Home Entertainment It's steampunk Kung Fu in this trailer and character posters for TAI CHI O!

It's steampunk Kung Fu in this trailer and character posters for TAI CHI O!

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Oh you kooky Asians, you never fail to entertain with your unique blend of crazy and badass. Case in point, this new trailer for Hong Kong actor-director Stephen Fung’s Tai Cho O. For those of you not familiar with it, Tai Chi is a very graceful and gentle martial arts. This film looks to be the complete opposite of that.

Just like he did on Detective Dee and Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Fung blends traditional Kung Fu wirework (courtesy of Jet Li and Sammo Hung), state of the art CGI and a heaped dose of good ol’ batshit craziness to produce something that looks insanely cool.

The trailer editing itself definitely appears to be borrowing quite heavily from the first full trailer for David Fincher’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, from the machine-gun bassline of the accompanying song, to the bold red and blue text and even to the rapidly increasing cuts as the trailer nears the end. However, irrespective of it’s copied style, it works extremely well here, giving you a sense of unexpected craziness.

Speaking of unexpected craziness, this is supposed to be based on the life story of the founder of the Yang style of Tai Chi, Yang Lu-chan, but somehow I don’t think he really had a magical pocket of power in his head as this synopsis implies:

From the creators of DETECTIVE DEE and SHAOLIN SOCCER, featuring martial arts choreography by the legendary Sammo Hung and Jet Li, TAI CHI 0 tells the story of Yang Luchan, a young genius who, tired of being picked on due to the fleshy abnormality on his head which he uses to store great power, travels to Chen Village to learn the art of Tai Chi. Luchan finds out the hard way that it is forbidden for a villager to teach an outsider when the villagers, from strong men to old women to little children, repeatedly challenge him to a series of fights, all of which he loses quite badly. But when a frightening army of steampunk soldiers bearing strange machines shows up, the villagers realize that in order to save their home, they must trust this strange outsider with the ancient and powerful knowledge of Tai Chi.

The film is supposed to be the first part of a trilogy, with part one releasing in Chinese theatres on September 28th, with part two, titled Tai Chi Hero, releasing just a month later on October 26th. The film will be getting a further world release only early in 2013, though I suspect we might have to wait until it arrives on Blu Ray.

In the meantime we will have to rewatch that trailer over and over until the internet breaks, while ogling these amazing looking character posters for the film.

Last Updated: August 1, 2012

One Comment

  1. James Francis

    August 1, 2012 at 11:20

    This should be worth watching, even if it’s bad…

    Reply

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