Rating: C-
Dir: Xu Shixing
Star: Li Ning, Gu Jing, Zhang Meng, You Zheng Xuan
I’m going to start with a demerit for incorrect use of the apostrophe here. “Monster’s Battlefield” means a battlefield belonging to one monster. Which would not be much of a battlefield, would it? If there are multiple monsters – and I certainly hope it’s the case, based on the poster – then the title needs to be Monsters’ Battlefield. Unfortunately, this sloppy approach to punctuation extends to the rest of the movie. The hero is Qin Yang (Li), a soldier who lost his fiancee Ye Qin (Zhang) to a monster, following her heroic sacrifice during an attempt to rescue miners. Subsequently, he went into a bit of an alcoholic funk, over the next decade.
He’s then dragged out of the bottle for a mission to relocate a radioactive meteorite, for Dr. Gu Ping (You). However, the scientist intends to use this in his research to mutate and combine DNA. The resulting Chinese dragon-like creature naturally escapes, with Qin and good scientist Xu Tong (Gu) in pursuit. This turns out to be convenient, because the mutant bat-like thing responsible for the death of Ye, also shows up again. The dragon is actually Godzilla-like, in that it’s a friend to humanity. Or, at least an enemy to humanity’s enemy. Indeed, the film dares to drop the G-word at one point. This is a great way for Tiger Pictures to get themselves a cease and desist letter from Toho’s lawyers.
So, it becomes a case of “Let them fight!”, with an additional sprinkling of further heroic sacrifice. The execution to reach this is almost startling in its unevenness. The makers have got access to some good underground locations, and these scenes are not bad. The problem is on the monsters’ side – please note the placement of the apostrophe – especially the bat-thing. This never looks convincing, especially when it has to interact with (by which I mean “eat”) any of the human cast. It’s understandable that the film opts to shuffle it off to one side for a lot of the time. When it does get to take on the dragon, the results there are equally unimpressive, not least because the movie focuses on the ground-based human conflict.
It is interesting to see an entry which is quite clearly influenced by the Godzilla franchise. You have two independent monsters, one more of a threat to mankind. Indeed, the dragon is depicted very sympathetically, and a scene where Yang and Tong basically pull a thorn out of its paw. Sadly, it doesn’t quite go full Androcles down the stretch. But in another nod to Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Yang feeds the dragon the radioactive meteorite at the end, allowing it to rejuvenate and resume the fight. There’s also an almost Monarch-like scene at the end, Tong getting a call from an oil rig under attack. The intentions here are good. Shame it offers little in the end product to merit interest in a franchise.
This review is part of our feature, When Chinese Animals Attack.