A swordsman from Wu Tang Clan falls in love with a woman raised by wolves who is now working for cult leaders who want to destroy the 8 clans. Because of confusion over conflict between alliances, the wolf girl's hair turns white and she turns evil. The Wu Tang swordsman spends the next 10 years waiting for a blossom on Snow Mountain which will heal the wolf girl. Meanwhile, she has created her own all-female, man-hating cult.
The first film was great and the second was terrible. I blame the change of directors. What I would like to deal with here is the video techniques which made the original unique. By use of heavy back-lighting, the characters separated from the backgrounds in a stark manner. The midgrounds were mostly black, with slightly lighter far backgrounds and even lighter characters. See the image for why I think back-lighting was used. I don't know all the details, but some of the backgrounds looked to be manipulated in a way to produce this set of value contrasts. Motion blur was also used in action scenes. With modern digital editing, it could just be added easily. With older equipment, the film would be run slower to get less frames per second. Dutch angles were also used in some sections. The original had some flying and what I call "long sleeve technique" (long fabric, hair, etc. being cast out to full length as a weapon). Rotten Tomatoes audience score dropped from 75% for the original to 43% for the sequel and I agree. The original was unique and the plot made me care what happened. The sequel seemed like a mockery of what made the original good. I rate them good and bad.
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