Online Review: Triumph in the Skies

Triumph in the Skies is a movie released in February in 2015. It is a sequel to a famous TV series of the twining name that was broadcasted on TVB. The TV show was first aired in 2003. Since it was the first TV show about aviation, audiences found the show new and interesting. The show then became a big hit. After that, the sequel Triumph in the Skies II was aired 10 years later. It was a blockbuster as well.

The movie, however, is a typical romance narration, featuring three independent story lines. It solely focuses on the love relationships of three pilots, i.e. Sam (Francis Ng), Captain Kool (Julian Cheung) and Branson (Louis Koo), with TM (Sammi Cheng), Kika (Amber Kuo) and Cassie (Charmaine Sheh) respectively.

In the movie, some social and cultural issues are represented. Firstly, the traditional ideologies towards gender are found. All the pilots are starred by male actors, while the cabin crew, such as the flight attendants, are starred by female actresses. The occupations in the movie are gendered.

Secondly, the movie has four Mandarin-speaking roles. Three out of the four roles, except one flight attendant, are portraying wealthy people, i.e. owners of aviation companies and a second-generation rich. It reflects the social environment in Hong Kong. The pool of Mandarin speaking people in a Cantonese-speaking environment is usually the rich and the powerful. The casting of the movie shows an aggressiveness to use mandarin-speaking roles, for example, Branson is Cantonese-speaking, but his father speaks Mandarin to him. It is not difficult to find that the aim is to make the movie more relatable to Mainland Chinese people and more marketable in China.

In terms of genre, it is traditionally portrayed. Iconographies such as chocolate, Ferris wheel, high heels stuck in the grate, characters including handsome and rich pilots and a female character who has illness, in the setting of a carnival in Brighton pier and the rainy Britain. The narrative has the same old happily ever after closure. Branson marrying Cassie over all the obstacles, Sam and TM fell in love despite the previous hatred towards each other, and Kika who was gravely ill magically recovered and got together with Captain Kool. To set the mood cheerful and romantic, the editor used a heavily high opacity of rainbow-color filter throughout the whole film. With a total running of 100 minutes divided into three independent narratives, edited into a montage of shots of three stories together, and the use of filter. The movie gives audiences the feeling of a short film, or rather, a music video, where the story plot mentioned very little and not yet there as a movie.

If you are the young generation who are interested in aviation-related career, or looking for a getaway to escape the problematic city, the movie will not satisfy your wanderlust bug. The movie is overly mainstream with romance-genre expectations. However, the movie originally came out on valentine’s day, but the date clashed the Chinese New Year holidays. If you look at the movie from a Chinese New Year genre perspective, which has a showcasing of stars, a shallow and easy narration, with a bit of laughter, it may give Triumph in the Skies a nice excuse.

- Lai Po Man Emily    10520674 | 21423843

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