Lady of the Dynasty (2015) User Reviews

Huh?

[Foutainoflife · 3/10 · 18 November 2018]

After reading some these reviews after having already watched the film, I am under the impression that this was based on actual historical events. I had no knowledge of this going into the film and was simply watching it because I enjoy period films.

The plot is that beautiful woman becomes the wife of a prince only to learn that the Emperor wants the girl for himself. The Emperor eventually marries her without her affection with the hopes she will eventually return his love. In the meantime, someone in her family plays a part in an uprising against the emperor causing a call for all members of her family, including her, to be executed for treason.

This was a confusing movie for me. I was reading subtitles and maybe some details were literally lost in translation. I feel like I missed the point. It sorta felt like it was supposed to be an epic romance but there was little romancing going on. Maybe is was supposed to be about treason but there wasn't much explained about why the treason took place. This was really slow paced so it shouldn't be so confusing.

The good thing about this was the costuming and the cinematography. It was a beautiful film to watch even if it was so jumbled. If you watch it, it will be for those things alone. The story is a hot mess.

How did this end up being so bad with a cast this good?

[audie_u · 3/10 · 11 September 2021]

This is how to turn an historical epic with beautiful costuming and gorgeous sets into a cheap meandering drama.

It's extremely jarring that the entire film is narrated from the perspective of an English speaking foreign ambassador.

Some of this should be shown in film schools as an example of how not to edit a film.

How to turn a historical epic into a shallow cheap drama.

[quincytheodore · 2/10 · 5 September 2015]

Yang Gui Fei was a consort who lived in a perilous time. Her beauty made her into a pivotal role in savage political struggle of ancient Chinese monarchy, but audience won't find any of those here. Lady of the Dynasty is a dull spectacle that waddles for two hours with silly low production drama. It's equivalent to brooding teen wallowing and no amount of cosmetic can save it from ruin.

The story is mostly told from perspective of Byzantine ambassador. This setting already proves to be problematic early on since the ambassador pops up in extremely convenient scenes, even having impossible information on the royalties' sexual activities. He delivers some musing every five minutes, but what's supposed to be inspirational ends up being ridiculously cheesy.

The rest is a less than tactical maneuvering between the characters. There's debauchery and betrayal theme, but they are presented so feebly between exhausting long scenes. Some conversations can take incredibly long time and all they do are displaying juvenile emotions. It even repeats several scenes needlessly, sadly these forced dramatic moments only add boredom to the already tiresome experience.

It has a couple of decent costumes and settings, although the colorful CG might look awkward at times. The lead Fan Bingbing is definitely attractive, but the movie relies too much on her and the lack of meaningful narrative actually drains her charm. Not to mention when it tries to be dramatic the moaning opera soundtracks becomes severely annoying.

Forget historical accuracy or epic tale, with the abysmal drama Lady of the Dynasty is far from exotic and tragic legend, it's merely a pretentious excuse for cheap romance.

Inspid romance devoid of historical context

[jennyzhang25 · 2/10 · 21 August 2015]

Yang Gui Fei, or Consort Yang was one of the most famous beauties of Ancient China, and her story is just as compelling. The emperor's obsession with her allowed her grasping family, led by her cousin, Yang Guozhong, to secure lucrative posts at court. They conspired with various factions to obtain wealth and power while the Emperor ignored his duties and turned trusted advisers away. The subsequent rebellion was actually led by another one of Yang's former favorites barbarian General An Lu Shan. Under Yang's influence, General An ingratiated himself within court, while biding his time and raising his own forces. The power struggle between these pivotal figures, Yang Guozhong and An Lu Shan, the internecine competition between the emperor's sons, and an aging, enamored emperor eventually cumulated in the murder of Yang Gui Fei and the abdication of the Emperor.

This film however, contains very little of that. It reduces the legend of Yang Gui Fei to a hollow romance. Notably missing from the film are characters depicting Yang Guozhong and An Lu Shan, as well as Li Linfu, the Emperor's capable and Machiavellian chancellor. The only incident worth noting (and indeed, consumes the first half of the film), is the storyline involving Consort Wu and the princes. Consort Yang herself is naive and innocent to the point of childishness, and their "romance" is better characterized as the lust of an older man for his son's innocent young wife and her subsequent capitulation. Yang's inexplicable fondness for Li Mao after she becomes a Consort, and her petty jealousness towards Consort Mei confused me at best.

The end of the movie feels extremely rushed glossing through the historical and political context of the rebellion in the final 20 minutes.

