{"id":40006,"date":"2023-06-08T03:57:16","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T07:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=40006"},"modified":"2023-06-08T03:57:16","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T07:57:16","slug":"heroes-of-the-golden-mask-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/08\/heroes-of-the-golden-mask-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroes of the Golden Mask (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Inside \u201cHeroes of the Golden Mask\u201d there\u2019s a great film desperate to bust out. It has a cool concept, some solid animation, and a neat mythology behind it. It\u2019s 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\u2019s definitely a direct to video kind of animated movie better suited for basic cable, despite its best efforts. That\u2019s not for lack of trying, though. Director Sean Patrick O\u2019Reilly has a large career in producing budget animation. He and Arcana Studios have helped engineer titles such as \u201cThe Steam Engines of Oz,\u201d and the mildly amusing \u201cHoward Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Inspired by the ancient bronze masks of Sanxingdui discovered on the archaeological site of Guanghan in the Sichuan Province in the late \u201880s, \u201cHeroes of the Golden Mask\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

With \u201cHeroes of the Golden Mask,\u201d O\u2019Reilly draws inspiration from real life events and a series of young adult novels. \u201cHeroes of the Golden Mask\u201d takes a lot of its story elements from the likes of \u201cAladdin,\u201d \u201cSeven Samurai,\u201d and even \u201cThe Wizard of Oz.\u201d The entirety of the set up for the heroes\u2019 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\u2019t a ton of exposition about Charlie\u2019s life. He\u2019s an orphan, he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

This arouses a ton of questions that the movie never bothers to explore. How did King Yufu know they\u2019d 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\u2019s the point of the mask? It\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s definitely not a masterpiece, but like Arcana\u2019s other titles, \u201cHeroes of the Golden Mask\u201d allows for okay filler for fantasy buffs.<\/p>\n

Premiering on Digital platforms June 9th from Gravitas Ventures.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inside \u201cHeroes of the Golden Mask\u201d there\u2019s a great film desperate to bust out. It has a cool concept, some solid animation, and a neat mythology behind it. It\u2019s 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\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,64,71,99,340,349,580,622,631],"class_list":["post-40006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-animation","tag-family","tag-fantasy","tag-kids","tag-magic","tag-martial-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40008,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40006\/revisions\/40008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}