Inevitably, Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon will draw comparisons to John Woo's excellent Red Cliff, because they are both based on the same source material (the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and were released within months of each other back in 2008. Perhaps that's not fair, since Red Cliff is a rousing cinematic experience and one of the best examples of the genre. But even if Three Kingdoms stood by itself, much less just being one in a long series of recent historical epic Hong Kong/Mainland China co-productions, it probably would still come off as decidedly average.