Fight of fancy

Despite falling viewing numbers since being squeezed by a slew of recent releases, including Jackie Chan's Bleeding Steel and Chen Kaige's Legend of the Demon Cat, The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is hard up to surpass 400 million yuan in takings at the box office, according to major Chinese film database Maoyan.

A film usually has to earn at least double its budget to break even once distribution and marketing costs are factored in.

Another disappointing figure: The movie gained an aggregate rating of just 4.8 points out of 10 on the film-review site Douban, an online guide for cinema fans.

Many viewers complained that the film's storyline was confusing and had too many holes in the plot, while others thought the jokes were simply not funny enough.

Other moviegoers criticized the alien villains for looking too much like their counterparts in Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters, arguing the lack of novelty did little to engage viewers.

For a big movie teaming up the two top names in Chinese martial arts films, its failure came as something of a surprise to the majority of critics.

Hailed by many as a maverick and a master of the genre, Tsui began reviving the fortunes of Chinese martial arts films by combining traditional stunts with fantastic visual effects in the late 1970s.

His bold imagination and flair for creating visual spectacles in classics like A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) and the Once upon a Time in China franchise have enchanted generations of Chinese movie fans ever since.

Best known for the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix franchise, the action choreographer-director Yuen has also been a major figure in reshaping the direction of Hong Kong's kung fu movies.

Yuen's early directorial classics Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle's Shadow－both martial arts hits in 1978－launched a new era for Jackie Chan and his globally acclaimed action comedies.

In The Thousand Faces of Dunjia, Tsui worked as the executive producer and scriptwriter, while Yuen took up the role of director.

Enthusiasm from fans initially helped the film knock off Coco, Pixar's highest-grossing animated movie on the Chinese mainland, from the top of the box-office charts on its opening day.