Two years ago it was announced that Bond girl Olga Kurylenko would star, along with no one else you’ve heard of, in a $100 million-budgeted, 3D Chinese ripoff of Avatar (the largest Chinese 3D production ever), called Empires of the Deep, whose synopsis goes as follows:
The fantasy adventure, set in ancient Greece, tells about a young man’s adventure in the undersea mermaid kingdom in order to save his father, while encountering ferocious sea monsters and gets involved in large-scale battles in the seabed between mermaids, monsters and demons. Kurylenko plays the Queen of the Mermaid Empire and stars opposite lead actor Steve Polites and Chinese actress Yanfei Shi.
Not since a giant Indian robot snake slithered around eating cars have I been so embonered by a synopsis for a foreign B-movie. They finally released a trailer, which you can watch below, and I’m here to tell you that it looks EVERY BIT the massively bloated Chinese mermaid adventure we were promised – AND MORE! It looks like if you mixed Avatar with Clash of the Titans, drowned the baby, and then reassembled it in a Chinese sweatshop.
Or in other words, incredible.
“What is this place?”
“A myth, my friend. The legends of the ages are true.”
There’s a lot to love in this, but I think my favorite shot was of the two clans of mermaid-people assembled with their giant fish, who run at each other for a climactic battle, Gangs of New York-style. Wasn’t there a Metalacolypse song about this?
UNDERWATER MERMAID EXPLOSION! Easily my favorite indie band of the last 10 years.
STOP IT, WILL FORTE! YOU’RE KILLING AQUAMAN!
Yes, I will see this film.
[Twitch via ThePlaylist]