Catch a jump on Avatar: The Road of Water, Warrior of the future is a CGIized Hong Kong sci-fi masterpiece that shows the industrialized power of man against the forces of nature. Here, it’s the epitome of a giant alien plant with the same name, Pandora, with an intergalactic setting in James Cameron’s series.
That’s not the only element that Ng Yuen-fai’s film copies from Cameron’s work, as it also borrows freely from Terminator 2: Judgment Day and alien-not to mention Transformers, Iron Man, The edge of tomorrow, Pacific rim, RoboCop and a series of video games like Halo and Our Last. It can be said that uniqueness is not its forte.
However, if one could put aside the fact that there is almost nothing new about this import, there would be a modest pleasure in reveling in its sheer excess. Now available on Netflix—after its summer theater premiere in Hong Kong, when it became The most successful Chinese movie of all time—Warrior of the future is the feature film debut of director Ng Yuen-fai, a visual effects star who used all of his digital talents in the making of this chaotic tale.
