BEFORE: I'm anxious to get out of the realm of Chinese action films, but I also just learned that there's a SEQUEL to yesterday's film, and it's available on Netflix. This is what happened last year, but with Swedish films by Bergman, I kept finding more and more that were available, and so I pulled a few doubles and included as many as I could, because I just didn't want to have to double back. So I'm sort of in the same boat this January, but with Chinese films instead. This time I've resigned myself to the fact that the romance chain is just going to be late, otherwise I have to cram 35 films into a calendar month with just 31 days. My secondary job is starting up again today, so that's not going to be possible. I've added so many extra films, now I have to either cut four films from the line-up, or just re-schedule my February 1 film for February 6. I think I'm choosing the latter, again, it's so I won't have to double back here.
I hope you'll agree that these first two weeks of 2022 have been really something, movie-wise, and if so, then it's all been worth it. Now I'm heading toward the dark days of winter, a bunch of lesser-known action films on Netflix and Hulu, most of them with either Bruce Willis or Nicolas Cage, so we'll see how I feel about 2022 after I get through all of that. Michelle Yeoh carries over from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". See, I wasn't so much avoiding "Crouching Tiger, "Hidden Dragon" for 20 years as much as I was just waiting for the sequel that I didn't even know about to become available - that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
THE PLOT: A story of lost love, young love, a legendary sword
AFTER: The first "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" film was released in 2000, and the sequel came out a full 16 years later. These are based on a book series from Chinese literature, called "The Crane-Iron Series", and yesterday's film was based on the fourth book, and this sequel is based on the fifth book, titled "Iron Knight, Silver Vase".
Any film represents the year it was made, I know 16 years isn't a record for longest distance between a film and its sequel, but it's still a significant period of time. I've been working for one animator for a long time, nearly 30 years, and when I started working for him he had just finished his first animated feature, and he was in post-production on two live-action features that got finished, but were never distributed. We still sell them on DVD via his web-site, but there's not that much interest - for one of them, there's no master tape so we never made a lot of copies on DVD, so if somebody orders one the easiest thing for me to do is to burn one from the VHS tape I have at home - it's not fantastic quality, but we're only charging $5 for the DVD, so nobody will complain about it. It's not that great of a movie, anyway, so it would be criminal to charge more.
But as I sit and I watch the credits roll, waiting for the movie to end so I can finalize the DVD, I see a lot of familiar names, some people I've known for many years, some people I've lost touch with, other people I never met but I know them by reputation, or they're still friends with my boss in real life or on Facebook. One lead actor happens to be the director of an arts center in suburban Chicago, and I happened to visit that town last June on a trip, we stayed in an AirBnB right across the street from his office. (It's not weird that happened, it's weird that I figured that out, after the fact.). But as I watch the credits roll from a film made in 1992, I can't help but wonder what happened to everybody, did they keep working on movies, did they stay in New York City or did they move away, how many of these people are still alive, and active and happy? I know for some people, working on films is their calling in life, for others, they might just be doing it as a temporary thing while looking for their calling. But this is why the credits of a film are important, they're a permanent record for those people - I was here, I stood on that spot, I wore this costume and said those lines, or for people behind the scenes whose efforts may appear invisible to the audience - I was there, I drew storyboards or made costumes or I created props or I drove a truck, and my efforts were not in vain.
For "Crouching Tiger", I know that only ONE actress carried over to the sequel - part of that is just the nature of the story, this author seemed to like writing stories where nearly everybody died in the end, but it feels a little like a cheap way to achieve closure, if I'm being honest. That's not the way to run a franchise, by modern standards - if they killed off almost all the "Avengers" at the end of the first movie in 2009, they'd have to rebuild the whole team just to make a sequel, so really, it makes more sense to keep all the heroes alive, that's more incentive for people to come and check in on the team in "Age of Ultron". Maybe this is why "Infinity War" was so shocking for audiences, because so many heroes blinked out of existence - but I knew that most of them would be brought back, it just made clear financial sense.
