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[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

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[bookblather]

AMAZING