Having finally seen Shim Hyung-rae’s D-War — otherwise known as Dragon Wars in the West — and having discovered it to be an entertaining giant monster lark, albeit flawed by some dodgy acting and a poorly structured script, I now find myself rather bemused to learn that the Korean director’s current production schedule includes not only the inevitable D-Wars 2 but something called Fish War.
Though the project has been pushed back to make way for the Dragon Wars juggernaut in the light of the first film’s spectacular box-office success, Fish War is apparently still on the go and promises to be … odd.
Consider this synopsis, issued by Shim’s Younggu Art Entertainment company (hence the awkward English):
In the deep, bottomless sea … There are undersea cities where mutated fishes with highly developed intellectual power live together peacefully. But, they got into rage and swore revenge against human beings who continue to catch fishes indiscriminately.
One of those days, mysterious events started happening, such as pleasure boats at sea sunk and submarines exploded in the sea. Finally, fishes declared a war against human beings on land and came out on the ground to conquer the human beings with highly advanced weapons and military strength, several times more developed than those of human beings. Human beings was defeated instantly by fishes equipped with bombers shaped like a stingray, battle tanks like an octopus, and special forces like a seahorse, and finally put the world under the control of fishes, not of human beings anymore. At court, Dr. Octopus sentenced human beings who habitually tormented fishes. At a sushi restaurant, a catfish, puffing cigars, waited for dishes made of human beings. And fishes caught and refridgerated human beings as exactly human beings did to fishes and completely controlled the whole world.
In Japan, meanwhile, Yamamoto family, the well known sushi master in business for 3 generations, became an most infamous enemy of fishes.
Hmmm. Interesting picture on the poster though; it suggests to me the possibility of a weird sort of retro, steam-punkish feel to the film.
- Source: SciFi Japan via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery
I’ve just watched D-War. Nice special effects and a good giant monster, but the script was a shocker (and the acting not much better).
I enjoyed it, though you’re right about the script and at least some of the acting. The main actors were serviceable, but never really give their characters any spark and come over as rather flat. That’s probably due to a combination of factors, script being a major one. For me the main problem was that all the unengaging (because lacking emotional context) exposition (sometimes multilayered) at the beginning simply serves to remove all involvement. The story would have been better served if we directly followed the female lead as she becomes — inexplicably — the target of all this stuff and has to (a) cope and (b) find out what’s going on. Then it becomes a mystery to be solved as we go. As an audience we’re more involved and it also becomes easier for the actor to emotionally engage us. Still, I quite enjoyed the film anyway — on a flawed level.