Although the translation of "The Warlords" is "God of War", in fact, it spares no effort to promote the anti-war theme. Therefore, in the war scenes of the film, Peter Chan's approach is completely different from Zhang Yimou's violent aesthetics. He did not lay out dazzling colors, but chose blue-gray tones to highlight the cruelty and horror of war. In the action design, it is not flying around, beautifying force as dance, but striving to be realistic, not avoiding blood, yellow sand, blood and blood, and intuitively showing the dazzling and shocking violence of violence, which makes people feel uncomfortable with violence. Instinct disgust.
"The Warlords" completely subverts the previous model of costume blockbusters in its attitude towards war and violence. For the first time, it starts from human nature and casts a skeptical scrutiny on war and violence. Chinese audiences have become accustomed to Pretty Lies. Peter Chan can continue his humanistic care in such an ancient costume blockbuster and honestly face history and human nature, which is admirable. Of course, the subversion of "The Warlords" does not stop there. It challenges the theme of "brotherhood" in Chinese martial arts films. It is also an act of courage. In "The Warlords", desire overwhelms commitment, and the high-sounding ideal turns out to be only Dirty conspiracy, the slogan of "don't live together, but die together" looks pale and ridiculous in front of the fact that either you die or I die. As a result, the "Jianghu Utopia" that martial arts films tried to create in the past collapsed in "The Warlords"
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