League of Gods

Koan Hui’s League of Gods, known as Fēng Shén Bǎng in Mandarin, is a marvelously beautiful Chinese fantasy film based on Xu Zhonglin’s 16^th Century novel Fengshen Yanyi.

The premise of the plot is very much that of a classic fantasy adventure – a hero goes on a journey to find a legendary sword and defeat an evil king, going from place to place and finding allies along the way. The story follows Ji Lei (Jacky Heung), the last surviving member of the Wing tribe with an unexplained electric psychokinesis called Adept power. The dispatcher of the narrative is Master Jiang (Jet Li), essentially a quirky Gandalf the White, who sends Lei to find the Sword of Light in order to defeat the evil King Zhou (Tony Leung Ka-fai), his queen, the seductive and deadly fox demon Daji (Fan Bingbing), and the cruel General Leopard (Louis Koo). Along the way he comes across his proud sidekick Magic Grass and fellow heroes, the impatient and nigh-unstoppable Naza (Wen Zhang) and earth god Yang Jian (Huang Xiaoming). All of the actors emote excellently and portray clear and varying characters.

The visual design is by far the most attractive part of the movie. The sets are breathtakingly crafted, costumes and character designs are adorned and colourful, and the mythology is greatly interesting. The CGI creatures appear a little obvious or cartoony, but not bad overall and well animated. The cinematography is decently put together, as it shows off the environments and plays around with camera movement somewhat. Strangely, the editing is sometimes similar to that of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012), especially in the opening infiltration scene.

The action is interesting and fast-paced, full of flips, hard hits, magic, monsters, shield-surfing… Couple these with the wonderful visuals and these action scenes are amazing to watch. There is a romance subplot between Lei and a secretive girl called Blue Butterfly (Angelababy). Heung and Angelababy portray this relationship as one might young love. Despite the lack of time and development between the two, the music and their performances show a great deal of emotion by the end of the subplot. Referring to the story in general, it follows a relatively linear narrative; there are really no big surprises. Besides that there are parts that seem incomplete. After meeting Yang Jian, he goes to find his Gold Armour and is not seen again until the climax, having retrieved his armour off-screen. Naza’s motivation for allying himself with Lei is to find his Wind Fire Wheels; he will use this treasure against Zhou and Daji, but he doesn’t seem to recognise that he and Lei have a common enemy that would give him all the more reason to join him. The movie ends with a cliffhanger, which means it is not a self-contained story, though this is understandable as the film is based on a large book. It may require some sequels to tell the whole story, but given the uncertain reception there are no guarantees.

League of Gods is definitely a visual spectacle. There are admittedly some dents in the story, but the classic fantasy narrative and astonishing mise-en-scène is more than enough to blow the audience away. The heroes have distinct character designs, personalities and unique powers, the action is extremely creative, the music works wonders in every scene, and the actors are all completely invested in their roles. It is a thoroughly enjoyable adventure from start to finish.