Henchwomen Fight

Movie Name : Gladiator Underground

Actress Name : Selina Wiesmann

Character Name : Mantis

Year : 2025

The movie basically starts with telling you the premise so you understand what's going on, which is good and bad, the good part is that sometimes I get lost watching Asian movies to keep up with the plot, like I watched recently Blades of the Guardians and I kind of got lost watching the movie, like so many characters, many of them introduced by writing their name on the screen, many of them don't play active role in the movie, the story also have like 5 tribes, it would make sense if it was a TV show so you can have understanding of the realm of the story, but when it comes to movies it's hard to process too much information for a movie that is new to you, also the idea of the character having unfamiliar or easy to remember names make it hard to remember them, so that's the positive..

The negative is that you don't reveal such information later, which can help you explore the story over time which would make you invested, like, what is this place, why it exist, who is behind it, why they do it etc.. By revealing everything early there's no space for that, losing the mysterious nature of what's going on can make you less invested in the movie. For example, let's say you have the hero character, you want the audience to explore the world through them, like, they don't know why they are here, or what is this place, maybe the hero is in debt and had to enrolled in such tournament as the other choice would be their death, so, they explore a new dangerous world, they don't know if they are going to survive or not, they don't know what happen if they won, they don't know who is behind such tournament, and you explore the world with them.

Anyway, let's keep watching..

Damn, the movie starts with awesome fight scene..

We see Brian Le playing Shojin just afterwards, he was fighting and punched one of the audience by mistake LOL, it was so funny..

 We get another cool fight between Max and Wu Yen that ends with "ENOUGH", like it happened once at the start of the movie when a third party stepped in to stop the fight, for it to happen again, it sets the stakes too low, which also would make the audience less invested in any fight between these two characters, in order to make good use of a second fight, one of them had to be beaten or humiliated by the other, which would give the defeated a motive to get fight and defeat the winner in another fight, if it's the hero, it would be like he's overcoming a challenge, a failure and fear, if it's the villain it can be out of pride, ego, and jealousy for example etc..

Finally We first see our gorgeous villainess around 30 minutes mark..

Ok, first of all, I think this movie main audience are MMA sport fans, I don't enjoy watching MMA matches, but I get it's very popular, for me, you have MMA matches, you elevate it then you have WWE, because WWE have theatrical element to it, in the coordination, and even drama and characters, then elevate it and you get movie fights, maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't watch a movie just to watch MMA fight, I would just watch MMA fights without watching a movie..

My other problem is Sifu, it's hard to care about the character, like he didn't even die, so it's hard to understand the motive the two main characters have, so he can't be an element to push the story forward, and his character wasn't even built so we care about him or his injuries have an impact, if you want the moment Shojin raided the place have an impact, you have to build for it, for example you get the story of the two main characters since they were children and train with him and we see him age over time, so the audience can develop a connection with him, so they care about what happen to him, other problem is Shojin himself, since he too did it unwillingly, the idea of the two heroes avenging their mentor is also meaningless, so basically the character was useless..

Now after the tournament starts, we get Max Yen having a fight, then he wins the fight, after that Wu Yen having a fight, then wins the fight, I get the movie focus on the fight scenes, and probably people who are into MMA sport will really love it, but still, both Wu Yen and Max winning the fights have no impact, because, we don't know what the nature of the challenge they are facing, at least we get another fight between two different players, and let's say one of the player win and break the back of his opponent, then when one of the heroes fight the winner, the stakes became high, even if the fight didn't take place right afterwards, but at least you anticipate and wait for one of the heroes facing them, and if you want to make the stakes higher than that, one of the heroes may die on the hands of such fighter due to playing dirty, and no one last hero is fighting till the end, and maybe such event would really effect one of the main characters to reflect their disagreement..

  We have interesting character Magic Money Marcus played by Grabriel Ramiro Ruan, and he's not mentioned in the movie IMDB page..

Ok, we have a wheel that elevate the challenge, cool, I love that..

 Poor Marcus, oh god..

The movie is getting better and better, Kerchak Kong is the main interesting character now..

Around 44 minutes mark, Mantis shot one of "the sponsors"..

So Max and Wu have two vs two fight, and the sponsor of their rivals span the wheel and armed his fighters.

The Jiu-Jitsu dude has nice moves with his wolverine claws.. 

  

 Poor Jiu-Jitsu dude LOL..

Around 57 minutes the stunning villainess wait for Wu after she knew he will surrender in his last fight in protest, and she went to warn him not to do it.. She's an absolute goddess, if I'm ever going to fight in a death tournament it would be to win her over, I mean, who dare to disobey such evil goddess, I would worship her.

The relationship between Veena and Max makes zero sense LOL, it's like they developed 6 months of dating during couple of hours, it just doesn't work, especially that she is basically paying him to fight to death..

This movie is full of great characters, unfortunately they don't get much screen time, I mean, we kind of have a vampire fighter..

  

Shojin is a beast, at first I thought the character lame, but in the fights, it's like he's the totally different character, you can feel Brian Le is having fun playing the character..

Now 1 hour 12 minutes in, and we are waiting for the final fight, I should be anticipating the fight, I am not, because of the reasons I mentioned above, like I said, the movie is too focus on be closer to be a MMA sport movie, yeah, the idea of the wheel raised the stakes, but the motive isn't that strong, and the stakes aren't that high, because the contestants can survive the fight, and what the reward of the hero won? They didn't even use Sifu injury as a plot device, like he need to make a surgery and the hero have to fight to get the money fast..

Ok, the fight is gonna be more fun than I expected, Shojin got the beast serum..

  

Oh, god, so lame, like Shojin is basically giving us his sob story, and how he is a victim, like, dude, you just ate someone's dick, like literally..

 Shojin in the fights is awesome, but the character over all is very confusing.. 

The final confrontation starts around 1 hour 21 minutes.

 

 This was awesome, one of the best action movies I ever seen in years, and it's recent, the premise of the movie that everything happen indoors and basically fights in arena may discourage you, and TBH discouraged me too, so I didn't watch the movie right away, and also the first half hour made me feel the movie will be boring, but after that, it's awesome, you watch it and loose track of time, really one of the greatest action movies of the decade.