Battle of Red Cliff, the Movie

hanqiang1011 said:

Cao Cao tied up his battleships because his seeming invincible infantry + cavalry troops were all northerners... northen people usually dont know how to swim and being long period on land, they had sea sickness when on board the battleships. Thus he (dont know which one of his military stategtists gave him the idea) ordered all ships to be chained up to create a land-on-sea so that his soldier would not suffer from sick sickness.

The people from the south from Eastern Wu were skilled in swimming and naval warfare because there living areas were around rivers and coastal area. They had gotten used to the sea conditions (monsoon wind, naval fighting...etc).

It was either Zhuge Liang or Zhou Yu that came up with the idea of burning away Cao Cao's ship due to the fact that all ships were chained from ship to ship. Thus when unleashing the tactics of using fire, the ships would burnt from one on till the other spreading rapidly fast due to the wind condition.

As for the movie, it is not historical accurate at all. In actual facts, only Zhuge Liang was sent to Eastern Wu, not the entire Shu Factions character were there.

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The movie is just to dramatised the event.

Nevertheless, IT IS still an epic. It has long overdue that the Chinese film industry had this kind of epic movie. Apart from some of the casts (which I do not know why John wanted Japanese actors in the casts), the battle scenes were great and both Takeshi and Tony Leong are 2 great actors to watch.

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according to rotk, zhuge liang and zhou yu both said they had a strategy for defeating cao cao, but couldn't decide who would present the strategy first. so they each wrote their strategy on their hand and showed each other at the same time. written on both their hands was "fire"

as for who presented cao cao with the strategy of linking his ships together, it was pang tong. he was sent by shu/wu to pretend to defect to cao cao and present him with the "strategy"

I just really don't like how Kaneshiro(Jin Chenwu is he's chinese name)'s nose looks like, dunno why he's so popular, just feel odd somehow, hehe. And I think Tony Leung is better for the role of Zhu Geliang while Kaneshiro as zhou Yu.

Anyway, I don't understand all these critics of this movie, I liked it, and FOR GOD SAKE if I wanted to see the exact history event of this battle I would have chose to see a documentary.

yehe said:

I just really don't like how Kaneshiro(Jin Chenwu is he's chinese name)'s nose looks like, dunno why he's so popular, just feel odd somehow, hehe. And I think Tony Leung is better for the role of Zhu Geliang while Kaneshiro as zhou Yu.

Anyway, I don't understand all these critics of this movie, I liked it, and FOR GOD SAKE if I wanted to see the exact history event of this battle I would have chose to see a documentary.

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Tony Leung was originally casted as Zhuge Liang but he quit, and so Woo had to take in Kaneshiro. Then Leung went back in when Chow Yun Fat quit, taking over the role of Zhou Yu.

With so many cast and role changes, you have to reshoot those parts and that would put additional costs and delays.

So far the reception to the movie is quite good, the problem is how they would show it in the US, since you can't put a two part movie, you have to take the two movies, condense it into one long movie. However, that may mean cuts on the movie scenes that may rob the movie of its essence.

<Romance of the Three Kingdoms> novel is not entirely a history, an increase of many fictional story, the author is Luo Guanzhong, who he was born in the Yuan Dynasty.
<Three Kingdoms Record> is the real history, the author is a historian Chen Shou, he was born in China's Three Kingdoms era, and was appointed to the history official of the Government , the preparation of the official history of the Three Kingdoms era.
According to the <Three Kingdoms Record>, Cao Cao was defeated in the Battle of Chibi , because at the time of his army in the spread of infectious diseases.

Soviet General said:

if thier is one thing i like is Asian history, achitecture, and movies like Chon ye yo BrotherHood of War is from south Korea based on two brother in tha SKorean army against the north during the korean war were at a point the olderbrother wich is decorated as a hero for capturing a DPRK General finds out the his brother was acusse as a comunist and killed in a prison during a chinesse attack. Then he the decorated hero betrayes his country for betraing him and joins the PLA and is now comander of A unitthat is a threat to the south. latter his brother did not die he manage to escape and after finding out what his brother defected he crosses the frontline to bring his brother to his sence, the rest i will not spoil, but is a must seen movie and it is available in the west in your local Blockbuster and other vedio stores that movie touch my soul i give it a five.

