Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia film directed by Ang Lee and written by Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus and Kuo Jung Tsai. The film features an international cast of actors of Chinese ethnicity, including Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen. It is based on the Chinese novel of the same name serialized between 1941 and 1942 by Wang Dulu, the fourth part of his Crane Iron pentalogy. A multinational venture, the film was made on a US$17 million budget, and was produced by Asian Union Film & Entertainment, China Film Co-Productions Corporation, Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Edko Films, Good Machine International, and Zoom Hunt Productions. With dialogue in Mandarin, subtitled for various markets, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a surprise international success, grossing $213.5 million worldwide. It grossed US$128 million in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film produced overseas in American history.

The film was the first foreign-language film (it was filmed in Mandarin Chinese) to break the $100 million mark in the United States. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2000, and was theatrically released in the United States on 8 December. An overwhelming critical and commercial success, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won over 40 awards and was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 2001, including Best Picture, and won Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography, receiving the most nominations ever for a non-English language film at the time, until 2018’s Roma tied this record. The film also won four BAFTAs and two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Foreign Film. Along with its numerous awards, Crouching Tiger is often cited as one of the finest wuxia films ever made. The film has been praised for its story, direction, cinematography, and martial arts sequences.

Plot.

In 19th-century Qing dynasty China, Li Mu Bai is a renowned Wudang swordsman, and his friend Yu Shu Lien, a Machete female warrior, heads a private security company. Shu Lien and Mu Bai have long had feelings for each other, but because Shu Lien had been engaged to Mu Bai’s close friend, Meng Sizhao before his death, Shu Lien and Mu Bai feel bound by loyalty to Meng Sizhao and have not revealed their feelings for each other. Mu Bai, choosing to retire, asks Shu Lien to give his fabled 400-year-old sword “Green Destiny” to their benefactor Sir Te in Beijing. Long ago, Mu Bai’s teacher was killed by Jade Fox, a woman who sought to learn Wudang skills. While at Sir Te’s place, Shu Lien meets Yu Jiaolong, or Jen, who is the daughter of the rich and powerful Governor Yu and is about to get married. One evening, a masked thief sneaks into Sir Te’s estate and steals the Green Destiny. Sir Te’s servant Master Bo and Shu Lien trace the theft to Governor Yu’s compound, where Jade Fox had been posing as Jen’s governess for many years.

Soon after, Mu Bai arrives in Beijing and discusses the theft with Shu Lien. Master Bo makes the acquaintance of Inspector Tsai, a police investigator from the provinces, and his daughter May, who have come to Beijing in pursuit of Fox. Fox challenges the pair and Master Bo to a showdown that night. Following a protracted battle, the group is on the verge of defeat when Mu Bai arrives and outmaneuvers Fox. She reveals that she killed Mu Bai’s teacher because he would sleep with her, but refuse to take a woman as a pupil, and she felt it poetic justice for him to die at a woman’s hand. Just as Mu Bai is about to kill her, the masked thief reappears and helps Fox. Fox kills Tsai before fleeing with the thief (who is revealed to be Jen). After seeing Jen fight Mu Bai, Fox realizes Jen had been secretly studying the Wudang manual. Fox is illiterate and could only follow the diagrams, whereas Jen’s ability to read the manual allowed her to surpass her teacher in martial arts.

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Title.

The name “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is a literal translation of the Chinese idiom “臥虎藏龍” which describes a place or situation that is full of unnoticed masters. It is from a poem of the ancient Chinese poet Yu Xin (513–581) that reads “暗石疑藏虎，盤根似臥龍”, which means “behind the rock in the dark probably hides a tiger, and the coiling giant root resembles a crouching dragon”. The title “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” also has several other layers of meaning. On the most obvious level, the Chinese characters in the title connect to the narrative that the last character in Xiaohu and Jiaolong’s names mean “Tiger” and “Dragon”, respectively. On another level, the Chinese idiomatic phrase “卧虎藏龍” “Wo Hu Cang Long” (“crouching tiger hidden dragon”) is an expression referring to the undercurrents of emotion, passion, and secret desire that lie beneath the surface of polite society and civil behavior, which alludes to the film’s storyline.

