You can practically tell from the movie poster or cover art that Tai Chi Zero is a little different. In watching the extra features, Stephen Fung and crew were intent on making something fresh. They wanted to make a traditional martial arts movie that just hadn’t been done before. They were going for a way to present Tai Chi or Chinese martial arts in general to a younger, hipper audience.
The result was Tai Chi Zero. It packs an impressive punch with fight choreography handled by the legend Sammo Hung. Plenty of high flying acrobatics and lots of actors-on-wire sequences await you, nothing new there, but Fung’s presentation style is something else altogether. Watching Tai Chi Zero was almost like watching a cutscene in a videogame, at least at times. Augmented visual cues and graphics are seamlessly, and sometimes not-so-seamlessly, overlaid and integrated into the film. When new characters first appear, graphics and subtitles exclaim who they are and what other film they may be known for. During one sequence, when protagonist Yuan Xiaochao’s character Yang Lu Chan tries to enter into a secretive village, colorful graphics appear on screen that say “Round 1, Fight!.” Other times the names of the Tai Chi ‘moves’ or katas are shown.
Tai Chi Zero also takes a decidedly steampunk angle and I thought it worked well. A fifty ton mobile prop powered by a massive bulldozer was built over the course of seventy-five days, with some fifty or more techs working on it. This is the large steam-powered train, if you can call it that, that appears on the cover art. The “Troy” as it’s known, is a western made device.
Actor Eddie Peng plays the young man who grew up in the secluded village who got an education and moved to England. He comes back to his people to try and introduce them to technology. When his demonstration goes wrong and he’s made to look a fool, he betrays his village and plans to destroy it so that a railway can be built right through it. His girlfriend, Chen Yunia played by Angelababy, is intent on protecting her village with the help of her father Master Chen (Tony Leung Ka Fai). All the while, a young martial arts prodigy — who was born with the three blossoms of the crown mark — tries to learn this internal martial arts style from the villagers, especially Chen Yunia, but they refuse. In time, they see he’s honorable and serious, and so this formidable external style martial artist finally gets taken in by the villagers to learn the internal arts.
The first movie in this planned trilogy is a fun ride with some gorgeous action scenes, a dash of humor, and some drama as well. The sequel, Tai Chi Hero, should be great if it can maintain or accelerate the momentum of Tai Chi Zero.
Presentation quality of this Blu-ray is excellent, featuring both the original 5.1 audio track and a dubbed English track (although I only watched the original track with subtitles). CG was used sparingly, and the effort and work that was put into making realistic props (the Troy especially) is something you can easily appreciate. Now, as far as all of augmented graphics and animations and so forth, I’m still trying to decide what to make of it. I applaud Fung and crew for being bold enough to try that, but at least personally I never saw anything wrong with the traditional cinematography methods. My biggest concern is if the visual gimmicks and extras will dampen the viewing experience later on, but if you’re like me and tend not to re-watch movies for years at a time, this isn’t really a big deal.
There are a few extra features, including a 5m43s behind the scenes, or Zenes as it’s printed on the box, feature. This is in SD and has brief cast and crew interviews, but it also shows a few brief scenes and talks about the sequel. The ‘MuZic VideoZ’ was ok, it just show scenes from the film set to an aggressive Chinese rap song. Finally, three trailers for this movie, all in HD, are included.
To the summary…