Robert Kerr Professor Yang 12/7/12 CMAC A Fantastic Spectacle: The Western Success of Modern Wuxia Films

In the early days of Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, directors adapted stories from Wuxia literature to the silver screen. At first, the films were technologically limited but still appealing to eastern audiences. As the genre and cinematic technologies would continue to progress, very few Wuxia films would garner any major success in the west until Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. After the stunning success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the inclusion of fantastic elements and spectacle, such as fighting on water and on the tops of bamboo trees, while clichd in domestically marketed films, has added global appeal to the Wuxia genre that has translated into large revenues and continued production. In the eyes of western audiences, the fantastic aspects of the Wuxia genre, such as the mastery of qi, set it apart from the relative realism of modern Hollywood action cinema. While practiced in the real world, the art of harnessing ones own energy or qi is greatly exaggerated in Chinese fiction. First found in Wuxia literature, the different ways in which this life force can be harnessed are broken into three different disciplines: Qinggong,

Neili, and Dianxue. The first, Qinggong, gives the master the ability to Fly, move at a preternatural pace, walk on water, and generally defy gravity. Seen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the knights-errant characters of Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu lien both possess the ability to harness their qi to jump amazing distances, and defy gravity. Also, Jade Fox and her disciple, Jen, have mastered Qinggong. In the famous scene where, dressed in dark clothes with her face covered, Jen steals Green Destiny from Sir Tes estate, both she and Shu Lien run up walls and make impossibly long jumps. In another scene, Mu Bai duels Jen while flying through and balancing on bamboo trees. When it was debuted in theatres in the United States, moviegoers were captivated by the gravity defying actions of the martial arts masters as they ran up walls and dueled among trees. However, in his article Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Bouncing Angel, Sheldon Lu states bluntly that this did not impress the Chinese as it did the Western viewers The Chinese audiences have seen enough of martial arts filmsincluding improbable stuns such as characters flying on rooftops and fighting on bamboo trees. The fighting scene in the bamboo forest at the end of the film appears extraordinary and refreshing to non Chinese viewers only because they are not familiar with what has been done in the past (Lu p.227) While Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien fight to recapture Green Destiny and hunt down Jade Fox with their martial prowess and Qinggong, Jade Fox is able to elude them by adopting the disguise of Jens governess. In the

showdown between Inspector Tsai, his daughter May and Master Tes servant Bo, Jade Fox is shown to have mastered focusing her Qi to paralyze by touch, or Dianxue. During the fight, Fox is able to completely immobilize Bo with four precise touches. Much like the gravity defying stunts of Mu Bai and Shu Lien, western audiences were amazed to see this distinctly fantastic technique. Like the Fantastic elements of the Wuxia genre, such as qi, the spectacular fight scenes and events that are portrayed in the films captivate western audiences. Specifically, the use of external martial arts such as weapon fighting and empty-handed styles when combined with the fantastic abilities of the knight-errant create spectacular scenes that immerse the viewer in the jianghu, the fictional setting of Wuxia films. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee uses a duel between Shu Lien and Jen to showcase his actresses weapon skills. During the course of the duel Shu Lien uses and demonstrates her mastery of six different weapons while Jen successively breaks them with Green Destiny. While later in the movie, Mu Bai uses a sheathed Green Destiny and a thin cane to disarm the would-be thief. In both scenes, the characters display their extreme mastery of weapons and thus create a pair of spectacular scenes designed to astonish the audience. These scenes, all several minutes long were new and refreshing to western audiences because they contained a different take on martial arts, specifically empty handed combat. Traditionally, western movies that contain hand to hand fighting, such as James Bond films and Bruce Willis Die

Hard series feature quick takedowns and gritty finishing moves that conclude the action against one target in a matter of seconds. For example, in the film Die Hard 2, Bruce Willis wrestles with a terrorist on the wing of an airplane. When the engagement starts, Willis tackles the man, punches him in the face several times, and ends the engagement by pushing him off the wing and into the jet engine; the total time of the fight is roughly 30 seconds. While this scene is spectacular, it takes place on a wing of an airplane during takeoff, it is intrinsically western because of the short duration and lack of grace seen in Chinese Martial Arts films. When contrasted against the scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where Shu Lien and Jen duel, it is easy to see why the longer, more flowing, and graceful duels that contained spectacular swordsmanship would appeal to and be refreshing for western audiences.

