Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (25 page)

Her second movie of 1994 signaled another change in direction.
Wonder Seven
was done as a favor to director Ching Siu-tung
, who was using the knock-off of
The Magnificent Seven
(which was, in turn, a knockoff of
Seven Samurai
)
to showcase an Olympic-medal-winning Chinese gymnast. Not surprisingly, the result was a mixed bag, to say the least, with Yeoh as a lovelorn villainess won over by the honest affection of a gymnast turned secret agent. After that, Michelle knew she would have to find more serious roles if she wasn’t to suffer the fate of Yukari Oshima
, Moon Lee
, Cynthia Khan, and even Cynthia Rothrock
— namely, to toil in increasingly cheap, unimaginative, exploitation movies for the rest of her career.

Michelle knew it could happen: after all, Yukari Oshima
had been in
Project S
, but only as one of many unnamed villains in the pre-credit sequence. So she put her extraordinary managers Terence Chang
and Chris Godsick
to work, and then waited for better scripts to come her way. In 1996 she appeared in two films — only one of which was even nominally an action film. The other,
The Soong Sisters
,
was an important, heartfelt drama that proved that Yeoh was more than a pretty face, a dancer’s body, and fast limbs. But she was also that, so her final, pre-handover Hong Kong film was especially disappointing.

Stuntwoman: The Story of Ah Kam
seemed made for Michelle. It was directed by the illustrious Ann Hui
, who was known for such powerful dramas as
Boat People
(1983). It also featured Sammo Hung
, playing an action choreographer. What could go wrong? Two things. First, the action was awful. Like so many movies about stuntpeople made by people who don’t use them much, the director seemed loathe to show the audience the way stunts are actually done — creating absurd continuous, multi-angle, multi-cut action sequences instead.

Second, and in a more personal vein, although Yeoh had suffered many bumps and bruises along the way,
Stuntwoman
was the only movie up until then in which she got seriously hurt … which was all the more unfortunate since the movie’s action is so ridiculous. After a completely unnecessary shot where she jumps from a bridge, Michelle landed badly, tearing ligaments, fracturing a rib, and nearly breaking her back.

“I felt my spine bend,” she told me. “I was afraid I had broken it in two.” It would have been terribly ironic, since she was just months away from one of the greatest coups in movie history. Only once before in action movies had an established action superstar allowed a veritable unknown to step in and share the spotlight. That was Jackie Chan
in
Supercop
. But lightning struck again for Michelle when the only action icon in the world greater than Jackie invited her to become “Double Yeoh Seven.”

That would be James Bond
, of course, in the person of Pierce Brosnan
, and the film was
Tomorrow Never Dies
(1997) — the eighteenth movie in the series. Reportedly, the movie was set to be called
Tomorrow Never Lies,
and the wife of a megalomaniacal media mogul was supposed to be sharing Bond’s bed at the fadeout. But the “Die” was cast because the filmmakers decided it sounded better and, for whatever reason, the media mogul’s wife was dead within fifteen minutes of her introduction on-screen.

The day before Michelle was to report to the set, she was at a party in New York celebrating her films. There, the rumor spread that the 007 producers were discussing cutting her action scenes, so as to not upstage their Bond and his then Bond girl. “Why hire me if they aren’t going to use me?” she was overheard as saying. But once Michelle arrived on set that story, true or not, changed. Roger Spottiswoode
, the director, and Pierce Brosnan
were both charmed and impressed by their new co-star, and the producers saw a prescription for a revitalized series. If many considered 007 out of fashion, then what about a woman who could believably match him kiss for kiss, kill for kill? No one had really been convincing in that role since Honor Blackman
’s Pussy Galore in
Goldfinger
(1964).

Thus the set was staged for one of the greatest introductions in the annals of action films, because, just years before, this sort of thing couldn’t happen to a white Anglo-Saxon, let alone a “woman of color.” And it wasn’t just the film world that accepted Yeoh with open arms; it was Madison Avenue as well. It was Michelle’s face, alongside Brosnan’s, in the cosmetic ads. It was Michelle who was standing next to Pierce in the supermarket beer standees. It was her character who was made into an action figure along with Commander Bond.

Rumors of an extremely difficult production were rampant, yet Michelle insisted that her fight scenes be choreographed by a kung fu pro, so they let her bring in ex-Venom Philip Kwok Choy, and even used him as a walk-on villain. If only the filmmakers had trusted him with Pierce Brosnan
’s action scenes as well. But veteran stunt arranger Vic Armstrong
, of
Indiana Jones
fame, worked on Brosnan’s battles instead. As a result, James looks old-fashioned, especially after the fine martial arts moves 007 showed in his first Bond outing,
GoldenEye
(1995). Sadly, the hoped-for finale in which 007 and the dully-named Wai Lin trade styles and skills, never materialized.

