Our author Schuhmann accidentally watched the wrong movie on Netflix: “Dynasty Warriors” from 2021 slightly ruins his memory of “Total War: Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” one of his favorite games on Steam.
What kind of movie is this?
- Dynasty Warriors is set in ancient China, during the time of the Three Kingdoms – just like far better films, such as “Red Cliff” by John Woo. “Three Kingdoms” is sort of the “Trojan War” of the Chinese: An epic era full of heroes, some of whom are historical and some fictional. The era has been processed in many video game series.
- Dynasty Warriors is from 2021, lasts just under 2 hours and has an IMDB score of 4.8 – a rating that is still quite generous. The movie is poorly dubbed in English on Netflix and feels like an over-the-top mix of historical drama, martial arts and fantasy.
- At its core, it’s a “martial arts” movie, where Chinese gentlemen send 50 people flying through the air and kill them with a single stroke. In the “quieter scenes,” you see tyrants doing tyrannical things while in the background people, who will surely become important later, are rubbing their goatees and planning their revenge.
Seeing what you’ve done countless times in the game once on Netflix
What annoyed me so much? The world of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” is represented in many video games: In Dynasty Warriors, Dynasty Tactics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and, in the Western variant, in Total War: Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Since there are some gems among these games and Chinese strategy games have a special allure, I have spent a lot of time in these universes.
Zombies and heroes in ancient China
Each of the games I have played starts the same way: You have to suppress a “revolt of the common people”: carpenters, woodworkers, fishermen, who have donned yellow turbans and are rebelling against the chaotic government. This is the tutorial in each of these games. In the process, the games hint that the leader of the yellow turbans, a guy named Zhang Jiao, exudes a sort of mythical aura – something Taoist.
Well, in the movie “Dynasty Warriors,” the leader of the Yellow Turbans is a kind of voodoo priest who uses “white ghost magic” to raise his fallen soldiers like zombies.
Then the heroes of the series appear: The mythically revered Liu Bei (Terence Hill), Zhang Fei (Bud Spencer), Guan Yu (some kind of mega superhero) ride in and are introduced with epic music. Each of them can take out at least 50 “normal people” with one hit.
The “main enemy” in the first chapters of Romance of the Three Kingdoms also appears: Dong Zhou. In the film, he is a stocky, older man riding a horse, while 50 zombies cling to him. And he – just because he can – does and says very tyrannical tyrant things. In the first minutes of his screen time, he rides around with 50 yellow zombies at his horse, acts like an ass to his rescuers, intimidates a room full of officials, and somehow makes a young emperor cry. In fact, that part pretty much matches the image I’ve always had of him.
The movie ruined my memory of heroic deeds in a game on Steam
Why did it ruin my game? I have been playing the “Total War” games from Creative Assembly for almost 20 years. It started with Rome, went through the Middle Ages to the fantasy worlds of Warhammer: Generally, you have to plan somewhat reasonably here, making sure your cavalry doesn’t run into spears but hits the opposing archers instead.
However, one game in the series is based on the “Three Kingdoms” and here you control the epic heroes that are also seen in the film and I must admit: I tend to play Total War: Three Kingdoms very sloppily. Because the hero figures there are so incredibly strong that it often suffices to forgo all strategy and just send out that one hero, who single-handedly kills 50 opponents with a single stab of his spear.
I have great heroic memories of how I – due to poor planning – with one hero and a tiny band of soldiers wiped out entire enemy armies by repeatedly retreating the hero and then sending him in for a storm attack against the enemies.
But when I saw on Netflix how totally silly and unrealistic this “medieval Chinese with spear sends 50 enemies flying” looks in moving pictures, I started to rethink things a bit.
Maybe I should put more effort into planning the battles after all.
By the way, after the series Vikings, I got extremely interested in “Crusader Kings 3” – that worked better:
