Heavenly Sword (2014) User Reviews

The animation was very mediocre and felt like video game cut scenes and wasn't always fluid and natural

[kevin_robbins · 4/10 · 12 February 2022]

Heavenly Sword (2014) is a movie I recently watched for the first time in a long time on Tubi. The storyline follows a prophesy where the son of a king picks up the heavenly sword and saves the world from tyranny when an evil emerges. When the King is murdered the princess picks up the sword and seeks out her lost long brother in hopes of giving him the sword to fulfill the legend.

This movie is directed by Gun Ho Jang in his directorial debut and contains the voices of Thomas Jane (The Mist), Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings), Anna Torv (Mindhunter), Ashleigh Ball (My Little Pony), Nolan North (Star Trek into the Darkness) and Renae Geerlings (Halloween II).

The storyline for this picture is entertaining and had potential. Unfortunately the animation was very mediocre and felt like video game cut scenes and wasn't always fluid and natural. The action scenes were uneven with some scenes better than others. As the movie progresses the fight scenes do get better.

Overall this is a below average addition to the genre that's not as good as it could have been. I would score this a 3.5/10 and recommend finding something better to watch.

This wasn't overly great...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 9 September 2014]

"Heavenly Sword" seemed more like something that should have remained in a PlayStation game and not made it to the big screen. Especially because it looked like something from the early 2000's. The animation and textures were not up to par for 2014, not by a long shot. And it totally pales in comparison to the 2001 "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" and the 2005 "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children".

The storyline was adequate and had some good moments, but it seemed like everything was just skipped over lightly and without going into depth with anything much really.

A lot of the animation was rigid and wooden, and the outdated textures didn't really help further the movie in any possible way. I must say that I think they could have used more resources and time on the animation here.

The characters were adequate, albeit two-dimensional and lacking personalities.

Having sat through the entire length of this animated movie, and with being very close to getting up and doing something else twice along the way, but deciding to stick with it to the end, I must admit that I had hoped for something more than it turned out to be.

I have never tried the game upon which this movie is based, but truth be told, then it felt like this entire movie should have been used as in-game cut scenes and not as a feature animated movie.

One thing I did think about though, was if this animated movie wouldn't actually have been far, far better if they had opted to continue with the cartoonish animation style that they used in the movie to tell some of the backstory. That was actually more interesting to look at and far more stylish and memorable than the outdated CGI that was this movie.

CLEARLY NO KITTEN

[nogodnomasters · 6/10 · 27 November 2018]

I have not played the game, which may be a good thing when watching films based on the game. I am barely over the shock of that FF VII fiasco, that I hesitated to take on another animated film based on a game.

Nariko along with Kai seek out Loki who they believe is "The Chosen One" who can wield the power of the heavenly sword, because it could never be a woman, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. The want to keep the sword out of the hands of the evil King Bohan in what amounts to an oriental Viking tale of the Middle Earth.

Kai has a bad case of Yoda Syntax she does. She "likes to make blood." Nariko is "clearly no kitten." She has great lines like, "Let's see you laugh when your guts hit the floor."

The film has a lot of fighting and killing and is light on plot. Like so many games, the bad guys become more of a challenge as the game goes along and the characters level up.

Some of the fighting sequences were way too lengthy, perhaps because of the game.

Awful

[sergio-arauzo · 2/10 · 5 September 2014]

I came to this film because of the games, which I think are good. But this film has only that, a name. When I watch an animation film I expect, nowadays, the graphics will be good, the animations will be smooth, and the faces will show at least some emotion. I have not found any of these in this film. Graphics are very cheap, even pixelated sometimes. Animation seems to come from 10 or 15 years ago. Characters faces are empty of any kind of emotion. So, the technical issue is really bad. I suppose producers thought that with a famous name would be enough, so they decided to spend ass less money as possible here. When we talk about the story or the character development things are only slightly better, but just because it cannot be worse than animation or graphics. Plain characters, no development, plot full of tropes, absolutely predictable. This film is not worth your time.

