Review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016) by Kevin R — 29 Mar 2016

Sword of Destiny is basically a shadow of its former self. Whereas its predecessor excels in quintessential Chinese cinematography, compelling story telling, emotionally invested characters, epic fights, enticing romance, and an in-depth tragedy, Sword of Destiny feels like a cheap Hollywood imitation with all the spectacles, but none of the substance and aesthetics of the old film.

While it retains at least one character from the older film, remains faithful to the wire-flying techniques, and repeats the theme of the master-apprentice relation, it completely fails to capture what made its predecessor great.

Even if one generously decides to evaluate the film on its own merits independent of the original "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," it comes across as another generic and cheap martial arts movie.

Most of the characters in Sword of Destiny are barely developed, so when some of them die in battle one barely feels any sympathy. The romance in the film is unconvincing because the background story behind Silent Wolf (Donnie Yen) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) is unbelievably comical (you have to watch it for yourself to see why it's bad).

The villain is quite possibly the most shallow character in the movie as one has yet to figure out his motives beyond "I want to rule the world with a kick-ass sword!" Jade Fox from the original was far more developed and interesting.

To make matters worse, the basic plot structure is virtually identical to the original movie: save the Green Destiny from a power hungry villain. A lot of the non-antagonist characters (except Shu Lien and Silent Wolf) are underwhelming and undeveloped.

Snow Vase and Wei Fan are among the more developed characters in the film, but their existence feels so contrived as it becomes apparent that all this time they exist primarily for romance and revenge.

The ending feels cheap as there's no real sense of tragedy and there's a happy ending for everyone (that is, everyone who is important in the film). Overall, this is a cliche and generic martial arts film that may entertain you, but fails to be just as good or better than the original.