Too many fans seem to be blown away

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I had this movie for a while in my "to watch list" , got it from a VIDEO STORE selling a while ago, i think 2 years... Yeah, been a long time. I finally decided to watch it today. I had saw a trailer back in the day and tough it looked cool, thus why i purchased it.So let me start this review positively. The CGI is actually pretty good. I mean it does look like a video game in some point but in a way that the movie is constant and you never have this impression that it is out of place. Obviously if you enjoy the style or not, this is your own point of view, but i personally did enjoy it and i am not a fan of wired fu to say the least.That being said, sadly the movie fail on almost every other aspect for me. Sure the music was alright but all the rest, characters, story, all movie long i was wondering what was going on. The movie start very abrupt and show us our main heroes all chain and ready to be executed. But by some mean they manage to escape, think there stronger than the bad guy, but get there a** kicked. So they then need to find a way to get stronger in order to defeat the bad guy. That part is easy to understand but all the rest surrounding this is really hard to understand. I get that this is based on a comic book, and no i never read it, and i never saw the first movie either. Actually you can blame me on jumping on the sequel and then complaining about the story or you can blame the North American distributor for naming the movie The Storm Warriors instead of The Storm Riders 2. Yeah i figured out i was watching a sequel later when i checked IMDb. So yeah i did had a hard time connecting to those characters and the lore of the movie, and especially that whole plot point which end up being a major one about a stupid dragon spine that for some reason is super important for china to stand together. Spoiler ... the bone actually get split in half and never is mentioned again... wow, what an important plot point.I really had a hard time figuring who is who, maybe learning more about the lore would had help me, again if i knew before watching the movie, but so much character are there and you don't know too much about them. For example that Lord Wicked guy, he is supposed to be the strongest of them all, yet he cut his arms because he was evil? That plot point almost made no sense what so ever. And "Nameless" which is supposed to be such a legend, it seem the movie kinda tell us midway that he was poisoned and for that he does not have all his strength so thats why he can't defeat the bad guy. I just feel there is just too much characters with little development to really care about them. In a magic word like this, you want to know who is who and why he is so...As for the fights... well beside the special effects which i said where pretty good, there is not much fight choreography for the martial arts aficionado, a little here and there but its almost purely a special effect CGI fest. Honestly this movie somewhat remind me of Dragon Tiger Gate done wrong. That movie had a similar premise as young pupils training to beat an almost unbeatable enemy in a martial art set up that also involved super powers. The difference tough was you cared for the characters, the special powers added to the movie but there is still plenty of great martial arts. Obviously Donnie Yen... hard to wrong. But anyway that movie was much more entertaining than that Storm Warriors movie.This is the kind of movie i feel i will forget in T-minus 1 hour... yup already forgot.

Stupefyingly awful comic adaption cum remake cum sequel to earlier version is the low point of everyone concerned. This is a bad movie that would have been a highlight of Mystery Science Theater 3000.The story of Lord Godless' attempts to take over over China only to be challenged by characters named Wind, Cloud and Nameless, among others is never fully explained. Events start in the middle and just go. Yes the fights look great but with out a sense of character and over all plot it gets meaningless instantly.What were they thinking? I won't even get into the dialog which is full of lines so silly you may end up doubled over with laughter.(okay its an over the top comic they are adapting but what if we don't know or like the comic?)I will take the cast to task since no one, not even the great Simon Yam, turns in anything remotely like a performance Visually this is one of the most impressive films I've seen this year (hence the three rating) but thats all this film has is visuals. There is nothing else.If you must see it get some friends, something to drink and eat, and have go at it in a party atmosphere.Really bad.

Ouch.That pretty sums up how i felt when i watched it. I really believed that this movie had a chance at doing justice to the comic series. I remember that the 1st one was not as bad as part 2. I am not a fan of the comics but part 1 was able to set the story decently for me to enjoy it. Yet part 2, so many years on with improvements in graphics and effects, still failed at the most critical element ... the story telling.I was very lost at several points of the story and fought hard not to jeer at the many parts that mimics other movies. Watched "300"? If you did and liked it, you'll see how this movie "plays tribute" to it. I honestly believe there would be better ways to use those effects into their story telling and fight scenes.The plot is really simple. You have Lord godless who wants to dominate the whole of China, and it's up to our 2 heroes, Wind and Cloud to team up and defeat him. The 2 men each train differently and that difference ended up giving them more problems than godless himself! That's it!! But the movie does showcase some decent CG that i must admit surpassed my expectations in some ways. It does go to show that Asia (not including Japan)'s CG standards have started to be taken seriously. I was quite impressed by the effects used during the duel between Nameless and Cloud. We may have seen better in other movies but that was good enough and well used to tell the power of the fight. Music and sound wise, the sound effects are pretty decent, my ears did hurt abit at certain parts of the movie, especially when there are sword blades clashing and coming into play.If you still want to bother with the movie, i'll suggest you rent it. Skip the big screen, this movie in many ways is not worth revisiting again after one session with it. And add to that, i'm pretty sure we'll be looking at a 3rd part soon. And yes, it ends with a cliffhanger of sorts. Let's hope they learn from this mistake of a movie and get back to part 1's standard of story telling with part 2 good use of CG effects!

I'm "storm Ridders" comic fans ever since the 1 episode, and i'm very disappointed how Directors Pang brothers has turn this "storm rider" into a completely rubbish !! This movie should be made into a 2 minutes effect show-reel instead of a full feature film !! The worst Chinese movie i ever watched for past 10 years !! Completely no story, poor in every aspect of film-making, especially the directing, acting and story !! Very boring, the movie should end right after the opening title, where after master "no name" launched his "million sword". Watsing my time and money !!"Storm rider 1" was far more better than this empty soul "storm rider 2". For non-comic fans, the whole story making no sense, and for comics fans, it was completely a disaster !! The Pang brothers has raped all the comic fans, and all comic the characters !! If there is "Storm Rider 3", please change the directors first !! The Pang brothers don't even know how to tell a simple story !!