I already can accept the second movie to differ from the first one. But, the third movie is even more differ. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but as a trilogy, your movies need to have a visual handsign to make them have red string to one another. These trilogy in another hand, feel disconnected.
As for this trilogy, the 2nd movie is better than the 3rd movie. This statement coming from someone who still think Donnie Yen's first installment as the best.
I don't understand what happened to the downgrade. Is it so hard for the director to make his production consistent?
I heard the 2nd movie had the same CGI studio of Lord of The Ring and The Hobbit to worked on the project. I think this movie couldn't get that studio back and it ended up in lesser quality.
The tonal shift of somber, but humorous 2nd film to this full on soap opera comedy blew my mind in the bad way.