SHANGHAI FORTRESS (2019)

SHANGHAI FORTRESS (2019)

Tagline: Nope.

(Sci-Fi, Action, It’s Aliens Isn’t It?) [PG-13]

Here’s to hoping people in love will stay together, defeating aliens and saving the world!

In this one, we are taken to the future where it just so happens that Shanghai, China is one of the best-defended cities on the planet. Part of that is a giant canon. This is because the world has been under constant alien attack and is trying to harvest a new type of energy that Earth has perfected. It has become clear that Shanghai is humanity's last stand, can they survive?

The first thing I noticed about this movie is that the CGI is great in some parts and really spotty in others. The movie was made for $64 million and to be honest, a LOT of it looked better than what we get in some Marvel movies. However, it was only released in China and did about $16M at the box office. So there is that also. 

They do try to give us some plot between Lu Yiyi (played by Jialing Sun) a female drone pilot, Jiang Yang (played by Han Lu) who is probably the best male pilot, and their friends who are part of the Gray Eagle Squad. What they do is fight smaller ships that come from the alien mothership known as predators. 

I wasn’t really expecting human drama after how this thing started but we do get a bit of that. Oddly it’s centered around Pan which is a character they didn’t bother developing enough to make us care. Still, the bit they do introduce makes this kind of feel like it’s a downer at the end. 

The actual design work is really good, but we’ve seen better aliens out of Chinese studios. I am not saying we don’t have some weird choices here. Not really sure why they would give Gray Eagle Squad ships with giant transparent bubble cockpits. It doesn’t make any sense just from a practical standpoint.

This flick is well-directed, but there are a few shots that are cheesy. We do get a pretty decent score, but it’s certainly not perfect. I do think the soundtrack itself was kind of shaky. This is another one of those movies where you will have to read the subtitles, and fortunately for me, that is just something I have started to be able to do with no problem. If I am being honest, I used to hate subtitles. 

I think this ends up being pretty middle-tier for me. I was kind of hoping for some cooler-looking aliens and a plot that was a bit more than the usual. Understandably because this movie is made in China, of course, Shanghai is going to be all that, so people that can’t get over that they did that, clearly don’t understand how creators think. My comic literally happens in Phoenix, because I know Phoenix. I could have set it in London, but I love my city. At least I do at the moment. 

Overall this thing gets a 4 out of 7. I wanted to like it more than I did. The depressing ending really didn’t do this thing any favors. 

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