7 Guardians of the Tomb

[GeneChing]

Another Chinese 'tomb raider' flick, with an Oz accent.

Arclight Films Launches Development Arm to Fuel More China-Australia Co-Productions
6:29 PM PDT 8/1/2017 by Pip Bulbeck


Screen Australia
Li Bingbing stars in Arclight's 'Guardians of the Tomb'

The U.S.-Australia production and distribution company has created Chinalight, which aims to build on films like 'Bait 3D' and the upcoming ‘Guardians of the Tomb.’
Arclight Films is taking a major step into the Chinese market, announcing the launch of development arm Chinalight.

Chinalight aims to develop a slate of official Australia-China co-productions, using the treaty that’s been in place since 2006 but under which only five films have been made.

Arclight, headquartered in Los Angeles and Sydney, also has offices in Beijing and Hong Kong. Executive Jenevieve Chang, whose memoir, The Good Girl of Chinatown, about growing up in Australia and returning to China as an adult was published by Penguin Random House this year, will head up the new division, based in Sydney.

With production recently wrapped on Guardians of the Tomb, the largest China-Australia co-production to date, Arclight wants to become the market leader in initiating new collaborations in financing, development and production between the two countries.

Guardians of the Tomb stars an international cast including Li Bingbing, Kellan Lutz, Kelsey Grammer and Chinese pop star and actor Wu Chun. The film is being produced by Gary Hamilton, Ying Ye and Mark Lazarus and directed by Kimble Rendall, whose debut feature, Bait 3D, became one of the highest-grossing Australian films in the history of Chinese cinema.

Chinalight has put out a call for writers, producers and directors with proposals for genuine China/Australia co-production feature films. Successful applicants will be invited to take part in a hothouse script development laboratory to develop their ideas into potential projects.

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

How did 7 Guardians of the Tomb slip past my The Tomb Raiding, Grave Robbing, Post-Indiana Jones movie genre in China thread? I'll copy it with this review.

Li Bingbing gets top billing. She plays an expert on poison looking for her brother who disappeared while tomb raiding. He was searching for an elixir of immortality, the waidan for those that know Daoist alchemy. Fraser (Kelsey Grammar) is the obvious villain, the CEO of the company founded by Li's parents. He'll always be Fraser to me and despite his painful over-acting here, I still saw Fraser. Kellen Lutz is a mercenary tracker, an almost complete negligible character. I was grateful he didn't hook up with Li because it looked like it was going there. There are others on the rescue mission, which takes them into the desert which spontaneously explodes because it emits gas when struck by lightning caused by a massive sandstorm. That got a bit silly, but it was a device for lots of random explosions. The tomb looked like a bad movie set, which in fact, it was. It is guarded by hordes of spiders, somewhat reminiscent of the Mummy film with all the scarabs (can't remember which one that was - the first one maybe?) There was an opportunity to really work arachnophobia, and they almost get there with the creepy factor in the finale, but ultimately it falls short. The dialog is stilted, the tomb traps were rather cliche (pit of lava, slow crushing ceilings, spiderweb trip wires that bring spider hordes or shoot arrows). Li is good actually - she almost rises above it all with an earnest performance. There's a wise-cracking Aussie that saves it all. He actually makes fun of the tomb trap cliches several times - Shane Johnson playing 'Gary'. It's half in English, half in Mandarin, trying to play to both sides of the Pacific and failing in the process. No Kung Fu. There's a sword, but no real sword fight. Lots of spiders.

In the end, I wasn't exactly sure who the 7 guardians were.