Digital Wuxia - The Chinese Cinema

More Condors, More Heroes: The Dragon Tamer (Diao Yu and Zhu Lingfeng, 2021) and What is love (Lin Zhenzhao, 2025)

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Contemporary Chinese (Streaming) Cinema

More Condors, More Heroes: The Dragon Tamer (Diao Yu and Zhu Lingfeng, 2021) and What is love (Lin Zhenzhao, 2025)

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Tsui Hark

Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants (Tsui Hark, 2025)

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Qin Pengfei

The Bodyguard and Blade of Fury (Qin Pengfei, 2024)

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Liu Binjie

Mutant Ghost Wargirl (Liu Binjie, 2022)

Daniel Lee

Code of the Assassins (Daniel Lee, 2022)

Code of the Assassins was originally released in China last summer with the English title Song of the Assassins, but now WellGo has renamed it and brought it to the US, streaming and on disc. The title change doesn’t seem to make much of a difference: there isn’t

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Wong Jing

New Kung Fu Cult Master (Wong Jing and Venus Keung, 2022)

Lu Yang

A Writer’s Odyssey (Lu Yang, 2021)

Given the number of effects-driven fantasy wuxia films that have come out in China in recent years, and the general mediocrity of the ones I’ve seen, I was a little wary of diving into the latest film from Brotherhood of Blades director Lu Yang. But A Writer’s Odyssey

Chen Kaige

Legend of the Demon Cat (Chen Kaige, 2019)

Chen Kaige’s Legend of the Demon Cat is not what you’d expect it to be. Well, at least not after the first 20 minutes or so, wherein the eponymous feline wreaks havoc on the lives of Tang Dynasty courtiers, promising buried treasure in exchange for fish eyes and

Soi Cheang

The Monkey King 3 (Soi Cheang, 2018)

The latest in director Soi Cheang’s saga inspired by the classic novel Journey to the West might be the strangest one yet. The franchise blockbuster has always been a weird fit for the former director of indie horror movies and slick crime dramas, and Cheang’s first Monkey King

Derek Yee

Sword Master (Derek Yee, 2016)

In 1977, at the age of twenty and appearing in only his third film, Derek Yee got the starring role in Death Duel, a film by prolific Shaw Brothers director Chor Yuen. After helping spark a revitalization of Cantonese language cinema with his hit ensemble comedy The House of 72

Yuen Woo-ping

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (Yuen Woo-ping, 2016)

A straight-to-Netflix multinational English language collaboration that is the sequel to the highest-grossing foreign language film in American history, Sword of Destiny reunites star Michelle Yeoh with the action choreographer from the first film, Yuen Woo-ping. Belonging more rightly to the CGI-driven Chinese wuxias of the 2010s (and the cheaper

Zhang Yimou

The Great Wall (Zhang Yimou, 2016)

The Great Wall, an experiment in co-production between Hollywood and China, opens with the spinning globe of the Universal Studios logo, its computer-generated image rotating slowly as it zooms in on the eponymous defensive fortification, helpfully orienting the hoped-for American audience by showing them where exactly the nation of China

Raman Hui

Monster Hunt (Raman Hui, 2015)

An effects-based comic wuxia directed by Raman Hui, a Hong Kong native who has spent most of his career working on animated Hollywood films, most notably on some Shrek and Kung Fu Panda shorts and as co-director on Shrek the Third. This appears to be Hui’s first Chinese film

Tsui Hark

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (Tsui Hark, 2011)

Tsui Hark’s second variation on Kung Hu’s masterpiece, after 1992’s New Dragon Gate Inn (nominally directed by Raymond Lee). While that version added Tsui’s Blues–movie style sexual complications and gender-ambiguity along with a healthy dose of cannibalism while minimizing the fighting, this one ramps up

Stephen Fung

Tai Chi Zero and Tai Chi Hero (Stephen Fung, 2012)

It hooked me from the prologue, flashing back in time to the birth of the main character (not yet the “hero”) Lu Chen. Told silent-movie style, it rushes through the early stages of his life with a mix of narration and captions and title cards at breakneck pace, which only

Peter Chan

Wuxia (Peter Chan, 2011)

Known in the US as Dragon, the actual title of Peter Chan’s 2011 film is Wuxia, the name of a genre of both film and literature, a word that is a compound of “wu” (military) and “xia” (chivalry, more or less). Wuxia stories are stories of warrior heroes, knights-errant,

John Woo

Red Cliff (John Woo, 2009)

Five years after his last American film, 2003’s Philip K. Dick adaptation Paycheck, and a long, troubled and expensive shoot plagued by last minute casting changes, John Woo finally released the first half of his epic two-part film Red Cliff. It proved to be a critical and commercial success

Stephen Chow

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Stephen Chow & Derek Kwok, 2013)

I see a lot of complaints that this, the latest from Stephen Chow, is “no Kung Fu Hustle (or Shaolin Soccer)” which, yeah sure, it’s a different kind of movie than those. Those were the culmination of 15 years of Chow’s comedy style, which burst on the scene

Tsui Hark

Young Detective Dee and the Rise of the Sea Dragon (Tsui Hark, 2013)

The anarchist prankster Tsui Hark who burst onto the Hong Kong scene over 30 years ago with Dangerous Encounters—First Kind and We’re Going to Eat You still lurks underneath layers of glossy CGI as the eponymous detective, in order to counteract their poisoned tea, orders all 1,200