I got the chance to see the movie Hero. What an awesome movie. If you get the chance and you have at least a little imagination check it out!
I don’t think it has made it out in the states yet but it’s playing here in Japan and fortunately at Roppongi Hills it’s playing with both Japanese and English subtitles.
I was pretty skeptical when I went to see it. Athought I like Jet Li a lot many of his recent movies have been pretty weak. But, fortunately this movie was an exception.
Of course it will be compared to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and I’m sure many will consider it a kind of copy although according to the Internet Movie Database they were made the same year.
What makes it special, like Crouching Tiger, is it’s seriously and lavishly done. The art direction and cinematography are simply breath taking. The story is well done and interesting all the way through.
I know that some people just can’t get into wire stunts. I don’t get that. Generally those same people can go watch Spiderman swing through the city or Superman fly through the clouds or Trinity and Neo jump buildings but they don’t seem to be able to get into or imagine the idea that someone could be so skilled they could walk on water or jump through the tree tops. In fact while I was watching it there was one girl a few seats away that would giggle at every little idea that people could be so skilled.
Fortunately I can imagine that and get into that kind of world and so I can get into these kinds of movies. Especially ones that are so well done. I would say the wire stunts in this film are better than Tiger. They also used some CG to great effect for various shots.
This is a MUST see movie. I will definitely see this again. Hero is on my top 10 list of all time.
HERO was made one to two years AFTER CTHD. I caught it in Taiwan before the Chinese New Year. It has its moments and is a startling pro PRC-line revision of actual Chinese history (the emperor was usually depicted as a tyrant and selfish, but here his pushing outsiders away was portrayed as a loyal thing to China). It doesn’t handle the switching of POV’s as smoothly as RASHOMON, which it clearly owes a lot to (the film is heavily Kurosawa influenced, down to its costume designer) and I doubt Zhang Yimou read the original book where RASHOMON lifts its main story from.
It’s a stunning film with superb cinematography by Christopher Doyle (no surprise) and it’s a change of pace for Zhang (though he produced and appeared in the Hong Kong/Chinese co-production of the wuxia fantasy A TERRACOTTA WARRIOR with Gong Li a decade back).
It blew away CTHD, in my opinion, since CTHD was Ang lee’s plagerizing of the work of the late, great King Hu Jin-chuan, with a substantial amount of whole shots stolen from Hu’s masterpeice, A TOUCH OF ZEN (1969).
As for being an historial wu xia pian – I found it good but not impressive.
Watch ANY of King Hu’s work from the sixties to the mid seventies and I rest my case. Visually and aesthetically eh was doing this stuff when a very young Zhang was dealing with the cultural revolution as a kid, and when Ang lee was learning bu pu mu fa in his Taiwanese elementary school. Even Tsui Hark handles the wu xia better than Ang lee or Zhang Yimou. Of course, Tsui was an avowed fan of King Hu’s work (he even tried producing a “comeback” film for Hu in 1990, entitled SWORDSMAN, but his ego ended up conflicting with Hu’s and he tfired him, though his screen credit – and influence- remain).
Since the mofos at Miramax own the US rights to HERO, you may never see it in the US.
Cheers,
Django
I saw Beat Takeshi’s Zattouichi, it was kinda lame.
I can’t believe it was nominated for an award at the Cannes festival… or so I heard.
I don’t know if it was before the Miramax purchasing of the rights, but I know for sure it ran at a few of the art-house theatres here in Minneapolis late 2002/early 2003…
If history repeats itself, what would happen is that some American movie that is an exact copy of Hero would appear in the theatres, and then Hero would go straight to DVD…
Example? Disney’s Lion King (Tezuka’s “Kimba the White Lion”, Treasure Planet (Miyazaki’s Laputa)…
I saw Laputa and Disney’s “Treasure Planet”…explain to me how TP was an “Exact Copy” of Laputa?
I didn’t see Treasure Planet but I did see Atlantis which seemed like it was basically Laputa ripped off except in that it sucked ass and Laputa rules. I know some people see it as a rip off of Nadia but I found those similarities more superficial.
Same with Lion King vs Kimba. The similarites are superficial.
That topic reminds me of when I worked at Microprose. Microprose made a game about WW2 submarines called Silent Service. Some other company came out with a sub simulation game and like oh-my-gawd. They both had submarines, they both had screens full of gauges, they both had sonar screens, they both had torpedoes, they both had screens with maps of the ocean, the boss was freaking out, “they are ripping us off!”…NOT!
As they were both about submarines they are most likely going to have lots of similarities. The same is true of Kimba and the Lion King. In many movies about animals the main character walks up on some rock ledge of surveys the area below. I think there’s a scene like that in Bambi. If you happen to make an anime about a lion there are bound to be similarities. That doesn’t make them a copy
You can look at this page and think it’s a rip off
http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm
but give it a little more thought. Going down the pictures: I already discussed the first 2. The second 2 with the cub next to dad. Well gee, how many nature documentaries have I seen with a similar image? 3rd set, they are both cartoon lions and the both actually look like cartoon lions. What did you expect, one of them to look like a walrus? 4th set, show me a Disney movie where some characters did not stick out their tougues or eat something gross. 5th set, a character falls into a path of thorny bushes. Can use say “Song of the South” or “Sleepnig Beauty” or a zillion other cartoons? 6th and 7th set, some dangling from a cliff. It’s a pretty standard shot composition for that kind of scene. 8th and 9th, if I were trying to make a movie about the African jungle one of the first things that would come to mind is to have a stampede. They’ve been in several documentaries and even other Disney movies. 10th, remembering someone dead looks about the same in a ton of movies. 11th, clouds on the Serengeti Plain and seeing things in the clouds. Another common theme…
Zattouichi was a lot more entertaining than Hero.
You’re a hero if you die to unite your country (under an evil warlord) theme didn’t really do it for me. Artistically it was kinda neat, but the repeating everything over and over in different colors got kinda old.
Zatoichi had better characterization and story-sei. So what if the CG was dasai every now and then.
‘The same is true of Kimba and the Lion King. In many movies about animals the main character walks up on some rock ledge of surveys the area below. I think there’s a scene like that in Bambi.’
uh…maybe, but that is one of several remarkable similarities. there is also that simba was originally white, but disney animators knew that there would be trouble over that. there is also the main bad guy in Kimba and in The Lion King, i mean, Claw and scar? are you blind, deaf and just plain stupid?
want me to keep going?
micheal j fox initially thought that he was going to be in a remake of Kimba the White lion, Roy Disney referred to Simba as ‘Kimba’ in an interview he did on the radio when talking about mothers, animators initially thought that they were doing a remake of kimba, the name simba has often been ‘mistakenly’ said as kimba in interviews and other television shows that have noticed similarities.
go watch the episode of the simpsons where bleeding gums murphy dies, it is quite plainly said as kimba.
and the closest thing to bambi that either movie has is probably the fact that they both have animals in them.