First of all, it is a bit annoying how many Asian films get English titles that are widely different from the movie's actual name. In this case, "The Legend Of The Black Scorpion"'s real title is "The Banquet" ("Ye Yan" in Mandarin Chinese) and although it does take over an hour and a half to get to the actual event the title refers to, it's a little misleading. Scorpions do play a role as a motif but the interjection of "legend" erroneously suggests there's more to it than that. The word "legend" is thrown around too liberally with English titles for Asian films in general. I guess the distributors felt "The Banquet" was too plain of a name and wasn't flashy enough for American audiences. This insults both the American viewer, who if they're watching this is probably at least a casual fan of Chinese/Hong Kong cinema already, and the movie itself.
But to get back to the film, this movie is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet set during the tumultuous end of the Tang Dynasty in the 10th Century. You have the king who murders his brother in Emperor Lin (played by Ge You), his dead brother's wife who he takes as his own in Empress Wan (played by Zhang Ziyi) and the conflicted son of the murdered king in Crown Prince Wu Luan (played by Daniel Wu). There's even the play to "catch the conscience of the king" at one point.
The movie opens up with a musical drama performance in a round theater made of bamboo nestled in a bamboo forest. It's a beautiful visual like you'd expect from a quality modern Wuxia film. All the players are wearing spotless white robes and expressionless white masks. The song is a haunting one and the marionette-like dance is a bit unsettling, but in a visually interesting way. White is a very symbolic color in many Asian cultures. It can mean death but it can also mean purity. In this case, it seems to mean a little bit of both. Distraught over his lover Wan marrying his father, Wu Luan has fled to this place to study song and dance, all but abandoning his royal life. So in this sense, the white could represent the death of his former self and the purity of his studies. This movie is heavy on symbolism in general. Even the characters talk about what certain colors, images, etc. mean. The death part shows up again when imperial guards clad in black armor storm the theater, on orders from the new Emperor Lin, to assassinate the Crown Prince. He hides while his fellow actors perish. This is one of the better action sequences visually thanks to the sloping tiers of the bamboo theater and the stark color contrasts.
What follows is unfortunately often a jumbled give and take that trips over it's own shoes. It's often unclear what the motivation of the characters is. Wu Luan returns to the imperial palace, portrayed with fantastic set pieces of gold, red and black, and in what is supposed to be a harmless sparring demonstration with wooden swords, the Crown Prince is once again nearly murdered on his uncle's orders. The problem here is that all these machinations are too direct and it's not believable that there wouldn't be immediate consequences, even if it involves a royal family where people look the other way. Empress Wan seems to go back and forth over favoring her new husband, her former husband, her former lover or her own selfish desires for power. It is established that she wears many metaphorical masks and costumes to suit her needs of the moment but instead of being an interesting, complex character, this just adds more confusion. You don't know who Empress Wan is. However, Zhang Ziyi makes the most of what she's given and provides the best acting the film has to offer. She plays jealous, lonely, angry, calculated, cruel, sad and seductive all well. Most of the other characters are played far too straight to be well-rounded though Ge You does do a pretty good job of playing a man who goes through the motions of being emperor but is truthfully unsure of his position.
Everything comes to a head at a banquet that the emperor has for all the courtiers. He once again thinks his nephew dead after making him "ambassador" to a neighboring kingdom with no intention of having him complete the journey there alive. But Wu Luan shows up in disguise as part of a similar song and dance routine to the opening scene. The empress plans to poison the emperor at the banquet with a concoction of arsenic and black scorpion venom mixed into wine. Her plans don't turn out like she hopes and the film climaxes in the misery well known to Shakespeare tragedies. The final scene of the film is quite unexpected though, a fatality where the source of the killing is highly ambiguous.
There is a lot less fighting action in this movie than in many other Wuxia films. Most of the scenes that do have this are very dance-like, which does nicely reflect Crown Prince Wu Luan's hobby. Modern Wuxia movies do a wonderful job of bringing out the beauty in martial arts but when too much emphasis is put on style, like in this movie, it loses believability as fighting in the context of the story. Also, if the majority of the movie flowed better and the interplay between actors was less awkward than the lack of extensive fighting scenes wouldn't be missed.
In some ways, "Hamlet" is simpler than the story told in "The Legend Of The Black Scorpion." There are some characters in this movie that clutter the plot up and make the movie a tad overlong. While this movie certainly has the colorful and highly detailed depiction of imperial China that's expected of these types of films , the rigid pacing and the too direct dialogue and symbolism give the movie much more of a Western feel. The liquidity, vastness and subtlety that characterises the best Chinese Wuxia films is all but missing.
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