Final Portfolio

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: What Makes it Successful?

When I first watched the film “Crouching Tighter, Hidden Dragon”, I understood why my professor said people from mainland China did not like it. Personally speaking, this movie was not as good as other martial arts I watched before. However, this movie was the first Chinese language film that attracted a mass American audience and it had so many awards. It made me wonder why this film could attract so many audiences from the overseas audience. The first reason I think up is the content of the movie is from martial arts fiction which was very popular in China. When the fiction becomes visualize, it must attract many readers. Second, the martial arts film from China can trace back to Bruce Lee which gave a huge impression to people around the world. Fighters in the film perform Chinese-style Kung Fu which is very different from other action movies. Moreover, the shooting style and the use of new film technologies make the film more realistic. For example, when the camera changes angles frequently, it makes the fighting scene more intense. After I read the article about this film which was written by Klein, Christina, I know we can learn a lot from the background of the film. She mentions the word “globalization” and China becomes more powerful in the world. She viewed the martial arts film from China is “an act against martial arts from Hollywood” (Crouching tiger, hidden dragon: A diasporic reading). As we know, Hollywood’s film production has been dominated the movie industry for several decades. The audience needs something different and fresh. So, Chinese martial arts film become one of the forces that act against Hollywood.