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sorry but i have extreme trouble reading your post
please re-write your entire post
i almost don't understand anything you wrote
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i think john woo is brilliant this time
i have my reasons

people have complained about the curse of the golden flower, but to me the movie incorporates shakespearean type drama.

anyways as for this movie, in the beginning i have the same expectation as everyone else: seriousness. why? because three kingdoms is something we take in as pride of our culture. so we expected a movie that does justice.

anyways so how was the movie? john woo made it very lively and modern. it included humor, seriousness, character studies, and scenes in the movie which may be fictional, but symbolic to developing the story and characters. for example the tiger hunting scene. i've read in some hk forums that it's ridiculous, but i think it represented sun quan's coming to age. cao cao's lust demonstrates his ambitions, his underestimation displays his arrogance, his acceptance of defeat displays his calmness, and his slyness is displayed throughout the movie. the music scene of zhou yu and zhugeliang displayed several things: art, education, how learned they are, their intelligence, their lifestyle, deepness of their character and personality, and how equivalent they are to each other.

lin chiling is a underrated character. we might see her as eye candy, but she demonstrated much much more. she represented the beauty of china: the soft elegant side. she also brought life into zhou yu here, which shes serves to produce a different image for zhou yu for the audience to differientiate him from zhugeliang. while zhugeliang is a learned scholar, politician and very calm, zhou yu is an accomplished man of honor with family. while he fights and lives in a life of a hardened tough tactful general during day, at night he is a family man with love.

the horse-breeding scene represents the hard life of the people in the past, even for the wealthy (the zhou). another will be that the horse-breeding scene represents the growth of the story and shu and wu. zhugeliang represents his entry as a foreshadow to the development into the three kingdoms scenario, but also a little development to zhugeliang's past as well as his character and his calmness in situations. (such as dealing with the calf)

it's true the battles are a bit comical. the turtle formation seems more like an idea that john wants the audience(and the west) to see of the brilliance of the chinese organized warfare even 2000 years ago, so he put it in.

john woo has created a lively movie of this particular event. he incorporated much art into a war that gave it to life as i see it. enjoy this as a dimensional movie is what i recommend

crobato said:

He got in because Tony Leung quit the Zhuge Liang role, and then Chow Yun Fat quit the Zhou Yu rule, Tony Leung changed his mind and took over the Zhou Yu role and Kaneshiro, Leung's costar in Flying Daggers, got the Zhuge Liang role.

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To be accurate the costar of Kaneshiro in Flying Deggars was Andy Lau, as well in Warlords.

I found the movie interesting only that on the side of the "rebels" there seems something lacking in contrast to the cunning CaoCao. There was to many heroes with equal screen time but noone who really stands out.

Whether the historical Cao Cao is a bad guy or not, in the end, he became somehow or somewhat the bad guy (but still a very human bad guy) in the novelization of the Three Kingdoms. Let's just say whoever wrote the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a bit historically biased, which was back in the Ming Dynasty then---and over a thousand years after the Three Kingdoms---although he had the actual historical records to work on.

The issue of the real historical Three Kingdoms vs. the popular "romantic" public image of the Three Kingdoms may never be settled.

It will be kind of like a thousand years from now, someone rewrites the story of the American Civil War into a romantic story, and General Grant gets painted as the "bad" guy and General Lee becomes the "hero" with soldiers dressed up not as Civil War soldiers but with World War II uniforms.

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I have not seen the movie yet, the first part. Waiting for the DVD. Is it good or worth the effort? Must be if you watched the movie three times. Yes?

I just downloaded illegal copy part1 gonna watch it. You mentioned sometime ago that you cant split it into 2 movies as it could become disjointed? or something. Well if they had off approached it like Lord of the Rings