Full marks to the marketing team at Magnolia / Magnet. The nailed it with their poster artwork for John Woo's Red Cliff and they've just unleashed an equally impressive trailer for the sprawling epic. Purists will, no doubt, be irked by the fact that they're releasing the single film version of the epic rather than the Asian two-film version but given that Woo was directly involved with creating this version and that those I know who have seen both are all firm in their opinions that the single film version is actually superior - not a surprise given the bloat of the two film version - I've got no problem with it. Head over to Apple to check out the trailer.
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If Magnolia puts out the uncut version I'll buy it. Otherwise, they can get bent.
Sorry but i can't see how such a compact version would be the better one. The other two movies have NO pacing problem whatosever, not a single scene just for filler. Evertything comes together pretty nicely, we get to know the characters pretty well, their motivations and so on. Otherwise we just have two one dimensional factions fighting each other for no real reason.
Eh, the purists are already irked by the changes John Woo made to the original story. Personally, I was annoyed by how he transfered an action done by Guan Yu in the book to Zhou Yu, especially since Guan Yu had a perfectly good reason to do so, while Zhou Yu had NO REASON AT ALL to act like that.
Didn't Woo said he wasn't aiming to be 100% loyal to the books? Not to mention that those 3 Kingdomes purists would never be happy with anything.
Not to mention the books distort history in amusingly blatant ways to begin with.
The films are unquestionably bloated but eh - call me a nerd, I just can't forgive chopping that much out of them. I have no interest in seeing the international cut, much less buying it... too many scenes I simply could not stand to lose.
Being a purist about historical accuracy and being a purist about the presentation of a film (more accurately, two films) are wholly unrelated things. I don't expect a documentary. I only expect the complete piece of fiction.
Wait until the ROTK 2010 drama starts, then complaints about Red Cliff's interpretation of the books will sound like cheerleading. Battle scenes do look pretty despite all the casting chicanery, though.
Can't we get someone who knows history (Zhang Li, Hu Mei, Chen Jialin etc.) to adapt the real deal (Sanguozhi), and make the definitive Three Kingdoms epic...