Production, Casting.

The film was adapted from the novel Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Wang Dulu, serialized between 1941 and 1942 on Qingdao Xinmin News. The novel was the fourth book in a series of five. In the contract reached between Columbia Pictures and Ang Lee and Hsu Li-kong, they agreed to invest US$6 million in filming, but the stipulated recovery amount must be more than six times before the two parties will start to pay dividends. Shu Qi was Ang Lee’s first choice for the role of Jen, but she turned it down.

Filming.

Although its Academy Award was presented to Taiwan, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was in fact an international co-production between companies in four regions: the Chinese company China Film Co-Production Corporation; the American companies Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Sony Pictures Classics, and Good Machine; the Hong Kong company EDKO Film; and the Taiwanese Zoom Hunt International Productions Company, Ltd; as well as the unspecified United China Vision, and Asia Union Film and Entertainment Ltd., created solely for this film. The film was made in Beijing, with location shooting in the Anhui, Hebei, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang provinces of China. The first phase of shooting was in the Gobi Desert where it consistently rained. Director Ang Lee noted, “I didn’t take one break in eight months, not even for half a day. I was miserable—I just didn’t have the extra energy to be happy. Near the end, I could hardly breathe. I thought I was about to have a stroke.” The stunt work was mostly performed by the actors themselves and Ang Lee stated in an

interview that computers were used “only to remove the safety wires that held the actors” aloft. “Most of the time you can see their faces”, he added, “That’s really them in the trees.” Another compounding issue was the difference between accents of the four lead actors: Chow Yun-fat is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese natively; Michelle Yeoh is from Malaysia and grew up speaking English and Malay so she learned the Mandarin lines phonetically; Chang Chen is from Taiwan and he speaks Mandarin in a Taiwanese accent. Only Zhang Ziyi spoke with a native Mandarin accent that Ang Lee wanted. Chow Yun Fat said, on “the first day [of shooting], I had to do 28 takes just because of the language. That’s never happened before in my life.” The film specifically targeted Western audiences rather than the domestic audiences who were already used to Wuxia films, as a result high quality English subtitles were needed. Ang Lee, who was educated in the West, personally edited the subtitles to ensure they were satisfactory for Western audiences.

Marketing, Home media.

The film was adapted into a video game, a comics series, and a 34-episode Taiwanese television series based on the original novel. The latter was released in 2004 as New Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for US and Canadian release. The film was released on VHS and DVD on 5 June 2001 by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. In the United Kingdom, it was watched by 3.5 million viewers on television in 2004, making it the year’s most-watched foreign-language film on television.

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Box office.

The film premiered in cinemas on 8 December 2000, in limited release within the US. During its opening weekend, the film opened in 15th place, grossing $663,205 in business, showing at 16 locations. On 12 January 2001, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon premiered in cinemas in wide release throughout the US grossing $8,647,295 in business, ranking in sixth place. The film Save the Last Dance came in first place during that weekend, grossing $23,444,930. The film’s revenue dropped by almost 30% in its second week of release, earning $6,080,357. Internationally, the film took in an additional $85,446,864 in box-office business for a combined worldwide total of $213,525,736.

Cast:

Chow Yun-fat as Li Mu Bai
Michelle Yeoh as Yu Shu Lien
Zhang Ziyi as Jen Yu
Chang Chen as Lo “Dark Cloud” Xiao Hou
Lang Sihung as Sir Te
Cheng Pei-pei as Jade Fox
Li Fazeng as Governor Yu
Wang Deming as Inspector Tsai
Li Li as Tsai May
Hai Yan as Madam Yu
Gao Xi’an as Bo
Huang Suying as Aunt Wu
Zhang JinTing as De Lu
Du ZhenXi as Uncle Jiao
Li Kai as Gou Jun
Feng Jianhua as Shining Phoenix Mountain Gou
Ma Zhongxuan as Iron Arm Mi
Li Bao-Cheng as Flying Machete Chang
Yang Yongde as Monk Jing