Inside “Heroes of the Golden Mask” there’s a great film desperate to bust out. It has a cool concept, some solid animation, and a neat mythology behind it. It’s just once you get down to the nit and grit of the narrative and some lingering plot holes, it never rises above being just average. It’s definitely a direct to video kind of animated movie better suited for basic cable, despite its best efforts. That’s not for lack of trying, though. Director Sean Patrick O’Reilly has a large career in producing budget animation. He and Arcana Studios have helped engineer titles such as “The Steam Engines of Oz,” and the mildly amusing “Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom.”
Inspired by the ancient bronze masks of Sanxingdui discovered on the archaeological site of Guanghan in the Sichuan Province in the late ‘80s, “Heroes of the Golden Mask” centers on Charlie, a wise-cracking, homeless, American orphan who is magically transported to the ancient Chinese kingdom of Sanxingdui, where a colorful team of superheroes need his help to defend the city from a brutal conqueror. Charlie joins the heroes, and secretly schemes to steal the priceless golden masks that grant them their powers.
With “Heroes of the Golden Mask,” O’Reilly draws inspiration from real life events and a series of young adult novels. “Heroes of the Golden Mask” takes a lot of its story elements from the likes of “Aladdin,” “Seven Samurai,” and even “The Wizard of Oz.” The entirety of the set up for the heroes’ tale and how Charlie is introduced is so awkwardly staged at times that it tends to be distracting. The dialogue can be stilted, and there isn’t a ton of exposition about Charlie’s life. He’s an orphan, he’s homeless, and he has ties to a local mobster that remain unexplained until the very end of the movie. The late, great Christopher Plummer voices said gangster. Once the events are set in to motion, Charlie is pretty blindly recruited to help the group in their quest.
This arouses a ton of questions that the movie never bothers to explore. How did King Yufu know they’d have to travel to present day America to find a new warrior of the mask? Why not implement one of the villagers? Or perhaps why not recruit a warrior from another village? Why is Charlie so special? If the warriors have their own list of skills and have powers, why do they need the masks? I mean Aesop is an over powered Gillman, so what’s the point of the mask? It’s demonstrated that villain Kunyi uses stealth to sneak in to Sanxingdui to get the Jade Blade, so why did he need an army to invade the first few times? Why not sneak in, in the first place? Does Kunyi want the Jade Blade, the masks or all of them?
If the masks choose their user, what would Kunyi do with them? For all intents and purposes the animation is eye catching, and the action is engaging. I also liked the performances from Patton Oswalt and Ron Perlman. It’s definitely not a masterpiece, but like Arcana’s other titles, “Heroes of the Golden Mask” allows for okay filler for fantasy buffs.
Premiering on Digital platforms June 9th from Gravitas Ventures.