
The director of this film is Roland Emmerich. What do you expect? It was this guy who directed "The Day After Tomorrow" and "10,000 B.C.". Of course, you expect sets with grandeur and CG with massively shocking visualisation. Right? Exactly! This is also why I feel the scenes in the film a kind of deja-vu. Sea level is raised to submerge a monastery on the top of a mountain? I must have seen it somewhere. Has Mr Emmerich recycled what he filmed before? Perhaps.
Now, the story. The story is rather too long. Some plots are redundant. Some plots do not have the necessary depth. When compared to "The Day After Tomorrow", this film is rather too many sidetracks. I have recognised one thing which has become quite common in recent Hollywood productions. There are gags of Hong Kong style in the film. Is this good or bad? In a Hong Kong movie, this may be good because the movie can completely be a comedy. But for a Hollywood sci-fi supposed-to-be international blockbuster, the gags can be disastrously awkward. Fortunately, I still have to say that filming of this movie is good. For certain scenes, there is a feeling that they are filmed by handheld digital camera. The effect is surprisingly good.
How about the actors? Well, let us concentrate on the sci-fi. This does not mean that they are not good actors. But you do not expect much on the actors in a sci-fi film. For ordinary layman like me, I just want to have fun, sensory ones, after a day of hard work. For this, the film is still great.
PS: China is really a world factory provided that the lack of money is not an issue.