Even though director Spottiswoode chose to have the villain (ably played by exceptional actor Jonathan Pryce
) make fun of Yeoh’s kung fu skill without giving her a chance for an audience-satisfying response in the climatic battle, all could be forgiven (I suppose), since the crew was purportedly making up the film as they went along, and Michelle was so lovingly showcased otherwise. Then, to add monetary success to critical success, the movie was the largest grossing film in the series thus far, making more than $300 million worldwide. There was even talk of giving Michelle a parallel series to Bond, allowing a new 007-produced action movie to come out every year in a “boy, girl, boy, girl” sequence, but that was not to be (even when they tried it again years later for Halle Berry
’s character, Jinx, from 2002’s
Die Another Day
).

Rumors abounded that Yeoh had turned down roles in the
Charlie’s Angels
film series, a live action adaptation of the
Danger Girl
comic books, and even
The Matrix
movies, to concentrate on a long-term goal. Like her mentor Jackie Chan
, Michelle apparently wanted full control of her creative destiny. So deciding, she instituted Mythical Films, and set to work on movies that she could run completely. It wasn’t easy. She labored for years on just the right stories. And while she labored, so did another humble, unassuming, Taiwanese filmmaker named Ang Lee.

While Michelle was reviving her career in
Supercop
, he was starting his career with the thoughtful, effecting
Pushing Hands
(1992), about a Chinese taichi
teacher who unavoidably disrupts his family by moving in with his son and daughter-in-law in New York state. Already the director was showing the depth of his artistry by melding external taichi practice with internal taichi healing, as the teacher attempts to create a balance between his son’s responsibility and daughter-in-law’s resentment. As such, the director created one of the best “pure” kung fu films ever, although there is apparently no obvious kung fu in it.

When Michelle was starring in Wong Jing
’s forgettable
Holy Weapon
in 1993, this Taiwanese filmmaker created his first hit,
The Wedding Banquet
, a comedy of manners about a gay Asian man pleasing his parents with a sham heterosexual marriage. While Michelle was
Wing Chun
, he continued his career with the heartwarming (and mouth watering) romantic dramedy
Eat Drink Man Woman
(1994). As Michelle waited for better scripts, he pressed his advantage by making a sparkling, very English, adaptation of Jane Austen’s
Sense and Sensibility
(1995). And, while Michelle was cavorting with 007, this modest moviemaker stunned critics by making a powerful evocation of a lost American generation in
The Ice Storm
(1997).

Finally, after an underappreciated western (1999’s
Ride with the Devil
), this eclectic, extremely talented director finally decided to return to his cultural and cinematic roots by taking on both the wuxia
genre, and every inaccurate American film industry preconception about what the audience will accept. Bruce Lee
, Jackie Chan
, and now Ang Lee
(no relation) had been told: one, that Americans would never accept an all-Asian cast. Two, that U.S. audiences would never accept a subtitled film. And three, that Western filmgoers would never accept a film with women as the main action heroes.

The tragic romantic action film,
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
(2000), made lies of all these standard operating racisms, went on to make more than a hundred and twenty-five million dollars in America alone, and won four Oscars — as well as four British Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, five Hong Kong Film Awards, three Independent Spirit Awards, and many others. It was a suitable reward for a film that seemingly came out of nowhere, but was, in fact, the result of a long, arduous production that was fraught with setbacks — including the exit of its original male star, Jet Li
, due to a scheduling conflict.

Li’s loss was the film’s gain. Chow Yun-fat
replaced him, and, because he was so unskilled in kung fu, Ang and his choreographer, Yuen Wo-ping
, only really had time to teach him the bare necessities. That not only served to enhance the fight scenes of his female co-stars, but set him apart from them, since one sign of true kung fu masters is that they only move as much as they absolutely have to, rather than show off with elaborate displays of physical pyrotechnics. Or, as one world champion put it to me: “You ever notice that the louder they are, the less skilled they are?”

Further complicating matters was that both Chow, and his co-star Michelle Yeoh
, didn’t know the source material’s original language, Mandarin, which Ang insisted be spoken. They learned their scripts phonetically. Sets burned down and blew away. Cast and crew froze, sweated, and got lost in the desert. Each shot was an agonizing trial of multiple languages and cross-purposes. