Watched it recently and was kind of underwhelmed, in general.

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

Ok, good stuff: the acting is excellent - even new characters who we never met in The Untamed. Now that we know JGY is evil, it's fun to watch him getting away with so much.

Ji Li does an amazing job as Nie Huai Sang, showing how this naive kid turned into a master manipulator.

Everyone is excellent in their parts, even the kids portraying young Huaisang and young Mingjue - that's not the problem with the movie. The problem is the sub-Indiana Jones bit in the middle, which really drags, culminating in the fight between the two blade spirits, which is terrible, I'm sorry.

I wanted to see more character stuff, instead I get the bulk in an underground burial chamber straight out of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which drags on forever until you realise, with horror, that most of the movie is going to be this.

Even worse, Huaisang finds out about JGY's villainy by literally having it spelled out to him by his brother's ghost.

I wanted to find out about what happened between Mingjue's death and WWX coming back - the last scene could have been Huaisang heading off for Mo Village, with a kind of "I'm visiting an old friend," punchline.

Just like with The Living Dead, the problem is that the producers etc want to do the same thing they did in The Untamed, but in one movie. Except in CQL they had 20+ hours to have character stuff; planning stuff; the occasional CGI monster battle, and so on. They didn't have the same kind of running time for Fatal Journey.

I enjoyed watching it, but the only parts I'm interested in rewatching are the ones featuring actual humans, rather than CGI creations. Also, it was super annoying that the last AMAZING shot of the trailer (Huaisang bowing to JGY ), the one which made me watch it, was also the last shot of the movie.

Also whoever decided (both in this and The Living Dead) that using the weaponized guqin meant releasing a million CGI dots into the atmosphere: you chose . . . poorly.