Possibly good intentions, but bad production values

[after-hour_dvd_collector · 3/10 · 22 October 2016]

I stumbled upon the Heavenly Sword blu-ray more by accident at the bargain bin of a local electronics store. Being an ever hopeful viewer of video game movies (despite many previous experiences with the genre), I've looked up some gameplay videos ("that's actually pretty cinematic") then went out and bought the movie. Since I've already committed the error, you may not need to repeat it yourself.

It's bad. And sad. If I understand the closing credits right, this movie was made by a small team (some 20 people?) on a shoestring budget of 6 million, and I generally applaud small independent productions, even if they aim high and end up .. not quite as high. Enthusiasm covers a lot of cinematic sins.

Heavenly Sword however was a wholly different thing, especially compared to the game it originates from. The game has mo-cap actor legend Andy "Gollum" Serkis and the late Terry "Discworld" Pratchett's daughter Rhianna at the helm, and impressive graphics for its time and hardware (2007). It's a mixture of hack-and-slay, sniping, quicktime events and a whole lot of action-adventure tropes rolled into a playstation title.

The movie is significantly less than that. Its storyline is at times disjointed, its animations and environments are just bad compared to the game, and the framing and editing of scenes is a step down from the game's cut-scenes as well. I needed to watch the game footage to get the movie's storyline in order, and noticed that the game manages to elicit more emotional response than the movie.

How a movie that came out in 2014 manages to look worse than the real-time graphics of a game from 2007 (with the assumption that - since it's an official franchise product - the producers must've had access to Sony's graphics and animation data that the game already had 7 years earlier), is completely beyond me.

Lowlights are the three boss fights, with the showdown against the water witch being the absolutely worst, both in terms of action and in terms of graphics. Some more doubtful design decisions are sweeping camera moves during quiet "character moments", and turning the moats of the tyrant's impressive fortress from the game's exaggerated-yet-realistic water into ludicrous lava.

Using the gameplay as a template, shortening and framing the combat scenes cinematically and rendering the cutscenes with more advanced and fine-tuned facial animations and cloth/hair simulation could've made this into an impressive production.

As it is, it was interesting to watch, but definitely not enjoyable. Can not recommend this. 3 / 10, and this includes a pity bonus of +1 point.

Epic Story, Abysmal Graphics, Continuity Mistakes (possible spoiler if you haven't played the game)

[DaRangedTC · 1/10 · 6 September 2014]

When the Heavenly Sword game came out, it was at the pinnacle of the PlayStation 3's graphics and even the original graphics from 2007 look better than this movie.

The animation, the acting, and the dialogue, everything that made the game brilliant is missing in this film. The characters have little to no facial animation when expressing emotions. No effort has been made to try and match the mouth movements to dialogue. Might as well be watching Team America/Thunderbirds puppets in CGI. Only the backdrops look good... from a distance, because as soon as you get close they blur or pixelate... and I am not even going to get started on the physics are represented.

The film also borrows the 2D animated miniseries which preceded the game's release. This is chopped up and used to tell an abridged version of the story, but they have also dubbed the original voice which was much better acted than its replacement, so I cant even give them credit for that.

And then... there are the continuity mistakes.. even as bad as to switch King Bohan's scarred eye from left to right and more than once in the opening act!? Unforgivably bad.

Not having much to fall back on, there is none of the music from the game which was beautiful, and the story follows some real gagworthy plot clichés.

Sorry, in a nutshell.. there are no redeeming qualities, so don't waste your time on money on this.

You're much better off watching the Full Cutscene version movie of the game on YouTube, or playing the game on PS3.

