I watched Moon Warriors around the same time as The Diary of a Big Man, so in theory they should have been written about together.
The problem is that this one is so weak that I kept losing the will to revisit it properly. A few days ago, while looking for something else, I happened to come across an HD version, and that finally pushed me back into it.
When I saw it as a kid, I only thought it was dull. There was no easy way then to know what had gone on behind the scenes. Looking it up now, the production story turns out to be far more entertaining than the film itself. With that many people steering the boat, it would have been a miracle if it had come out coherent.
The film was financed by Andy Lau’s own company, Teamwork Motion Pictures, with a reported budget of HK$60 million. Sammo Hung was brought in to direct, while Ching Siu-tung and Corey Yuen handled the action direction. The action team was huge, with Chin Ka-lok and Collin Chou among the names involved. So yes, there are plenty of large-scale action scenes.
The trouble is that none of the four main actors are action stars, and they do not have the kind of dance or body-control training that can make stylized martial-arts movement look elegant. Lau’s movements in particular often look awkward rather than heroic.
On top of the action people, Lau also hired two “literary” directors, so naturally the story had to be made weightier as well. The basic plot is simple enough: two princes slaughter each other over the throne, and the protagonist belongs to the side represented by Kenny Bee’s character, the supposed righteous faction. But because the film also wants to sound profound, it keeps inserting dialogue suggesting that both camps are really the same kind of rotten. Mixed into all the action, this makes the tone feel especially twisted and uncomfortable.
And if it were only the dialogue, fine. But for the sake of a few lines that strain to be deep, the film apparently needed a whole field of wildflowers. Since Hong Kong supposedly could not provide the right real location, they spent a lot of money planting one from scratch.
Maggie Cheung was at the absolute peak of her beauty then; there was simply no bad angle for her. The story goes that she was so busy at the time that she could only give the production two days. Sammo Hung and Ching Siu-tung rewrote the script and reworked the storyboards overnight, then used those two days to shoot a pile of close-ups and posed shots of Cheung in different costumes. The later wide shots and action scenes are all doubles.
There is a fight in an ancient tomb between Cheung and Anita Mui. With the current HD source, it is painfully obvious that the figures flying around are two large men wearing wigs. Perhaps because Cheung personally shot so little footage, she is not billed as a leading actress in the opening credits, but as a special appearance.
This also ended up being the final collaboration between Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung.
Anita Mui, meanwhile, really got the short end of the stick. First she was put into a white-clad female-ghost look that felt more like something meant for Joey Wong, and then she was given a hairstyle and makeup that did her no favors at all. When I was little, I did not really know Mui yet. I just remember thinking: why is this woman so unattractive, and how is she supposed to be on Maggie Cheung’s level?
Kenny Bee is not memorable either. He comes across like a middle-aged bureaucrat dropped into a costume film. Wang Hsiao, who specialized in villain roles, at least has a bit of swaggering arrogance.
But even the villain is written like an idiot. He has already become emperor, yet he is still sneaking around at night posing with a bow and using the bowstring to strangle a subordinate’s head for fun. Why is he not staying properly in the palace? What exactly is wrong with his brain?
That night scene does have excellent music. If the high budget partly went to hiring big names, then among those names the best value was definitely James Wong as music director. Sally Yeh’s old-style theme song is gorgeous. At the beginning, during the bamboo forest sequence, Andy Lau sings the insert song “The Freest Are You and I,” which is bright, breezy, and incredibly dashing. Strangely, it does not seem to have been included on any of Lau’s albums. Did he think the song was unlucky?
Why unlucky? Because the film cost HK$60 million, flopped badly at the box office, and did not sell well overseas either. Lau reportedly lost a fortune, Teamwork Motion Pictures collapsed, and he then entered that long stretch of taking on bad films to pay off debts.
In fact, this was the film that first made me realize just how professional and hardworking Andy Lau could be. The biggest star here is not actually Lau, but an orca named Hoi Wai, the prized attraction of Hong Kong’s Ocean Park at the time. In the film, the orca steals the spotlight from every human lead. It was a novelty. Mention Moon Warriors and many people may draw a blank, but say “that costume movie where Andy Lau acted with a whale or dolphin,” and quite a few people will suddenly remember it.
The video version I watched back then included behind-the-scenes footage, and it was clear that all the scenes of Lau interacting with the orca were performed by Lau himself. Facing a massive animal weighing several tons and full of fine teeth, he had to practically become a trainer. That kind of nerve is honestly impressive.
The crew also built a full imperial tomb set so the orca could be worked into the plot. It had waterfalls and pools inside. Supposedly that set alone cost HK$20 million.
Never mind the question of whose tomb would contain a waterfall. Just look at the tomb inscriptions and design choices and there is already too much to say. It could probably fool only the standard-definition screening rooms and exam-cramming teenagers of the 1990s.
As for the plot, there is barely a plot to speak of. It is basically clang-clang fighting plus a melodramatic four-way romance.
The image that stayed in my memory: the protagonist’s entire team has been wiped out, the main villain is busy spraying nonsense and planting his own death flag, and then the whale smacks him in the face with its tail.
