Izzu162

After so long, I decided to rewatch this movie again as much as I bemoan the absence of Jet Li as the titular Wong Feihung in this movie and the one after. But to be fair, though, I don't really blame Jet Li regarding his old issue with Tsui Hark... especially considering that he often gets hurt a lot during the earlier filming of the first three movies. So his concerns about how much he should be paid for his appearance did have some grounds, since Jet do try to give his best performance in every work he does, but all the many retakes can be taxing.

This movie follows not too long after the previous one, with the last Lion King competition concluded. And we even got a brief montage of the lion battle from the last movie with clever edits that showed Jet Li's scenes without really showing his face.

So, despite having returned the golden medal after winning the competition, another officer had gone to visit Poh Chi Lam to give back the medal to Feihung... as well as honouring his victory in the competition with a Dragon dance, which was almost ruined by Leung Foon, who thought the incoming dragon was yet another challenger. The new governor, Guan Shing Tao, soon informed Feihung that there would be yet another Lion King competition... this time against foreign teams. Meanwhile, there's another anti-foreigner group called the Red Lantern that started to kill any foreigner they encountered,

At first glance, this movie was almost exactly a repeat of the third movie, with the opponents for the competition coming from the eight-nation alliance, instead of the Taiping gangsters, with the bonus side story about the Red Lantern group... which was like the female version of the Red Lotus group from the second movie. Well, technically, the overall plot was pretty okay... once I set aside my personal bias about Jet Li. That said though, I really don't get the reasoning for the side romance with the 14th Aunt to be included. And I really can't get around the whole bit about Vincent Zhou's Feihung being somewhat bedazzled towards not only the 14th Aunt but also Lady Miao from the Red Lantern. Cos it made it appear as if this Feihung was slightly more of a womaniser (and easily distracted by pretty women) compared to Jet Li's Feihung. Aside from this bit... I don't really have that much of an issue with Vincent Zhou. And ugh, seeing 14th Aunt throwing herself towards Feihung at every possible chance can get annoying. Like yes, Siu Kwan told her sister to watch over Feihung for her while she's away... but I don't think she meant it like ... very close. And then there's also Lady Miao being drawn to Feihung... and this Feihung not really doing anything to discourage the affection felt somewhat out of character. And I don't get why 14th Aunt needs to be an almost exact clone of Siu Kwan? Why? I'm also voicing the same exact concern as that one student asking if their master was trying to hog all the sisters. Like it's fine if these two girls were shown to have a one-sided affection for Feihung, but to turn it like he also felt the pull made him feel out of character. Especially since in the first 3 movies, it took Jet Li's Wong Feihung a very long time to even admit that he liked Siu Kwan.

There were also quite a number of new villains in this movie, this time with the Germans as well as a few anti-Qing people... which is fine, I guess. Though I wished there were some mention of what happened to those Russians last time that tried to kill Eunuch Li, as well as the Taiping group. That said, since most of the other casts were more or less the same... at least I had other reasons to continue watching this movie. I mean, having Hung Yanyan still around as Ah Chat made me feel like there's still a trace of Jet Li's presence remaining, so I'm a bit okay about that.