Asian Martial Arts movies

I just wanted to ask, but where does the idea of fighters jumping around like there's no gravity and flying incredible distances as well as landing in ridiculously impossible poses originate from?

A lot of movies have used this and one of the most high profile examples is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or even Hero. It kind of annoys me because the movies will try and totally be serious in content and then has it all undermined with such 'stunt work'.

It's called Wuxia.
It's a form of "movement Opera" based around Martial Arts.


The original term was "Youxia", which was basically poetry.


Most modern movies in this type are based around Taoist Kung Fu styles of Martian Arts.


Think of the theme in a similar manner as the early ballads and origins of Robin Hood. A super-duper archer who was also a skilled swordsman, who fought for the side of good.
In Far Eastern terms, it'd be a super-duper martial artist, who can fly and is unmatched with any weapon that they happen to be holding... and the general story is told in poetry forms. All they've done recently is put it to film.


Wuxia is a relatively new word for it, but the style of super-human fighter dates back over 2000 years in Far East story telling.

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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is loaded with terrible wire-fu, you'll find the same garbage in House of Flying Daggers.

You want movies with physical consistency such as Snake in the Eagle's Shadow or Legend of Drunken Master which put emphasis on specific martial arts methods, or something like Dragon Tiger Gate where the characters are specifically adapted to serve the comic book Rule of Cool.

As far as wuxia is concerned, I recommend Wing Chun.

All are different flavors of power fantasy in the martial arts genre.

Why is it garbage?

Omni hates anything Hollywood... and Crouching Tiger is the first of the Hollywood Wuxia movie to be made, with Hero and Flying Daggers being the second and third.

One look at my Top 10 will tell you that's ridiculous. What I hate is pretentious romantic narratives and jarringly obvious wirework.

You want a character to look like they can fly, or move with superhuman grace, hell, Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain did it better.

Just don't be crap and recognize when a movie's being crap. If a character is making overly parabolic jumps or moving with the mid-air momentum of a pendulum you're doing **** wire-fu and **** wire-fu looks incredibly ridiculous, which as the OP says, violently clashes with the dead serious narrative.

Well, the reason why Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is worse than most classic wuxia (King Hu, Chang Cheh) is the same why, say, Kill Bill is worse than Lady Snowblood. Both rehash old ideas, put them into new, luminous cover, but lose a lot of heart along the way. The result is fun, but heartless. They may tribute these old films they take ideas from, but they almost never reach their level. There are some great modern wuxias, though. Tai Chi: Zero & Hero being prime examples.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

No.

No.

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