The Legend of the Naga Pearls (2017)

The Legend of the Naga Pearls (2017)

5/10

Starring

Wang Talu

Zhang Tianai

Directed by Yang Lei

Well this movie was surprisingly captivating. I was very interested in seeing what the movie was all about. Why a man had some blue glow on his hand and what is all this talk about winged people?

The questions were answered and knowing that this movie was set in a fictional world called Novoland, it was a lot easy for many impossibles to happen.

This Chinese fantasy adventure film was produced in such a way to make it easy for everyone to enjoy and follow. You can guess, it was very predictable. No matter how much the movie tried it just could not get that dark shadow of predictability of its back. Although, I give the movie credit for the fact that it tried.

So the plot starts with a tale of how one day the winged people and the humans lived side by side. The winged people decided that they wanted dominion over the humans and then a war broke loose. The humans won and many winged people were killed and the peaceable ones were left to live among the humans.

We see a young boy who has a blue glow emanating from his hand. He was bullied a lot as a child, being cut by other older children wanting to see where the blue glow came from. He grew up to be a thief and called himself the Saint of Thieves.

Many of the winged lost their ability to fly after the war because of the lack of some particular substance which their wing is made of. One of the winged people named Vlad, whose wings are intact was plotting his return to dominance over the humans. He and his crew decided to get a weapon that will do the deed for them. To get that weapon working, which is a door way into another realm that will release creatures that will kill all humans, he needs two items. He already got one by killing a Prince and raiding his collection of weird items. The second was a blue pearl, called the Naga Pearl.

The opposition to his plans was a lady named Raven, a winged person who works as a security authority in the human world and her brother works with Vlad. One of the Princes of the human world wanting revenge for the death of his kin, which Vlad killed. The last person of the trio was Ni the thief with the hand that glows. He was the one who found the Naga Pearl, as it seems his hand and the pearl have a connection. He and his team know that the pearl meant doom if Vlad gets it so they are on a journey to destroy it, while Vlad and his cohorts are after them to retrieve it.

The whole set design is beautiful and you will get food for your eyes when you see it.

The plot as you can see above is just predictable and the movie was so done to make room for the others that will follow. What I do not get is why not much was done to make the movie less predictable. I do not know if the movie was a hit in China or not, but I do not see this movie become a regular word of mouth prompting you to go see it.