Finally, the use of a western narrator (a Byzantine envoy with a British accent) and various Christian overtones was odd and rather distracting. I think it says a lot about the poor storytelling in the film that such a device was required to explain the plot to audiences.

Although I am a huge fan of Fan BingBing (since her Princess Returning Pearl days!) and Jing Ning (the actress who plays Consort Mei), and I love Chinese historical fiction, I was sorely disappointed (and bored) with this movie.

OMg, not only Jesus wept, i cried for the downfall of Chinese movie industries

[MovieIQTest · 4 September 2015]

First of all, I have to point out that this movie is a totally and completely UNnecessary one. Another living proof that the Chinese movie industry is running into a cul-de-sac, like the street sign: "Not A Thru Street". And this film has spent unlimited budget, tons of ¥¥¥/$$$ to produce another lackluster, a mud-in-your-face, boring, bore-to-death, formulaic, meh-you-to-kingdom-come epic lousy Chinese film that should not, must not approved to put into production.

This movie, like lot of the extremely bad scripted Chinese films, using a foreigner as the narrator to tell a he definitely impossible to know the inside story of what-happened in the imperial palace of the Tong Dynasty! Yet this so-called preacher, a Catholic priest from the Roman Empire (what a load of crap! The Chinese never knew that Jesus was crucified by the Romans?) seems to know every detail of the Tong emperor's sexual activities deep in his palace. Why lot of the Chinese movies and the TV drama series always like to use a westerner to tell a Chinese story that he actually knew jacksh@t is beyond my comprehension. Maybe it's a Chinese complex like what nowadays Chinese who obsessed LV/Hermes purses, all the famous brands of the West, so the Chinese movies got to have some foreigners in their movies to show that lot of the white people also envies Chinese culture, so they kept coming to China to salute the Chinese empire and its emperors.

This brain-dead film was built on a part of the Chinese history, but evolved into a totally fairy tale like fantasy that got nothing to do with anything with its fundamentally based Chinese, instead, the producers, the screenplay writers, the director and those actors, they could not careless about the history, like the Chinese Communist Party who claimed they actually fought against the Japanese and won the war of the Japanese invasion. Historical facts to the modern day Chinese, from the reigning party to the common Chinese citizens, means NOTHING at all, they just do whatever they like to rewrite the history, for the Chinese media industries, they only want to borrow their historical background and twisted them into absurdity, spiced with ridiculous romances, love affairs and politically correct craps to please their reigning party to get approval of their productions, and kept fooling their movie/TV viewers with lot of made-up lies. They followed their Chairman Mao's motto: "F@@k the truth, F@@k the fact, F@@k the history, if you keep lying thousand times, the lies will become the truth, the fact and the history!" Then again, Comrade Deng also told the born-lying Chinese: "Black cat or white cat, it don't matter, comrades, as long as it can catch the rats, they are all good cats!" So keep lying, comrades who are making movies and anything related to media, as long as you guys could swindle the money out of the pockets of billion Chinese, to hell with the history, the fact and the truth.

Why I could say so for most of the Chinese people? Because unluckily, I am one of the foolish slant eyes in the eyes of the westerners. But before I rest my case of this stupid film, i still have to warn you:

"Watch out the wallet in your pocket, dude, DO NOT BE FOOLED AGAIN this time. DO NOT WASTE your money and lifetime on this crap!"

Almost not one sympathetic character on the screen

[anthonyspera · 2/10 · 1 February 2018]

Kings. Aren't they great? We should go back to the days of dynasty and emperors! Are you the king? Do you think your sons wife is sexy? Give him a new wife and take her for your own, cause, why not? Are you one of the kings many concubines / sons / followers? Make promises and alliances and break them as you wish to further your own ends, cause, why not?

After watching this movie, I had not one shred of respect for any of the characters who are all self serving and mostly insane. Is this a Chinese problem? Of course not. Go back and read the history of the Roman Empire or the British Empire. This story has played out for as long as someone has said, "Long Live The King! (or in this case, Emperor)".

People lie, cheat, murder and steal to keep their place or get what they want and no amount of nice background music or setting up of events to gain sympathy for the characters made me like them. The Emperor is a pig and his words mean nothing. He disposes of people because his libido tells him to and that's about it.

The main character is the new concubine, who could get some sympathy in the story, being, as she is, fairly powerless to get what she wants out of life, and, of course, not going along with the wishes of the king (emperor) will simply get you killed.

If you want to be depressed and hate people, watch this movie.