Another missed opportunity, of course

[seecheck · 1/10 · 4 September 2014]

As if copy-pasting the original (and much better) narrative were more difficult than coming up with this insanely offensive crap. The trailers didn't exactly make me expect wonders, but this film is one hell of a blasphemy. Where the game excelled (acting performances, pacing, direction of photography,...), the film falls flat on its face. And where the original had a bit of a room for improvement, but still was quite good (plot, characters, dialogue), the movie seems as though it sabotaged everything just to fall in the line of all those film adaptations that present video game stories as even more idiotic than an average Mr. Bay spectacle. And man, even the usually great Anna Torv and Alfred Molina seem to try their best to make this thing painful/surprisingly amusing to watch. *sigh* Seriously, this is an infinitely better cinematic experience: http://youtu.be/YS7sFIWDvIc (*and* it has a lot of Andy Serkis and an *engaging* Anna Torv in it!)

Unfortunately, this movie is far from heavenly

[TheLittleSongbird · 2/10 · 31 August 2015]

In fact, it is an absolutely awful movie, with very few obvious redeeming qualities , outside of the somewhat rootable and empathetically voiced protagonist Kai.

Technically, Heavenly Sword ranges from weak to dreadful., constantly looking a movie or video game that came out 20 years too late. The editing is confused, the characters lack emotion and move stiffly, the colours are very flat , there are very obvious continuity errors and the backgrounds while the least bad of the animation are unimaginative and lack detail. The music sounds very random in placement, and stylistically it's either an ill-fit or completely misplaced.

With the writing, Heavenly Sword fares every bit as poorly and even more so. The writing sounds incredibly awkward (almost like gibberish) all the time, very shallow, very on-the-surface and there is a complete disconnect emotionally. The story had some decent, if rather clichéd, ideas, but executes all of them messily, with laborious pacing, unexciting and incoherently edited action , a constantly jumpy feel and a complete lack of depth as a result of not doing anything with the ideas it had.

Outside of Kai, the characters are flat in personality and fail to remotely engage, and voiced with little emotion, some of the voice actors don't even fit their roles. Not even a talented actor like Alfred Molina can save this., one of my biggest bugbears regarding films/movie/television is waste of talent, which this movie manages to do.

All in all, very poorly done. 2/10, and that is only for Kai. Bethany Cox

Great and seductive,dramatic and amazing

[makomomo98 · 9/10 · 4 October 2014]

The movie is great and graphics are really amazing.See it in FULL HD blu-ray on the best TV led are very impressive.I don't know how others saw this movie and saw bad graphics...the texture and expression or modeling was amazing,stunning.Only one thing was bad...the physics of the animation,speed-movement of characters was fast with bad accomplished but...still, it's a movie made it after a game, so what? I never play it Heavenly Sword and now i really want to play this game.The story are strong and dramatic and memorable prime character, Nariko.Of course, Kay are second and maybe forthcoming heroine...

I strongly recommend this movie, without great expectations but with some powerful pleasures...

Goodbye Nariko, peace be with with you!

Avoid and save yourself time you will never get back!

[rchosen · 2/10 · 23 December 2014]

I'm not a Playstation fan. But I bought one to play the game that this movie is based on. So seeing this movie was a must for me since Heavenly Sword was so amazing, especially the characters. After preparing a meal, speakers turned up, lights low I started this movie. After a small intro the action started. 10 seconds later I wanted to stop watching because the movie felt REALLY terrible.

The editing was such a mess that the movie feels all over the place and confusing. Its like if someone took all the cut scenes out of a game and made a movie out of them. Half the time I was like "Wait, what happened to the end of the last scene?" or "Now whats happenings?!?". The story is barley coherent. The animations aren't all that great and the game itself sadly looks way better then this movie does.

It felt like you were watching some low budget movie made on someones computer at home. And the voice overs were terrible too. The original voice actors from the games take up their roles again but everything feels really off when people speak. Sometimes things are not perfectly lined up to match the mouth. Other times it feels like the voice isn't coming from who you are watching, but more of a narrators voice.

