Wuxia – Asian martial arts film survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=U8tU9uIzqOQbjssWs_2bQmAA_3d_3d

Critical Research Mock – Question 2

With detailed reference to your research findings, analyse and discuss the portrayal of Protagonists and Antagonists in Asian Martial Arts films.

I set myself the task of researching how Protagonists and Antagonists are portrayed in Asian Martial Arts films. At first, I thought that this question would be quite difficult to answer, but it didn’t turn out to be too challenging.

Within the online interview that I conducted, many topics were discussed, including the question I am answering. I asked the question:

How do you think Protagonists and Antagonists are portrayed in Asian Martial Arts films?

To which I received the reply:

In the above films (my 3 focus films), art house martial arts tend to offer shades of gray in both the Heroes and the Villains. For example in Hero, the ruler of Qin was in reality a ruthless dictator who practiced genocide and book burning, similar to Nazi Germany’s Hitler. It was actually shocking to see him portrayed as a somewhat sympathetic character in the film to Chinese audiences. Generally Asian cinema is pretty black and white when it comes to heroes and villains. A lot of this is due to heavy censorship of anything critical of the Chinese government.

This answer intrigued me a lot, generally because of the fact that he thought it was because of the government that they were portrayed in the way that they are. This made me go on to research some information about the Chinese censorship laws, and I found out that in China, you cannot have anything ‘anti-government’ in any form of Media. This made it clear why the Protagonists and Antagonists are portrayed in a certain way in most films.

Also, the way that he noted that the ruler of Qin was comparable to Adolf Hitler in some ways, the audience was made to feel sympathy for him in the film, even though he commonly committed mass murder. This would be another example of not attacking the government, and another way of showing the censorship laws.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Research

This is not a film that we are looking at, this is just wide research on the background information on films. This will help me to compare and contrast with the films that I would be looking at.

• Jet Li was originally cast to play Li Mu Bai, but turned the part down to appear in Romeo Must Die (2000). The role was next offered to Hong Kong singer/actor ‘Lai, Leon’ but he, too, turned it down.
• Ziyi Zhang studied calligraphy for several months along with her other training for the movie.
• Michelle Yeoh did not speak Mandarin, and the script was presented to her phonetically with help from Mandarin-speaking crew members – her Malaysian accent can be heard throughout. Yun-Fat Chow did speak Mandarin (his first language is Cantonese) but native Mandarin speakers thought his accent strained and overdone.

