Imagine
if Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman both starred in films about the same
bestselling action hero that released in theaters one or two months apart. That
is exactly what happened in China when both Shu Qi and Yao Chen starred as
Shirley Yang in films based on the Ghost
Blows Out the Light franchise. In a quirk of subsidiary sales, one group
controls the rights to the first four novels and another controls the
concluding four. The latter released Mojin: The Lost Legend slightly behind their competitors in China, but it was the
first to reach our shores. Now we can go back to the beginning (and get thoroughly
confused) with Lu Chuan’s rip-roaring Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe (trailer
here),
which releases today on DVD from Well Go USA.
Frankly,
the two films taken in tandem seem to be contradictory and mutually exclusive,
but who knows what genre business might have gone on in subsequent books?
Regardless, it is probably best to consider them separately and discretely. As Chronicles opens, Hu Bayi and Yang Ping
(as she is originally known) are not yet tomb-raiders by choice, but that is
sort of what they are doing anyway as a reluctant soldier and nurse under
orders of the PLA. In 1979, some very strange fossils have been discovered in
the Mongolian desert, so Yang’s archaeologist father has been assigned to the
excavation. Some mysterious force does its best to dissuade the Red Army with a
great big explosion, but even that will not be enough of a hint. As volunteers
for the investigatory team, Hu and the Yangs follow a freshly revealed passage
all the way to the Demon Pagoda. At this point, this get a little hazy.
Five
years later, the Yangs are still missing and Hu is still eating his heart out
over Ping. He has been transferred to a government research institute, but he
is intercepted in-transit by a mysterious librarian, somewhat in the tradition
of the TNT series. While sorting and shelving he will bone up on Prof. Yang’s
research into the Ghostly Tribe, the remnant of an alien race secretly living
among humans. However, when Ping Yang resurfaces (renamed Shirley by the
doctors treating her catatonia), Hu rejoins her latest expedition.
Unfortunately, he finds she has somewhat changed. Of course, there will not be
much time to worry about that when the unearthly monsters attack.
Not
unlike the competing Mojin, the best
sequences of Ghostly Tribe are
probably earlier period adventure rather than the contemporary half. If
anything, Ghostly Tribe is even more
ambiguous in its portrayal of the great, patriotic PLA. Yao Chen and Mark Chao
arguably have better chemistry as Yang and Hu than their Mojin counterparts, but Shu Qi and Chen Kun have greater individual
screen presence and action cred. Tribe’s special
effects are all first class, but there isn’t the sort of tomb-raiding action
you will find in Mojin.