Only reason I gave this two stars is because I like Nariko and Kai. And their voices. Other then that I really wished I had given up on this movie early on instead of sitting to the end. Many MANY times I found myself wanting to end it. Assuming you watch it and make it to the end.... prepare yourself as the story makes even less sense and leaves you wondering what your doing with your life watching such a terrible movie.

I feel bad about this review because I had high hopes for this that it would extend the Heavenly Sword series to new people. All it did was scare off people.

Story is good, animation lets it down

[gerry_barnaby · 5/10 · 4 September 2014]

Heavenly Sword is an film animation from the popular game on the PS3 (play-station) about a heroine and her sister, with an unbreakable bond, that set off on a journey to to find their long lost brother chosen by fate to wield a sword of the the Gods. The story concept of this film is an extraordinary story, specially taken from a games own storyline, but sadly this animated film has a lot of flaws which lets this film down. The voice acting is good but Some of the animation lets this down. Any one that has played this game will know this story all to well only Problem is i cant give any thing else about this film that good because there are just so many things wrong with it it just a let down, some may like it where other wont.

Dislikes : The physics of the animation was off at times and things were sometimes way to fast for what they ought to be, but i think this was down to rendering, The animation is pretty poor for this film, which suggest a very low budget as the film feels like Long game cut scenes movie between game play. I feel the C.G.I could have been done better specially with the fight scenes i feel if you going to have blood in a scene at least show like the person is been cut & not just have blood spurt out, it shows no realism in this film, sadly for an animation of this storyline this was a big let down, which ruined the film for me.

Graphic worse than most games, OK storyline

[pnice87 · 4/10 · 5 September 2014]

Graphics was so and so. Close up animation of characters had sharp edges, scenery was beautiful, but the overall feeling was really been letting down by the bad character graphics.

Storyline was OK, predictable at many points. Plot was heavely on the difficulty of being of female gender in ancient time. which was surely mention a lot of times. Last, the sword, even though it had huge significance in the story, could have been more awesome.

So overall rating of 4 is a combination of: - 1/10 for character animation - 7/10 for scenery - 6/10 for storyline - 3/10 for character voices and identity - 3/10 for the swords awesomeness (or lack of).

If you can live with bad animation and have nothing else to watch, this can be recommended.

I really wanted to like this

[e_man_7-66-977435 · 1/10 · 25 May 2015]

SPOILER ALLERT: You already know what happens in this movie. First of all, the stilted animation, the barely 3-D faces, with no expression on them let alone movement. The graphics are pixelated in places and background hardly deserves the name. Honestly, primary school children could do better with crayons.

But I could forgive that. Yes, I would completely accept the creators limitation in this regard and appreciate the life spent upon this endeavour if the vocals weren't so fake-sounding.

The tone, cadence and timbre in all the voices are incredibly jarring. I wish these guys had listened to any English dub anywhere if they could not do this in Japanese, Chinese or Korean with subtitles. You'd think they didn't know what angry or sad people sounded like. To be honest, silence and subtitles would have been a massive improvement.

Sadly, what they were actually saying was no improvement. You've never heard a cliché they didn't say. The plot line was devastating but I can live with a girl inheriting a magical sword. What I can't live with is a cliché killing off everyone she knew in her life in 12 seconds except for her one crazy but strangely wise and blood thirsty companion she didn't know was her sister. Six-year-olds have better plots in their fantasies. Ten-year-olds have much more imaginative characters.

I'm not a troll okay? I wanted to like this I was on board but 23 minutes and 41 seconds in I just knew that this was it. It wasn't going to get better and anything I can muster up in my imagination about how this thing continues and ends or even how it began would be eminently better than whatever predictable, agonising procession of pixels this Frankenstein could lumber up. I am sorry. My friend if you watch this film, you'll see what I mean but don't. Stop reading this. Go life your life.

Not worth watching!

