L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties (2016)

Horrible movie indeed. Better not to watch it, it is a waste of both time and money.

I watched this movie, because of the cast and I've found that it is extremely confusing to follow. I love the concept and ideas, however L.O.R.D should've been made into a trilogy. I wish there was more time for the story to develop. I didn't care about the characters. I was more interested in wrapping my head around this confusing narrative.This film had such a large budget, but sadly -- it went to waste, with the pointless details. The director should've reduced this movie, into a basic plot. We have seen the repetitive good verses evil story-line, and it's becoming quite tedious to watch. If a child can't understand it, there's clearly issues with the writing. It would appeal to Western audiences, because this movie looks visually stunning. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. China, you can do better than this.

After seeing the low IMDb rating and reading the bad reviews, I was expecting this movie to be another CGI mess like "10000 Years Later" (How that movie managed to have a higher score than this one will be always a mystery for me) with bad animation and a muddled plot...But it actually turned to be a pretty decent fantasy flick.The CGI for this movie was quite well made. Some scenes were very impressive and in certain aspects, more pleasant to look than many animated movies from the big studios (And by "big studios", I mean specifically Illumination Entertainment) Of course, there were a couple of moments when the movie looked a bit like cut-scenes from a video game, but the overall result was nice.The plot on the other hand, while being a bit clichéd, managed to be reasonably entertaining to watch, at least until the last minutes, where things start to get confusing and the dynamics between the characters become unnecessarily complicated. Even worse, there is no resolution to the main conflict, but since this apparently was inspired by a series of novels, I guess that all the loose ends from the plot will be eventually tied up by any future sequel. (At least, that's it what I hope.)This movie was okay. It was much better than "10000 Years Later" in every aspect, and honestly I don't know why it gets so much undeserved hate here on IMDb.

L.O.R.D. the movie is a pretty confusing situation. Whereas many stories in the action/fantasy category get tied down because of their lack of plot, L.O.R.D. has a great plot, but tells it poorly. There are actually a lot of things going for it, but in the end it's a bit of a muddled mess. For example, The acting was better than expected, especially with the amount of screen presence of Cheney Chen who I love to bits but has never been the strongest actor. The visuals are great (when the technology is working the way it should be). The general plot is interesting and creates a lot of room for character development and relationships. The biggest issue is the way the story is told. There are many characters, and if you've read the books they are easy to identify, but if you haven't the movie will leave you confused about who hates who and why. The animation, though more advanced than most films, is really hard to watch sometimes, especially in the fight scenes. The English subtitles, are manageable but by no means palatable. Despite all this I'm giving it at 7/10 because I did actually enjoy the movie as a reader of the books. I just feel bad for people who haven't.Guo Jin Ming has muddled his books with sub-par direction and screen writing. If you've seen the movie and you like the premise of the story, I'd strongly recommend reading the book which you can find in English online. To find them translated you will probably have to look on fansites.