• Michelle Yeoh tore her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) during the shooting of an early fighting sequence and had to be flown to the U.S. for knee surgery. She returned to the set at different times to film non-action scenes until the knee had recovered.
• “Crouching tiger hidden dragon” is a quote from Chinese mythology. It refers to hiding your strength from others; advice which is followed too well by the characters in the film.
• In Chinese, Lo’s name is “Little Tiger”, and Jen’s name is “Gorgeous Dragon”.
• In 2001, this became the first foreign language film to earn over $100 million in the United States.
• The film’s action choreographer, Woo-ping Yuen, was also responsible for the fighting sequences in The Matrix (1999) and its progeny.
• Tan Dun had only two weeks to compose and record the musical score.
• The Green Destiny Sword Li Mu Bai carries translates to Green Dark World Sword – a place where the dead go. The Mu in Li Mu Bai’s name translates to a kind of positive jealousy or longing – as in wanting something but probably never getting it.
• Taiwanese-born Hong Kong actress Qi Shu was originally cast in Ziyi Zhang‘s role of Jen Yu and worked on the film for several weeks, until her agent pulled her from the movie to do a Pepsi commercial in Japan. (She has since changed agents!)
• The film is an adaptation of the fourth novel in a pentalogy, or five-novel cycle, known in China as the Crane/Iron Pentalogy and written by noted wuxia (kung-fu) novelist Du Lu Wang. The novels are “Crane Frightens Kunlun”, “Precious Sword, Golden Hairpin”, “Sword’s Force, Pearl’s Shine”, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, and “Iron Knight, Silver Vase”. Much of the story is not about Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien; they are in fact secondary characters who only become important later in the series. When a comic-book adaptation of the fourth book in the pentalogy was slated, illustrator Andy Seto re-watched the film to get inspiration for how to depict the fight scenes.
• Ang Lee comments that originally he did not wish for Shu Lien to wield the heavy two-handed straight sword against Jen. This is consistent within the movie, as Shu Lien indicates her preference of the ‘dao’, the saber with a broad, curved blade, instead of the straight-bladed ‘jian’, Li Mu Bai’s weapon of choice. The Green Destiny is itself a jian.
• The film holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a “foreign” film. It was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Music (Song), Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Film Editing, and Best Costume Design.
• The four main actors all spoke Mandarin, but with different accents. Yun-Fat Chow had a Cantonese accent, Michelle Yeoh had a Malaysian/English accent, Ziyi Zhang had a Beijing accent, and Chen Chang had a Taiwanese accent. Because of the difficulty some Chinese-speaking markets had with the voices, some markets actually had a dubbed version (into standard Mandarin) of the soundtrack.
• #10 in the Hong Kong Film Awards’ List of The Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures. (March 2005)
• According to old Taiwanese newspapers, in 1959 there was a Taiwanese-speaking movie called “Luo Xiao Hu and Yu Jiao Long,” an earlier adaptation of Du Lu Wang‘s novel. The old newspapers noted that this version was also a martial arts film. The leading actress, Hsiao Yan-Chiou, was originally traditional Taiwanese opera actress. After this movie released, Hsiao married, leaving “Luo Xiao Hu and Yu Jiao Long” as her last movie. This movie is thought to be no longer in existence now, and it seems to hold no connection with Ang Lee‘s “Wo Hu Cang Long” except the adaptation source.
• The Green Destiny Sword used in the movie, along with other weapons in the movie, are made in Taiwan. The swordsmith is actually a neighbor of Ang Lee in his current residence in Tainan, Taiwan.
• The stamped documents shown by Shu Lien to the guards at the city-gate before she enters Beijing shows the date “In the of 43rd year of the reign of (Emperor) Qianlong, the sixth month, the eighth day”, which is the year A.D. 1778, somewhere in June or July.
• In the first night scene, Bo meets two night-watchmen who later give two knocks on clappers/ rods, indicating that it was the 2nd watch of the night. The first watch begins at 7 p.m. and each watch is 2 hours long, so it was after 9 p.m when Jen first sneaks into Sir Te’s residence. If we were shown how many times the night-watchmen then sounds the small cymbal/gong, we would know more precisely what time it was between 9-11 p.m.
• In the hall where Shu Lien first meets Li Mubai, there are two large sets of couplets hung on the wall behind them. The inner couplet reads “(Right) The Tall (Qiao) Tree spreads thousands of branches, but don’t they have the same roots; (Left) the Long (Yangtse) River flows into tens of thousand of distributaries, but all have the same source” and is about maintaining harmony. The outer couplet reads “(Right)In Spring and Autumn sacrifices, follow the Ancient Sages’ Rites and Customs; (Left) Arraying Left and Right, trace One Family’s Generations of Continuity” and is about maintaining tradition.
• While Ziyi Zhang‘s character is obviously highly trained & skillful in martial arts, the actress herself has never had any official martial arts training at all. Instead she uses her dance techniques to learn her moves in these scenes, as if they were a dance rather than a fight (which in terms of creating & filming them is actually not that far from the truth).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190332/

The martial arts and action sequences were choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, well known for his work in The Matrix and other films.

Made on a mere US$15 million budget, with dialogue in Mandarin, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a surprise international success. After its US premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival, it grossed US$128 million in the United States alone, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film in American history. It has won over 40 awards.

Also a Video Game on playstation 2.

Crouching Tiger was very well received in the Western world, receiving critical acclaim and numerous awards. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 97% of critics gave Crouching Tiger positive reviews, based on 141 reviews,^[5] while Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 93 out of 100, based on 31 reviews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crouching_Tiger,_Hidden_Dragon

Interview With Idol Ninja

World Cinema – Asian Martial Arts Research – Interview with Idol Ninja – Http://idolninja.wordpress.com

After reading the ‘About’ page on this person’s blog, I saw how passionate they were for martial arts films, asian ones in general.

‘About

I’m 36 and married, with a 12+year career in IT. My wife and I recently moved out of state for her job, and I’m looking for work. In the meantime, I decided to get into game development. It’s something that I’ve always dreamed of doing, so its pretty exciting. I also translate Japanese as a hobby and subtitle and author my own DVD’s. I have a massive collection of Asian cinema with a focus on fantasy martial arts and wuxia. I also play guitar and keyboards and also do composition.’

I saw this, and had the idea to ask them about the different types of films. I sent:

‘Hey, I am doing a media studies project at college, and it is all about asian martial arts cinema. I was wondering if I could interview you about them? I need to talk to people who are passionate about the genre. Don’t worry, it would only be a few questions over the internet. Comment on my blog if you are interested please. Thanks alot.