[cieranmkelly · 1/10 · 5 March 2016]

This movie was a waste of my time and I only watched just over 30 minutes of the film before I couldn't watch anymore. I'd never played the original game until 2016 and when I completed it I found out that there was a movie after looking up the game on IMDb funny enough. When I saw the cast of this movie I thought that it would be great (even though I only knew a few of the actors) but after the 30 minutes that I watched I would call it bait just to get you to watch it. The film has no energy what so ever, the characters (especially Nariko) sound like they're bored and tired and it doesn't fit with their body language. The animation was okay, I'll give them that, but I noticed in one scene that Nariko's top which originally covers the left side of her chest was on the right side of her chest and when it changed scenes, her top was back to normal. The animators basically reflected the scene and couldn't be bothered to fix the animation (A.K.A Laziness). This was only the first 30 minutes of this film and it disgusted me, I'm just really happy that it wasn't the original creators of the game that made this movie, I would have been upset if that was the case. I'm sure that if the original creators and all of the original cast of the game made this movie, it would be a thousand if not a million times better.

Do Not listen to those haters

[Janebo · 8/10 · 29 April 2018]

I don't get the bad reviews, half of what I've read of them aren't even true. The animation, for one. It's excellent. The textures are crisp and the backgrounds/characters are very detailed. I played the game to death and it was kind of cool to see a scene or 2 that made its way into this film from the game...with updated graphics. If whoever had a problem with pixelation, that goes away when you actually watch the real version as opposed to a crap downloaded copy. The story has been changed slightly, with some ...odd revelations. I won't spoil those however. The movie is just a retelling of the game.

Unfortunately, they didn't have Andy Serkis for Bohan, but Bohan himself doesn't take up much screen time anyway. They did have Anna Torv (who I adore in any incarnation) Kai (Lydia Baksh) is back & a little more bold than she was in the game. Sadly, they didn't have the originals for Whiptail, Roach or Flying Fox. I hated Thomas Jane's character, who didn't exist in the game and the movie could have done quite well without him. Nariko is and always was, the "Chosen One" and she wields the sword as such, with none of those foul demon henchmen walking away from any confrontations with her.

I'm probably a little biased as the game is what made me go out and buy a Playstation 3, I'm amazed the disc still plays after how much time I spent on it lol. But it's the story that fascinates me, this girl, this beautiful girl is what stands between her people and Bohan. And she prevails, but not without an extremely high price. Bottom line, watch it for yourself and make up your own mind...

Must watch in Blueray

[GunhoJang · 10/10 · 16 February 2018]

Must watch in Blueray. Amazing action sequence. Great Visual. Great Story.

Great movie, here are some of my thoughts

[r-grant-jr-122193 · 10/10 · 4 September 2014]

Heavenly Sword is an extraordinary film animation about a heroine and her sister, with an unbreakable bond, that set off on a journey to to find their long lost brother chosen by fate to wield a sword of the the Gods. __ * I rated the film a 10 for its underlying story, the Animation was not done to well and when charters spoke to words were way off. I would suggest that the animator had spent some more time with that.

* The physics were off at times and things were sometimes way to fast for what they ought to be. I am pretty certain that the fault on this one was the computer that did the rendering but i would have def. fixed that.

* The film was kind of like a really long game cut scene, personally i kind of liked it; and i wouldn't change that in the sequel.

* The sword slashing on the horses legs should have def. cut the horses legs off but instead there was just a blood splatter. i would have advised either not showing the slash on the legs or actually show the leg being cut off. This scene, even though it was for about three seconds, made me very disappointed.

*The Texturing and modeling was absolutely amazing spot on for the theme of the movie. I would def. like to commend the team that did the modeling and texturing.

___

If this was a game, i would play it. (if it were anything like god of war).

If there was a part II, i would watch it.

Would i recommend this film? Absolutely.

Great Heavenly Sword Movie & it has a great storyline as well.

[williamcartrail_official · 9/10 · 28 January 2022]

Loved this Heavenly Sword movie & it has a great storyline to boot that is easy to follow, I totally enjoyed it all the way throughout, Though I do hope that they do make a Heavenly Sword two.