Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui was so bad. I went in knowing it was Not Good, so I thought my expectations were calibrated reasonably well, and yet I was completely taken aback by how absolutely, relentlessly terrible it was.

HOW?!

[skygiants]

It honestly felt like someone wrote the script to an entirely different movie and then they were like 'wait ... some of those Untamed kids are free .... we could do a tie-in and make all the money?' There was just so astoundingly little thematic relevance to anything in the show!

[alias_sqbr]

The first one sounds like a TRAGIC waste of potential but the second sounds really interesting. I wonder if MXTX had anything to do with the backstory or if it's entirely the Untamed writers, as a book-only fan it all sounds plausible to me.

[skygiants]

I'm curious about that too! It's very much extrapolating on stuff that's there in the book/show -- nothing that necessarily feels like new information except the confirmation that the relationship between the Nie bros was at one point extremely supportive and affectionate before all the shit went down and Mingjue's personality got warped by the triple attack of personal betrayal/general burdens of saber ghost sect leadership/specific burdens of qi deviation exacerbated by evil oboe. Which is something that's very ambiguous in both primary sources, I think - the book mostly tells us about Mingjue's disapproval, iirc, and the show genuinely gives us very little about their dynamic at all - but certainly plausible based on subsequent events, and also honestly a very MXTX sort of sibling relationship to write ...

[brownbetty]

Love your icon!

[skygiants]

Thank you! I got it from here :D

[alias_sqbr]

Oh no, that is very MXTX and, not coincidentally, very sad :(

[skygiants]

They do get to have a good hug and talk about their feelings a bit in the movie! Admittedly it's in mid-air while they're both plummeting from a cliff but still it's very touching.

[libitina]

Yes to all of these things.


Supposedly there’s a potential for a third movie, and my main request is for it to be outdoors during daylight hours with color please.

[skygiants]

WOULDN'T THAT BE NICE. Maybe it'll be about the Wens and then we'll get all that pretty Wen red! (What I would actually like is a film about Jin Ling, Jingyi, and Sizhui, but the junior color palette is also, uh, not very exciting...)

[schneefink]

WHEN MINGJUE'S HAIR SPONTANEOUSLY UNBRAIDS ITSELF AND EXPLODES IN A TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE POOF
Okay I have to see this asap

[skygiants]

IT'S A MOMENT OF CHERISHED BEAUTY

[littlerhymes]

I've decided that scene where baby Nie Minjue gets himself and babier Nie Huaisang a pair of matched fans means that Nie Mingjue also secretly loved fans and brushes and The Arts the whole time, and just spent a lot of time living vicariously through his little brother before deciding he had to completely excise that part of both their personalities

I accept this wholeheartedly

[skygiants]

In a world where he did not have to spend all his time wrestling a bloodthirsty saber spirit, he was a famed calligrapher! Instead he channels all his aesthetic appreciation into elaborate hair braiding, the only socially acceptable Nie art form ;__;

[aria]

The Fatal Journey special effects were a thing of joy and beauty forever, and so was the Nie Clan Cheerleading Squad

[skygiants]

I love how, as you pointed out I think, when WWX is the protagonist we only ever see some snotty mean girl Nie underlings but as soon as Huaisang is the temporary protagonist we get an entire cheer squad of virtuous and handsome (albeit tragically doomed) lads. With all my heart, bless.

[lannamichaels]

- relatedly, Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui do not have a single conversation about their shared history or any of the things that tie them together

I am so confused. Then why did they make this movie? Isn't their family relationship the point?

- except maybe at the very end when Wen Ning tells Lan Sizhui to keep the cool piece of Yin Metal he found, as long as he's pure of heart surely nothing will go wrong

That is a great idea, nothing could ever go wrong, what the expletive deleted.



I'm glad the Nie one was better.

[skygiants]

I DON'T UNDERSTAND, I truly don't. At the end of it genarti theorized that they both ate some bad fish in the weird corpse city and it was all a strange fever dream, which works as a Watsonian if not a Doylian explanation for why the thing was made that way at all ...

But the Nie one was indeed quite enjoyable!