Back to the Past: Hong Kong Time-Traveling Sci-Fi is an Epic Reboot of a 2001 TV Hit
By Alice Shih
Rating: B+
Last year saw nostalgic sequels worldwide from Hollywood (Tron: Ares, 43 years after the original) to Hong Kong.
In December, Back to the Past, a follow up to the 2001 TV drama A Step into the Past, slammed Hong Kong’s box office with opening‑day records and quickly surpassed HKD$80 million (CAD$ 14 million), winning over long-time fans who grew up with the series as well as capturing new audiences born post-2001.
A future soldier (Michael Miu) represents bad news for the Qin Dynasty.
The success has been largely credited to the producer and lead actor Louis Koo who kick-started this project about five years ago. Being a producer of a string of blockbusters in Asia including Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024), he was able to source fundings close to HKD$ 350 million (CAD$ 62 million) to realize this sci-fi world of time travel between the Qin Dynasty (220 B.C.E.) and present day.
This amounted to one of the highest budgeted films ever financed in Hong Kong. Koo also tackled another almost impossible task by assembling the complete original ensemble cast from 24 years ago, and adding new antagonists to propel the story two decades later.
Koo reprises his role of a modern-day special forces policeman, Hong, who’d been sent to the Qin Dynasty 24 year ago and is still trapped there.
He now has a family and is leading a simple life away from the emperor’s court. He used to train the young egoist and tyrannical Qin Emperor (Raymond Lam), who now continually keeps Hong in check. Aware that the Emperor knows of his knowledge of the future, Hong believes he and his family risk harm should the powerful see him as a threat in any manner.
This is when an army from the future, armed with advanced weapons, descends from the sky. The leader is a wrongfully accused scientist, Ken (Michael Miu), coming to dethrone the oppressive emperor, who must now rely on Hong’s knowledge and protection to fend off this futuristic enemy with weapons his army are unable to beat or even comprehend.
With a relatively simple sci-fi plot of wisdom and loyalty triumphing over greed and deceit, this genre film is punctuated with humour, martial art fights and full blast of CG generated military action sequences.
Hong’s harmonious family and Ken’s dysfunctional relationship with his daughter fuel the viewers’ emotions. But the heart-wrenching throughline is the mentor-student vs ruler-minister dichotomy between Hong and the emperor, which adds complexity and conflicts to the narrative. Audiences who have no previous knowledge of the TV drama might find their interactions and behaviours a bit puzzling at first. But those who know their intricate past will fall in with empathy and concerns. Koo and Lam nail their characters masterfully, generating great chemistry in every scene. Nostalgia also helps to entice the audience, in place of flashy special effects or script and directorial reliance. Going to see this film is like a reunion with old friends reminiscing of glory days and catching up with each other’s present challenges in lives.
Initially, I was wondering how the high-tech weapons and supplies got transported back as I only saw humans in the time travelling capsule. Later it was disclosed that their weapons could be zipped down so small as to fit in a palm and would expand back to real size with the press of a button.
And they don’t have a time limit (like the 29 minutes in the virtual world of Tron: Ares). No wonder the U.S. is concerned about technological advancement in China!
Back To The Past. Directed by Yuen Fai Ng and Jack Lai. Written by Xin He. Starring Louis Koo and Raymond Lam. In theatres January 30.