Change Your Image
mikedufresne2013
Reviews
Qing Ya Ji (2020)
It's Bad. Amusing, but Undeniably Bad.
This movie is bad. Period. If you liked it, you either did so ironically, or you are a bot programmed to like this movie and give it good reviews. I assume there are many such bots, given the state of this review section. I was tempted to give it 2 stars simply because of how amusingly bad it was, but based on how many 9-10 star reviews this movie has received, I would be doing a disservice to movies everywhere if I didn't give this movie the lowest rating possible.
First of all, it makes no sense. Did a child write this? Is this fan fiction of some sort? Who came up with this story? It's basically every aspect of traditional Chinese cultural packed together and compressed into an incoherent mess. The protagonist, Qingming, is a yin-yang master (whatever that is) who can create Doctor Strange portals but for some reason can't learn a simple protection spell after training for twenty years (spoiler: he finally figures out the spell exactly when the plot needs him to). Also, he can pull magic spirit orbs from people's heads (including his own) that basically do whatever the plot needs them to do. Want to capture a desire-eating worm demon, put a loved one out of their misery or activate an ancient guardian statue? Use magical head orbs!
Also, there are too many plot holes to count. My favorites are the "twists" that are meant to mislead the audience but that literally make no sense if you think about them for even a second. For example, when we "learn" about Shouyue's deception, which was both obvious and ridiculous at the same time, we see that he didn't really put the magic spirit orb thing into guardian statue to activate it like we thought he did. Instead, he moved the orb away at the last minute, so it didn't actually go into the statue!! 😱 But wait...why would he bring the spirit orb thing to the statue in the first place and pretend to put it in? Literally nobody was watching him except us, the audience. Nonsense.
To give the movie some credit, the final encounter is pretty dope. First, a Godzilla-sized snake monster (aptly named "Evil Snake" in English) appears and threatens to destroy the world unless the good guys can awaken the last guardian statue. To stall the monster, Qingming, who can summon demon helpers (read: slaves), summons a demon ninja, a demon calligrapher and an ice-beam shooting angel-demon to fight the Evil Snake. By the way, the Evil Snake is being controlled by Shouyue, who turns out to be Qingming's dead master when he was young (what?), but then actually turns out to be a spirit guardian clone the dead master created to protect (and, apparently, also sleep with) the princess, Fangyue. Also, Fangyue had the Evil Snake inside her body originally, but decided to put it into Shouyue instead, because she loves him and doesn't want him to die (FYI, having the Evil Snake inside you makes you immortal). However, Fangyue immediately regrets her decision and tries to kill Shouyue, conveniently forgetting that she just made him immortal minutes earlier... Anyway, another character named Boya decides to use his own blood to awaken the last guardian statue, which causes the statue turn into a dark angel-demon version of him. Qingming then opens a Doctor Strange portal to teleport angel-demon Boya closer to Shouyue, and Boya then turns the portal into a sword, throws it at Shouyue and kills him. Shouyue could have stopped the portal sword if he wanted to, but Fangyue kills herself, to Shouyue's surprise, and he give up on life. It should be mentioned that Shouyue wasn't surprised by Fangyue's death because he loves her or something dumb like that, but because he also forgot that she isn't immortal anymore.
Like I said, amusingly bad.
Jokes aside, I will mention that the sexual chemistry between Boya and Qingming was a pretty refreshing sight, though it didn't really amount to much in the end. I assume the director was trying to hint at their feelings without getting flagged by Chinese censors. However, the film was apparently banned in China anyway because the director admitted to plagiarizing a famous book he wrote. Of course he did.