DESTINY LIES IN THE WIND
Finally doing a "proper" review of the Red Cliff movies, other than just the slew of ETAs to this post. I should've typed this up earlier, but then the downtime happened and so I've at least caught up with that passage in the novel in full. As I said before, I did enjoy the films overall - the cinematography in particular was pretty, even when it got to the battles, which were all realistically painful and not just played for the lulz as the case often is in pure "action" movies. They also didn't seem that prevalent; sure, most of the battle scenes were long, but they were balanced out by equally long instances of non-battle sequences. I'm only saying this re: violence in the media, since I don't think is objectionable when it's obvious that there's a purpose to it (which there can be even when it's excessive: for example, the Kill Bill series). Right, why am I digressing about violence - point is, the aesthetic side was very striking and balanced. It should be noted that the two films span more than four hours and I watched all that in a day, without getting bored.
Now, I'm not gonna lie that even if everything else in the movies had sucked (which it didn't), they'd be worth watching for Zhuge Liang alone. He got an amazing, amazing portrayal; hands-down the best character in there. I suppose that's equal parts due to the writing (his characterization being quite complex, not to mention it jives with all the other major adaptations I've seen/read him in so far - observant, deceptively humble, idiosyncratic, ~mysterious, multi-talented, working on his own terms, ready to take action when necessary, A FREAKING KNOW-IT-ALL, etc.) and to the sheer awesomeness of Takeshi Kaneshiro's acting skillz. (And his Chinese-language skillz. I mean, how badass is it he speaks it well enough to play a legendary character of this magnitude. Absolutely watch this with subtitles if you ever do; I'm not sure if it's been dubbed but even if so, there's nothing like the original.) In short, <3. That's the most space-saving way to describe him, really. How can a character be such an all-round ball of awesome without descending into Gary Stu territory? If the character is Zhuge Liang, that's how. Holy shit, just that arrow scene.
I liked the interpretation of his relationship with Zhou Yu here (namely the part where they were never actually aiming to kill each other, whereas in the novel they do at first and then suddenly bam! buddies who write on their hands instead of talking; whoops, now Zhou Yu's trying to kill him again because he's too "threatening"; whoops, there goes Zhuge Liang trolling him next). There are two scenes featuring them that just got me: first was the one where they make music together because that was intense, and the other was the whole thing about them placing a bet on each other's heads and how that gets resolved. Zhou Yu by himself was a compelling character as well, and oddly cute e.g. in the flute-playing/repairing scene and whatnot.
The films also made me appreciate Sun Quan more than I did before. The part where Zhuge Liang comes to dispute with him was sizzling with tension and sneaky rhetorical devices. By the way, the comment about Zhuge Liang being shippable with lots of people was right and let me count the ways: Sun Quan, Zhou Yu, Sun Shangxiang, and Liu Bei. And all of it is utterly plausible. (Although I'm glad they didn't just shove the others aside in favour of some token het romance with Sun Shangxiang - she kicked ass in her own right and the idea that every woman on screen needs to be someone's wife or girlfriend is ridiculous anyway. What I personally appreciated even more, though, was that they kept this possible pairing as just one of the options on the same level with the gay 'ships, no more and no less valid. Sure, it's a status quo, but fair enough.)
About Sun Shangxiang, you can pretty much tell that the films gave her a boost in making her a prominent character, but I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with altering the source canon to be more inclusive. She goes on to spy in the enemy camp dressed as one of the soldiers and makes a naive but dedicated friend there, which I honestly thought was among the best bits of the plot because, even though it's not essential to the main events, it gives a human dimension to all the fighting that happens in the end (needless to say, the friendship ends tragically). What I also liked was the utter inconsequentiality of gender in this dynamic: while at the camp, Sun Shangxiang is the soldier nicknamed Piggy; when they meet later and she's again a princess, no fuss whatsoever is made about the shift in the face of all the important stuff that's going on. You know, this flat-out pwns most Western movies I can think of that downplay gender fluidity as "just crossdressing" or some sort of funny interlude without a bearing on the larger context.
Liu Bei et al didn't make as much of an appearance as I'd thought they would, though it was nice that the movie kept the details like his shoe-weaving or Zhang Fei's roar. I don't know if it's cute or amusing that everyone goes with the "Liu Bei is the nicest guy ever and cares about every peasant or soldier and if they run out of supplies he'll personally make new shoes for them" reading, but I admit that I was touched by the fact that he really just wanted to protect his faithful little retinue.
