The Legend of Madam White Snake is a famous one in chinese mythology. In fact, the story was adapted many times over and shown in various movie versions. The trailer for the upcoming movie to be released in September is on one of the main characters the monk 法海和尚 played by Jet Li.
I will not show the trailer here but one memorable movie adapted from this was Green Snake <青蛇> shown in 1993, and starring the famous Maggie Cheung as the titular character and the now retired Joey Wong as Madam White Snake. In fact, someone loves it so much that the music is still being played on his handphone.
Anyway, the moral of the story is good and evil is sometimes not so clear cut. I guess good is never always good and neither is bad always bad.
I think for those who watched the original classic 'A Chinese Ghost Story' starring the late Leslie Chueng and Joey Wong, they would catch this latest remake starring Louis Koo and Liu Yifei. Well, at least I did.
There was a slight change in the storyline. In the original, the female ghost Joey was in love with only Leslie after encountering the decent scholar who tried to rescue her from the demon-hunter and touched her heart with his pure love for her despite knowing that she is a demon. In this remake, Liu Yifei played the sweet and innocent looking ghost, but she was caught between an old love, Louis the demon-hunter, and the new love Yu Shaoqiang. If you find the twood-twood scholar familiar, that is because he recently starred as one of the monks in the movie 'Shaolin' played by Andy Lau and Nicholas Tze.
Whilst the latest version boasts beautiful cinematograhy and authentic scenery with mainly chinese mainland actors, the original's appeal is irreplaceable. I don't think anyone can forget the wonderful pairing of the charismatic Leslie and beautiful Joey as the on-screen human-demon couple, with a tragic ending, torn apart by their differences in existence. While I don't dislike the new version, I also don't necessarily think all new things are always better than the older ones.
