Calm down. Fox hasn’t suddenly pulled a reverse Shyamalan (which I hear is an illegal wrestling move in South America) and cast Donnie Yen as Iceman in the next X-Men movie, although this film does appear to borrowing quite a bit from a certain other star spangled superhero.
Then again, it’s Donnie Yen. He has got the superpower of supreme asskicking. Throw in a time travel plot and this may as well be a superhero movie.
He Ying (Donnie Yen), a highly skilled martial-arts warrior in the Ming Dynasty, becomes the only suspect in a murder of a notable official and his family. Three of his best friends are ordered to bring him into justice. While he tries to get away, an avalanche occurs and the four are all buried in deep snow. They are not dead, but frozen in suspended animation.
Four hundred years later, the frozen He Ying comes to life again, and finds himself in a modern, high-tech world. With the help of a young woman named Mei (Huang Shengyi), he learns to use a cell-phone and computer. But the problem returns when his old buddies are defrosted too. Now he needs to use his ancient martial-art skills to fight modern weaponry.
I have to admit, that is a rather rubbish trailer. Was it not for the synopsis, you wouldn’t actually have a clear idea of what the hell it is that this movie is actually about.
Also, for a trailer for a kung fu movie, that was disappointingly light on actual kung fu. That’s a grave error on its own, but it gets compounded when your trailer is actually bragging about how “ancient martial arts” will take on “modern weaponry” and then the closest we get is a guy on horseback chasing a lamborghini.
Yen is arguably the best martial arts practitioner in film at the moment, and also not a half bad actor. Two traits that his last internationally released film, Dragon, put on display remarkably well. This though looks like it needs to get put on ice.
There’s no set release date yet for The Iceman 3D, but it’s expected to be released in Hong Kong later in the year, with an international release in the first quarter of 2014.
Last Updated: June 26, 2013
James Francis
June 26, 2013 at 08:56
The embed is broken – here’s an alternative:
Yeah, the trailer IS rubbish, but the concept sounds fun. Then again, some of Yen’s stuff have been awful, so I won’t get my hopes up too much.
OminousRain
June 26, 2013 at 13:48
I’m up for any Martial Arts film.
Problem is just getting the full original version, as America love to cut/paste/redo the films before releasing them.
And for some reason they love to remove certain characters from a film. Still don’t know why they do that.