The dynamics I've focused on so far, as you could probably tell, really are thoroughly enjoyable. The problem is this: only the "good side" gets these dynamics in the films. By which I mean to say that if Ro3K the novel seems anti-Wei (and fair enough if it chooses to be!), it's got nothing on this. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to give Cao Cao all these generic villain behavioural patterns, but the result of course is that it makes the conflict almost artificially clear-cut and cheapens the overall effect. Especially egregious was the fact that, several times during the movies, someone goes on to enlighten us with the "fact" that "Cao Cao has no friends" and I'm like
[CITATION NEEDED]
I mean, fine, let's go with the interpretation that he's the worst thing since before sliced bread and a rebel against the Han and a corrupt politician and whatever, but how did they manage to miss the fact that all these lords are as strong as they are because they're supported by an entourage of people who genuinely want to support them? Barring that, how did they miss the numerous passages in the novel alone (if we're leaving out historical anecdotes) where people profess loyalty to him or quarrel over him or die for him, completely willingly? You can have a character who's notorious for being ruthless and manipulative and still not hated by everyone or desperately lonely, just sayin'. That's the thing - he can get away with so much because those closest to him are loyal and reliable without needing to be persuaded. And I think it is a damn shame that the movies ignored all that and gave him a grand total of Ø meaningful, non-coercive on-screen relationships, not to mention reduced his characterization to basically "greedy bastard who consistently messes up and never ever shows any compassion, ever" [CITATION NEEDED]. Not to say he was just a nice kitty, but seriously. The main conflict would've been a lot more interesting (and convincing) if it had looked at the rivals somewhat neutrally, or just without the conscious "lol generic villain Cao Cao" godmodding. You guys, I know you can do complexity! Use some of it on the ~evil side as well!
I keep saying "generic" and, in addition to painting him as unloved, there's another reason: that whole romantic subplot with Xiao Qiao. I've since discovered that they didn't entirely pull it out of thin air, since in the novel he does want to...oh wait, steal off both Zhou Yu's wife and Sun Ce's widow, except his rationale for that is to lock them up in a tower for personal amusement as a pair of trophy girlfriends and a giant "I won" sign. Now that is evil, and I guess replacing it with a romantic subplot mitigates that (or just makes it palatable to contemporary viewers, whichever). The problem is, that whole element came across as nothing but a "generic big-budget movie source of conflict" and I for one did not need to see another one of those, so I was disappointed. I was also disappointed because, while it is a good move to diverge from the source canon and not treat women as a commodity (which the movie wasn't doing anyway), it becomes decidedly less nice when it's also used as a device to erase Cao Cao's other hinted-at relationships. I don't want to fault the films too much for skipping Xiahou Dun, considering he's not depicted as too involved in this battle elsewhere either, but I am going to fault it when it's used as an instrument of this insidious straightwashing. (Set during a time in history when everyone had to have a family, but no one seemed to get labelled with a rigid sexuality for time and eternity. Damn the 19th century!)
TL;DR: I just had to say I wasn't impressed with the fail surrounding Cao Cao's background/motives in this. Double shame because his actor was quite good. And no, I never do take off the queer theory hat. :P Oh, but the very ending worked out well since it was left open (as it should be) and yet again, Cao Cao's poor headdress goes down. How symbolic. (Although it doesn't beat the scenario in the novel, with Cao Cao's desperate escape and Guan Yu specifically letting him go. I believe this also appears in one of the DW installments.)
My overall conclusion is still good because there was plenty to counter whatever bothered me in part, for which I'd gladly recommend the films. Just take them with a gigantic grain of salt when it comes to the portrayal of Wei. You'd have a terrible impression of them from just seeing the movie with such a derailed leader. He does get redeemed a bit while rousing the soldiers to action in the second part but...yeah. Not even using tea as a battle tactic will make me entirely amenable. XD
It's a pain and mostly fruitless trying to find some actual clips from this movie (not trailers), so here's like...a quarter of a totally awesome scene before most of the awesomeness happens. I know, I'm sorry, but at least there's Zhuge Liang inventing rapid-fire crossbows.
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