Tyranny can not and should not be justified.

Rating: 1/10 (29 June 2018)

To give your life for a greater good is one thing. To give your life for a violent tyrant with delusions of grandeur is another. As noble as the idea "One under the sky" may be, it all depends on who unites the people and how. Because that was also Hitler's ideal, to create one big empire, never mind human casualties. Can we still justify the loss of even just one human soul as "necessary for the greater good" ? Can we still accept the barbaric idea that human souls are dispensable for the good of the cause ? And who defines the righteousness of the cause? These were cruel and savage times but we're supposed to understand better now. There is nothing truly wise or ethical or humble about the King of Qin, not even in the film. All he's after is power, as so many conquerers before him. He says at some point in this film that he does not intend to stop with China, his ultimate goal is to conquer the Earth. Just another megalomaniac , drunk with power, who justified his viciousness and lust for glory with a noble lie - we've seen so many of them in human history.
I went through a few reviews and I only found one that pointed out the obvious and clarified a few things. It is indeed shocking that so many viewers cared only for the spectacular effects and the beauty in the scenes and did not even care to examine the message of the film a little deeper. I thank the user by the name "potteries" for pointing out that : "the dynasty the king founded collapsed rapidly after his death as a result of the hatred for his regime". Of course it collapsed. Such regimes are unstable by nature. Tyrannies always collapse. The goal to "unify the people" can never be reached through tyranny. That's why democracy and human rights were invented.