Although not a Chinese film, The Matrix is a movie of spectacle and fantastic elements that borrows heavily from Chinese Martial Arts Cinema. It featured characters that possessed similar fantastic abilities to those found in Wuxia films such as dodging bullets and running on walls. With a very successful fight coordinator, Yuen Wuen Ping, it is logical that The Matrix would contain spectacular fight scenes that borrow heavily from Martial Arts cinema. Released in 1999, almost a year before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix earned US$463.5 million in the global box office. The success of the Wachowski brothers film indicated that martial arts films that contained fantastic elements such as preternatural fighting abilities and

spectacular duels were appealing to western audiences and able to generate a large profit. This success, though many people did not recognize it, foreshadowed success that movies, which featured characters with fantastic abilities and spectacular fight scenes, such as Hero and Kung Fu Hustle, would be successful in the first decade of the 21st century. In Hero, Yimou Zhang creates spectacles in his scenes by combining martial arts and the use of color in conveying emotion. The best example of these artistic spectacles is The Fight in the Yellow Forest, where Flying Snow and Moon fight over the love of Broken Sword. In the scene, Zhang clothes the two women in red to signify their burning passion for Broken Sword, their grief, and the blood that will be spilled in the fight, and inundates the screen with yellow. The use of golden yellow, which Hero's cinematographer Chris Doyle compared to Van Gogh in his shooting diary, is full of life. It is ephemeral. Nothing can describe better the fight/dance of the two beautiful women (Flying Snow and Moon), who amidst the golden dancing leaves and barren empty branches, fight and kill for the love of one man. (Lau) By linking color with emotion, the director is able to enhance the spectacular qualities of the action and create scenes that rely on images rather than actions and dialogue to convey meaning. Spectacle, rather than storytelling, teaches Heros philosophy. (Cinema Scope Magazine p.9)

The use of color to create can also be seen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon during the scene Five years after the release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Stephen Chow combined fantastic elements and spectacle with western pop culture allusions to create a transnational Wuxia comedy. In Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow creates spectacular fight scenes between the black suited Axe Gang and multiple martial arts masters. The movie begins with the introduction of the Axe Gang, a gang of axe wielding men dressed in black suits. While at first the connection is a stretch, as the movie progresses the gang and their spectacular combat scenes quickly become an allusion to the agents in the matrix trilogy. Obvious quotations from The Matrix are found in numerous combat scenes, most notably in a near-replica of the so-called Burly Brawl, in which Neo fights against the invincible agent Mr. Smith and his army of clones in a deserted residential compound. (Lee p.133). In Kung Fu Hustle, Chow directs a scene that is a near copy of the Burly Brawl. In it, he creates a spectacle with hundreds of Axe Gang members converging on Sing, the main protagonist. Sing defeats hundreds of these gangsters with laughable ease, often tossing them hundreds of feet in the air or kicking them several feet into walls. This spectacle is uniquely eastern in the sense that it features a master who has reached enlightenment by means of an esoteric text, The Bhuddas Palm, easily defeating the

unenlightened. This can also be seen as an allusion to The Matrix, where Neo becomes enlightened in the later half of the movie. In addition to the numerous Matrix allusions and satirizations, Kung Fu Hustle also features influences from the 20th century American animation. from satirizing The Matrixs mass slaughter of men in black suits, to making a Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner chase sequence come to live-action life. Oh Yes, Chow admitted. I saw Warner Brothers cartoons as a kid, and this scene was inspired by it. (Meyers p.312) The scene that Chow reflects on features Sing running from The Landlady after his accomplice attempts to kill her with throwing knives. In The Chase, Sings running speed and blurred legs are reminiscent of The Roadrunners while the Land Ladys eventual crash into a billboard reflects Wile E. Coyote always failing to catch his prey in spectacular fashion. This scene combines the use of both fantastic elements, the twos inhuman speed, and the use of spectacle, the chase scene its self is spectacular in the sense that shows Sing and the Landlady storming through the country side only to meet a comedic end, to create an humorous scene. Between Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Kung Fu Hustle, the three films have grossed nearly half a billion dollars. Before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon set the trend of using fantastic elements and spectacle targeted at western audiences to increase revenue, Wuxia films had not made over US$25million overseas. As the Wuxia genre continues to evolve and become increasingly transnational, as evidenced by the inclusion of western

pop culture elements in Hero and Kung Fu Hustle, it will have to continue to incorporate themes and material that will appeal to the global box office.

Works Cited: Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. "Hero: Chinas Response to Hollywood Globalization." Jump Cut No. 49 (2007): n. pag. Web. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/>. "Hero." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/>. "Kung Fu Hustle." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. <http://www.imdb.com/>. Sheldon H. Lu, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Bouncing Angels; Hollywood, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Transnational Cinema, in ChineseLanguage Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics, eds., Sheldon H Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (Honolulu: University of HawaiI Press, 2005) Meyers, Richard. Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book. Guilford, CT: Emery, 2011. Print. "The Matrix." Box Office Mojo. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Box Office Mojo. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. "Hero." Box Office Mojo. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. "Kung Fu Hustle." Box Office Mojo. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.