Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

I don't know why we had to have a sequel to a classic, ground breaking, international martial arts movie nearly 16 years later.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword Of Destiny is the name and it stars Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Jason Scott Lee, and is peppered with a mixed international cast. Poor Michelle, who still looks good and is a great performer, should not have even signed up for this. She's much better than this and Donnie has matured into roles insofar as acting, but he ain't no Chow Yun-fat and there is no chemistry in the characters, other than their generational role as martial art stars.  However, the addition of  Donnie and a returning Yuen Woo-Ping (this time as a director)  do ensure there is ample quality action (although not ground breaking).  There is also the Shigeru Umebayashi soundtrack, which I barely noticed to tell the truth.  Probably, oh I don't know, because there was the omission of director Ang Lee!  That might have something to fucking do with it, just a theory.  Lee knew how to add a classical elegance to stories and character parallel with Woo-Ping doing the same for choreographed action.  So without him, you have a story that tries hard but mostly unsuccessfully to copy and paste scenarios that continue a not needed saga with 2nd string acting.  An international cast, a partly New Zealand location, and Harvey Weinstein production with a Netflix debut attempt to inject new life into the project.  Yet without the other essential higher quality  parts of the original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon equation, it falls rather flat.  All this is not to say that it's not entertaining, but that one must lower their expectations to reap these feeble benefits.  At best, it's a just good martial arts film. It deserves a title change for sure and I just feel bad for Michelle Yeoh in the lead role.  Shit, Donnie is like in every martial art film and could benefit from pacing himself between roles, less some people viewers think it's Ip Man meets Crouching Tiger.