Crouching Tiger as the Savior
For those of you who have seen Crouching Tiger but are unfamiliar with Chinese folk lore and wuxia stories, you might wonder how people in ancient China flew through the skies, ran on walls, or flew from rooftop to rooftop. For those of us who grew up watching, reading, and hearing wuxia stories, we didn't blink an eye. This is expected in a wuxia movie.
And believe it or not, but there have been plenty of wuxia movies produced in the past with people flying through the air, lasers shooting out from finger-tips, hitting pressure points to temporarily paralyze people, and kung fu that made you practically immortal. We've all seen it growing up; it was unavoidable.
But the movies that we did see were usually low budget, crappy quality, bad acting, poor quality films. They were movies you'd expect to see from a third world nation, or not even up to standards to be even classified as a "B" movie. They were horrible and sometimes almost embarassing to watch, but we watched them, anyway. The only high quality chinese movies were usually artistic dramas with Gong Li in them directed by Zhang Yimou. But that was it.
Then came along Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon directed by Ang Lee. Although the story for a wuxia film was poor, the directing was fantastic. It was the first time a wuxia film had such a high profile director, actor, and actress. The film wasn't cheesy, it was taken seriously by the actors and directors alike, and it had a decent budget for a high quality film. Ultimately, it became a huge success as a martial arts film in the U.S. Although it failed miserably in China as a martial arts film, Chinese movie directors took notice of the film's popularity in other countries and followed suit with the use of high quality actors/actresses, high budget, CGI, and good story-telling.
Since Crouching Tiger, I have yet to see a really lousy cheesy kung fu wuxia movie made. Some of the stories of those that followed may be a little weak, but that was it. Following in the footsteps of Crouching Tiger were: Hero with Jet Li, Seven Swords with Donny Yen, Warriors of Heaven with a bunch of people, and Fearless.
I know that doesn't sound like a lot, 4 movies in the past 6 years since Crouching Tiger was released in 2000. But that's exactly the point. Now directors aren't cranking out garbage wuxia movies every 6 months the way they used to; they're actually taking their time, slowing down and putting more effort and quality in to their work.
And that's good to see.
And believe it or not, but there have been plenty of wuxia movies produced in the past with people flying through the air, lasers shooting out from finger-tips, hitting pressure points to temporarily paralyze people, and kung fu that made you practically immortal. We've all seen it growing up; it was unavoidable.
But the movies that we did see were usually low budget, crappy quality, bad acting, poor quality films. They were movies you'd expect to see from a third world nation, or not even up to standards to be even classified as a "B" movie. They were horrible and sometimes almost embarassing to watch, but we watched them, anyway. The only high quality chinese movies were usually artistic dramas with Gong Li in them directed by Zhang Yimou. But that was it.
Then came along Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon directed by Ang Lee. Although the story for a wuxia film was poor, the directing was fantastic. It was the first time a wuxia film had such a high profile director, actor, and actress. The film wasn't cheesy, it was taken seriously by the actors and directors alike, and it had a decent budget for a high quality film. Ultimately, it became a huge success as a martial arts film in the U.S. Although it failed miserably in China as a martial arts film, Chinese movie directors took notice of the film's popularity in other countries and followed suit with the use of high quality actors/actresses, high budget, CGI, and good story-telling.
Since Crouching Tiger, I have yet to see a really lousy cheesy kung fu wuxia movie made. Some of the stories of those that followed may be a little weak, but that was it. Following in the footsteps of Crouching Tiger were: Hero with Jet Li, Seven Swords with Donny Yen, Warriors of Heaven with a bunch of people, and Fearless.
I know that doesn't sound like a lot, 4 movies in the past 6 years since Crouching Tiger was released in 2000. But that's exactly the point. Now directors aren't cranking out garbage wuxia movies every 6 months the way they used to; they're actually taking their time, slowing down and putting more effort and quality in to their work.
And that's good to see.
posted by V-Hume at 11:12 PM
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