Doug Kerr.’

Then I received the reply:

‘Sure thing. As a huge asian cinema fan, I’d be glad to participate. Ask away. :)’

Which I replied to him with the questions:

‘1. Why are you so interested in Asian Martial arts?

2. Can you remember the first Asian Martial Arts film that you watched?

3. Do you have a favourite actor/actress?

4. Can you give me your opinion (mini review) on the following films:

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
House of Flying Daggers
Hero

5. How do you think hero’s and villains are shown in the films?

I then received all of these answers to my questions:

1. Why are you so interested in Asian Martial arts?

I find Asian cinema to be very creative and unique when compared to Hollywood fare. There is a certain energy there, especially in martial arts cinema, that makes viewing much more entertaining. My favorite sub-genre would be fantasy martial arts movies. I also have quite a fondness for Kyonsei (hopping zombie) movies, especially ones with Lam Ching-Ying (the one-eyebrow priest aka Mr. Vampire.)

2. Can you remember the first Asian Martial Arts film that you watched?

My first exposure was when a group of my friends rented Revenge of the Ninja starring Sho Kosugi when it came out on video rental in 1983. The movie that really started my obsession with Asian cinema though was when The Stormriders came out in 1998. After seeing Stormriders, I bought books and hit the Internet to track down as many similar films as I could. I currently own 500+ Hong Kong/Chinese martial arts movies, which doesn’t even include all the Japanese chambara and jidai geki movies I’ve managed to find.

3. Do you have a favourite actor/actress?

Actor: Tie
Ti Lung – His work with the Shaw Brothers studios in the 70s (especially the Gu Long wuxia adaptations directed by Chu Yuen.)
Gordon Liu – His work with Shaw Brothers studios directed by Lau Kar Leung are some of the best Shaolin martial arts I’ve ever seen. Especially the 36th Chamber cycle of films.

Actress: Kara Hui – Her work with Lau Kar Leung for Shaw Brothers studios in the 70s.

4. Can you give me your opinion (mini review) on the following films:

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
I don’t care for Ang Lee as a director, but the movie has beautiful cinematography, and the martial arts themselves are captured well. The big problem though is that Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh don’t speak Mandarin, (only Cantonese,) so the dialogue is terribly stilted and kind of ruins the rest of the film if you have a decent grasp of Mandarin. The best thing about the movie though is that it opened a door in the West for other Asian movies to come out here and get exposure.

House of Flying Daggers
Zhang Yimou is a fantastic director, and his second wuxia movie (the first being Hero) is a great follow up. Beautiful visuals, but didn’t really hold a candle to Hero. I may be a bit biased because my expectations were through the roof for the movie after Hero. Andy Lau is great in just about everything, and Zhang Ziyi is both an excellent actress and martial artist. It was also interesting to see Takeshi Kaneshiro who has been popping up lately in Chinese cinema, most recently John Woo’s Red Cliff.

Hero
Hero is one of my favorite wire-fu wuxia movies I’ve ever seen. I was really surprised at how this turned out considering that Zhang Yimou’s previous films were dramatic period pieces like Raise the Red Lantern. The action choreography by Ching Siu-Tung was incredible. He has always done excellent work, especially in the 90s with Tsui Hark films like Swordsman 2, but this was just off the charts. It was also a very deep film, using colors to signify different personal versions and false versions of events. It also had a great all-star cast.

5. How do you think hero’s and villains are shown in the films?

In the above films, arthouse martial arts tend to offer shades of gray in both the Heroes and the Villains. For example in Hero, the ruler of Qin was in reality a ruthless dictator who practiced genocide and book burning, similar to Nazi Germany’s Hitler. It was actually shocking to see him portrayed as a somewhat sympathetic character in the film to Chinese audiences. Generally Asian cinema is pretty black and white when it comes to heroes and villains. A lot of this is due to heavy censorship of anything critical of the the Chinese government.

NOTE: Kind of a strange selection of movies for opinions, considering that two of them are by the same director. They are all arthouse martial arts movies as opposed to “true” martial arts movies. You may want to have the opinions be open ended based on genre or period, like favourite:
90s wire fu
Fantasy martial arts
Wuxia/swordplay
Kung fu
Shaw Brothers studios
Golden Harvest studios

Or just mix it up a bit with other popular current movies in the West like say Ong Bak, or any of the Jet Li US films.

Anyways, best of luck on your project!
-IdolNinja’

These answers really helped me with the research of my project, and I can use them to help add to my knowledge of Asian martial arts cinema.