The Legend of Zu
Unofficial Web Page 
zucecilia3.jpg (3847 octets) This page is dedicated to the second voyage of exploration of director Tsui Hark into the world of Zu before its release in the West. Last update 10/04/2002

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Hong-Kong cinema is a cinema that leaves a big part to imagination and poetry and that allows us to discover another culture. It's a cinema deep rooted in the Cantonese pop culture as well but that can still meet great intellectual and artistic requirements.

Introduction to Legend Of Zu
Weakened by two disappointing American co-productions and an exhilarating feature that didn't convince the audience (i.e. Time And Tide), Tsui Hark decided to come back to the world of Zu. Presented in the first place as a sequel of Zu: warriors from the magic mountain (1983), Legend Of Zu bears finally very little resemblance with it. Because, for a start, a sequel will usually be produced to take advantage of any commercial success from a first feature. Moreover, 20 years divide the 2 films and Zu: warriors from the magic mountain was one of Tsui Hark biggest commercial failures. Ignored by Far East audience, it has however acquired the status of cult movie in festivals from all over the world. Nowadays, it still remains a fairly unknown feature. Finally, the casting, the characters, the plot and the special effects from Legend Of Zu are really different from Zu: warriors from the magic mountain. They only share in common a world extracted from Chinese traditional literature. They offer different angles of approach.

A Phantom Trooper

Legend Of Zu is a kind of martial-art movie with Zhang Ziyi, young heroine from Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, and with martial-art director Yuen Woo Ping. One could suspect that Tsui Hark pulled a commercial stunt by hiring them.
Not at all. Legend Of Zu was shot before Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon was released. Legend Of Zu was shot in May 2000 and some scenes were re-shot in September 2000. At this time, Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon was only released in Far East Asia and didn't work very well in Hong-Kong. Tsui Hark could have not predicted its success in the West to take advantage of it.
The presence of Zhang Ziyi is merely related to the fact that the director had noticed her in Zhang Yimou's feature: The Road Home. Moreover, Zhang Ziyi's role is limited to about fifteen minutes in Legend Of Zu.
As for hiring Yuen Woo Ping as fight co-ordinator, it is one of the usual Tsui Hark collaborators. Yuen's work is very different from what he did in Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon. The Legend Of Zu does not present kung fu fights as such. The characters actually use magic powers during duels. Common fight choreography is then of no use.

Another easy approach to Legend Of Zu will be to compare it with Andrew Lau The Stormriders (1998) because the two movies associate 'wu xia pian' (Chivalry genre) with computer-generated imaging work (CGI). But The Stormriders used CGI in order to adapt the formulatic concept of the 'wu xia pian genre', initiated by Tsui Hark by the way, to the universe of the video games. Tsui Hark gave CGI a very different meaning in his feature. Many sequences with special effects were made to visualise the fantasy world from the ancient literature.

Red & Amnesia

The Legend of Zu is to be taken as a major cinematographic event. From an aesthetic point of view, the film is amazing. Some huge fight scenes contain hundreds of incredible ideas. Tsui Hark didn't choose the easiest way. He decided on the contrary to surprise the audience, to continue philosophical explorations of the topic, which are of first importance to him, and he decided to refuse any classical narration. The film will inevitably cause sharp and contrasted reactions. The Legend of Zu was fairly well acclaimed in Hong-Kong and proved that Tsui Hark refuses to comply with formulatic recipe from local commercial successes.
Good for us in search of originality and surprise!

We should simply wish Tsui Hark to be able to carry on his incredible experimentation because this guy seems to still have a lot to say and to show.

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Multimedia
Here are some videos available on the Internet and that show the incredible look of The Legend of Zu

VIDEOS
- Trailer 2 from promotional website
56 k / 300 k - real video or asf. link, click on the right button of the mouse and save as...

- The first trailer of Legend Of Zu: from http://www.ch5.tv/
6 Mo

- beginning of Legend Of Zu
2.5 Mo - video real - use realplayer, Mandarin version

- Making Of from http://www.ch5.tv/
streaming, format asf 308 kb/s, Mandarin language,VOSTA, 17 minutes!

- the first 2 minutes for those who don't have any quick Internet access
4,7 Mo, click on the right button of the mouse and save as...

- Screen savers: from The official taiwanese website
2,2 Mo

WALLPAPERS
- Wallpapers n°1 (800x600) from the official site taiwanais
- Wallpapers n°2 (800x600) from the official site taiwanais
- 8 other wallpapers from : promotional website

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Links to other websites

- Promotional website (chinese)

- Hong Kong official website (Chinese)

- Taiwan official website (Chinese)

- Article Mad Movies (French)

 

Written by Laurent Henry, Nov 2001

Freely translated by Thomas, Dec 2001

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