The Chinese movies are maybe a bit different, there seems to be less incentive to keep everyone alive for the next movie. Then again, this is based on the fifth book of a 5-book series, so perhaps all bets are off. I don't quite understand the impetus to introduce a whole bunch of new characters just to kill them, but there's probably a lot about Chinese culture that I don't understand. For me, the "Star Wars" series is an obvious reference point, there's quite a bit here that reminds me of "Star Wars" - their swords aren't glowing, but there's obviously some mysticism involved in learning the ways of the Wudang, and the way the warriors can levitate and do impossible things is at times similar to using the Force. Donnie Yen played an almost-Jedi in "Rogue One", and he's here in this film, too - and ultimately the story of Snow Vase and Wei Fang reminds me of Kylo Ren and Rey, the way they formed a dyad, with some mental connection between them, like they were opposite sides of the same coin.
What's a little weird here is that all of the characters speak in English, while in the last film everybody spoke in Mandarin, and there were subtitles. Maybe they filmed this movie twice, like they did with "Mulan", once in Chinese and once in English? That's twice as much work, at least, but maybe this makes financial sense? A lot of Americans simply won't watch a movie that's in a foreign language - clearly I will, but I keep the subtitles on for every movie, it's just easier to know what's going on since I have a hearing aid now, so I'm less likely to miss anything if I read the subtitles.
So Shu Lien is the only character to carry over from the previous film, which really helps me out. Michelle Yeoh makes my 2022 year-end countdown for sure, and she may also end up with the most appearances this January. Now we know why she never got together with Li Mu Bai, because she was promised to another, even though that other guy was dead, the connection was SO strong that she just couldn't move on. Well, guess who turns up in the sequel? We learn this warrior's name, Silent Wolf, and he's been isolated on a mountaintop all this time, but now he's back and he puts a new crew of warriors together during a tavern fight (there seem to be a lot of tavern fights in these movies...) to take down the dreaded Hades Dai, who, big shock, wants to get his hands on the Sword of Destiny.
Whoever is in charge of the Sword of Destiny always seems to put it on display, which is a huge mistake. Before you know it, some thief from another clan is going to show up to steal the sword, why doesn't everyone just plan on this happening, again? Shu Lien even comments that the sword should be in a safer place, but then why doesn't she actually, you know, MOVE it to one? I guess she's technically not the sword's owner, and whoever is in charge of it doesn't want to listen to her, big mistake. Wei Fang, part of Hades Dai's clan, shows up to steal it, and so does Snow Vase, who tried to join Hades Dai's clan, but was rebuffed. These two warriors have more in common than they think, they have a shared past which will eventually be revealed. The theft of the sword is thwarted, Wei Fang gets put in a cage and Snow Vase begins training with Shu Lien.
Meanwhile, Silent Wolf has come out of isolation and heads back to the late Governor Te's compound, recruiting five new warriors at that tavern fight along the way. As they said with "The Suicide Squad", don't get too attached. Silent Wolf reunites with his lost love, Shu Lien, and explains why he had to fake his own death. It's not long, though, before the Hades Dai clan attacks, using Mantis and the Blind Enchantress to thin the ranks of the heroes. After an extensive flashback that explains the connection between Wei Fang and Snow Vase, there's a three-way battle for the sword on a frozen lake, and really, there's only one reason to have a battle on a frozen lake. Here's where Wei Fang really reminds me of Kylo Ren, because you never really know which way he's going to go, is he ultimately going to be a hero or a villain, or is he just a little bit of both?
Finally, the Big Bad Hades Dai gets into the battle, and it's Silent Wolf vs. Hades Dai for the title, and control of the Sword of Destiny. Some cool stuff here, obvious wire-work and fighters moving in impossible ways, but they do a good enough job of removing the wires with CGI so we can all pretend for a moment that warriors can fly. The ending is sort of a reverse homage to the ending of the original film, only maybe this time we can believe that maybe love wins out. Jeez, it only took these crazy kids 18 years to get back together, but that's enough to give hope to the masses, I hope.
OK, I'm off Asian-made movies, I think, but Michelle Yeoh's going to stick around for a couple more days.
Also starring Donnie Yen (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Jason Scott Lee (ditto), Harry Shum Jr. (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Eugenia Yuan (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Roger Yuan (also last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Gary Young (itto), JuJu Chan, Chris Pang (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Woon Young Park, Darryl Quon, Veronica Ngo (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), Andrew Stehlin (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Shuya Chang, Xiaofei Zhou, Xingang Gong.
RATING: 5 out of 10 broken vases
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