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And with so many plot points left unexplained or fuzzily defined it’s only the skill of Wuershan in juggling over-sized characters (as in The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman 刀见笑, 2010) that prevents the film from curdling in its own visual effects. The result, alas, is not especially fresh: like Chronicles, the final hour is very repetitive, and not helped by being entirely set underground in the same giant cavern. (The first four novels were bought by China Film, but the second four by Wanda Media, which accounts for “rival” versions going into production at the same time.) Mojin did, at least, have the original author on board as a “script consultant”, a job that apparently involved daily meetings with director Wuershan.
MOJIN THE LOST LEGEND CAST SERIES
Though both films employ characters and character names from the novels, they are, in fact, original stories: Chronicles claimed to be based on the first novel in the series but bears no relation to it, while Mojin states vaguely that it’s “adapted from the Ghost Blows Out the Light novels”. But where the ambitious Chronicles dared to fail, Mojin stays safely within the fantasy/adventure genre, with more engaging characters than Chronicles but less imagination as to what to do with them.
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There’s a similarly lively array of juicy characters, plenty of rough humour, and a natural taste for the fantastic. It is, however, only a fractionally better movie, and a notch down from the previous film of director Wuershan 乌尔善, Painted Skin: The Resurrection 画皮II (2012). Where Chronicles was a monster-strewn VFX-athon that had hardly anything to do with its supposed source novel, Mojin is much closer in spirit to Zhang’s original and the whole tomb-raiding sub-genre. The second of two 2015 films separately based on Ghost Blows Out the Light 鬼吹灯 – a series of eight tomb-raiding novels by Tianxia Bachang 天下霸唱 (penname of Zhang Muye 张牧野) that were originally published online – Mojin: The Lost Legend 寻龙诀 couldn’t be more different from Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe 九层妖塔, released only 11 weeks earlier. But then Wang Kaixuan suggests he and Hu Bayi return for the medallion in the hope of resurrecting Ding Sitian. When the company’s ageing hippie president, Ying Caihong (Liu Xiaoqing), steals the medallion, the chamber starts collapsing and the four tomb raiders barely escape alive. Wang Kaixuan and Da Jin Ya are saved by the arrival of Hu Bayi and Shirley Yang, and then they all penetrate the tomb’s huge inner chamber where the Equinox Flower medallion is located. In Inner Mongolia, where Global Mining Group is using the cover of “geological exploration”, Wang Kaixuan and Da Jin Ya finally locate the underground tomb but, on entry, the company’s staff start turning into zombies. During the chaos of escaping, Ding Sitian died.) Hu Bayi later decides to join Wang Kaixuan, much to the displeasure of Shirley Yang, who grudgingly tags along. While destroying a tomb that locals said was a gateway to the spirit world, the group came across a WW2 underground Japanese base that turned out to be haunted by zombies. Both fell for Ding Sitian, a member of the group.
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(In 1969, when they were both hot-headed students during the Cultural Revolution, Wang Kaixuan and Hu Bayi were sent there to wipe out feudal thought. When art smuggler friend Da Jin Ya (Xia Yu) accepts a lucrative contract from the mysterious Global Mining Group to find the tomb of Aogu, a Khitan princess during the Liao dynasty, and the Equinox Flower medallion that can open the door to the spirit world, Wang Kaixuan goes with him to Inner Mongolia province, northern China. Shirley Yang suggests she and Hu Bayi get married so he can get a green card, but he is equivocal and his old friend Wang Kaixuan is keen to return to tomb robbing in China. After a one-night stand with Shirley Yang, Hu Bayi disappeared and was later found by her selling trinkets on the street along with Wang Kaixuan. Hu Bayi (Chen Kun), Wang Kaixuan (Huang Bo) and Chinese American Shirley Yang (Shu Qi) had a successful career as tomb raiders in China but, on the suggestion of Shirley Yang, retired and moved to the US. Tomb-robbing adventure has engaging characters but becomes increasingly repetitive and unimaginative.