Clash of Empires: The Battle for Asia

2011 "To save a nation he will kill a god"
3.8| 1h49m| en| More Info
Released: 10 March 2011 Released
Producted By:
Country: Malaysia
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.krustudios.com/Merong_Mahawangsa
Synopsis

Based loosely on the 16th century historical document entitled ‘The Malay Annals’, ’The Chronicles of Merong Mahawangsa’ is an action-packed epic feature film, with mythical characters, magical moments and dazzling visual-effects sequences. Merong Mahawangsa was a descendant of Alexander the Great, a renowned naval captain and traveler who came to Asia several hundred years ago.

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Reviews

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment
Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece
Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
raoul_hostettler Honestly I wasted my 109 mins of my life watching this movie. It's worse then a kindergarten play, the kids would have done a better job in acting then they did. Bad graphics on all the themes. I don't know how someone could created such a bad movie. It's Amateur movie a shame for the money they wasted.I don't understand what other people like about the movie and I usually have an open mind for different types of movies but this was certainly one of the worse movies I ever seen.Do not waste your time on this movie 1 star is even overrated in my opinion but if you do not believe me see for yourself.
laapsaap You guys cant be defending this, its ambitious.. but this movie is quite bad.The broken English really make the movie less enjoyable, just make them even look more like amateur actors.Quite a lot of scenes and dialogs were very corny, hard to endure. I walked away from this movie.. leaving in the background.I can see they tried very hard to make this movie work, if they made it less corny. And if they just remove most of the English dialogs, it would be more enjoyable.Was impressed that in a few scenes they actually did a very good job compared to the rest, but too bad most of it, wasn't.
DICK STEEL Other than the horror and comedy films that get churned out on a regular basis by Malaysia's mainstream film industry (who is going into 3D too by the way), KRU Studios showed that it had ambitious plans to make a big budgeted action spectacle that have some legs to travel the world, crafting a tale from centuries past loosely based on The Malay Chronicles involving a melting pot of Roman soldiers, Chinese warriors of the Han Dynasty, and natives of the land of Langkasuka in a joint battle against pirates of the maurading Geruda tribe. It's noisy, it's epic looking, and it features characters and a cast that would make the United Nations proud, speaking in English, Bahasa and Mandarin as well to highlight its multi-culturalism.The story is told in simple terms, with a Roman Prince Marcus Carprenius (Gavin Stenhouse) set to wed the Chinese Princess Meng Li Hua (Jing Lusi) in a deal to seal two separate empires into an alliance. The wedding is to take place at the mid point between the east-west sea routes of the empires, which would be where modern day Peninsular Malaysia is but of course. However, the young royals fail to see the merits of any loveless, arranged marriage, before finally casting their eye on each other and discovering they share similar long term ideals. But the Geruda tribe is to gatecrash the wedding day with plans of their own for riches by capturing and holding the Princess hostage, and it's up to our heroes to train, form an armada of brave men to take the enemy down within two moons, or risk having the Princess violated then killed.While it's a film that features an ensemble cast of heroic characters such as the Chinese Admiral Liu Yun (Craig Robert Fong) and the Roman Prince Marcus, the main protagonist is that of Merong Mahawangsa (Stephen Rahman-Hughes), whom you can picture as a Captain Jack Sparrow equivalent, minus the comedic banter and attitude, with stronger physique and better fighting skills to boot. A wandering soul himself, his amorous exploits in various lands allowed an opportunity to meet Prince Marcus and his entourage in Goa, where the Prince saves his life from the mob and having Merong promising to take him back to his homeland in Langkasuka where the wedding will be, being late meaning an insult shown to the Chinese emperor. And it becomes a prophecy (as always) fulfilled when Merong makes land, being the chosen one to unite and lead his people to battle against their joint enemy, falling in love in the process and with an added objective to restore the honours of loved ones.This is an action adventure, so what mattered are the big fight sequences, filled with plenty of swords and sorcery, CG blood spewing all over the place, and what I thought to be admirable fight choreography to rival some of the best available out there, despite having some cringe- inducing acting from faceless extras who had to be various goons to fall in battle. The story doesn't waste time in presenting Merong Mahawangsa as a battle-weary individual, and launches into huge beachfront assaults that got repeated again as the finale battle, albeit on a different side with slightly different players. One thing's for sure though, that Malaysia has got the know how and capability to stage rather convincingly fights that combine choreography and CG (albeit some aspects of it requiring some polish), no longer having to play catch up with the more established film industries.What I would have enjoyed a lot more would be stronger opponents, who possess some degree of sorcery to control the weather, though nothing else which blunted their supposedly mean and ruthless reputation of continuous victory. With bomohs and warlocks, it could have been more of a fantastical action flick with magical amulets, a mean looking kris and an Archimedes inspired device that looked a little bit puny due to a lack of budget. I do not have issues with the many languages used in the film since the country of origin of the film is multi-cultural, at least characters speak to each other in the same set of language rather than a mishmash of sorts, although you do have to stretch that believability a little in having almost all the characters in the film educated in more than one tongue for narrative convenience.It may not be a classic, but it sure is quite a fun ride from the film industry of a neighbour that I'm recommending as worthy of your time during the weekend even. Now why couldn't we make a film as fun, loud and brash as this one here?
solidsnakeckw A Malaysian action film based on real history about Langkasuka, sounds great. It's been a while now since the last Malaysian high budget movie (Puteri Gunung Ledang) came out, and to my surprise, this movie was executed really well. The fighting was very intense and the movement is comparable to some Thailand martial art movie. There are also some funny moment between the Chinese Admiral, Marcus and Merong. Of everything the movie had to offer, the music is the best, as it was really good and did a lot to make the already intense scene much more impressive. The CGI in this movie is also very good, but for some reason had a huge quality drop in last part when depicting Sultan Mudzaffar Shah walking towards the harbour.Also, the story was a bit rush. For example, they didn't explain about the relationship between Embok and Merong, then all of the sudden, the narrator (the Sultan) came out and said that Embok was pregnant with Merong's baby. IMHO, this should be make into a trilogy to explain the full story thoroughly.And what is wrong with speaking proper English? Why is there so many broken English in this movie? You see, games like God of War depicted ancient Greece, but with characters speaking proper English, and I didn't see any problem with it, so I really don't understand why should the actor use broken English instead of proper English.At last, I give this movie a 7 out of 10, because the production value was high and some of the scene is really good, but sadly it also has some serious flaw that made the movie incomplete.

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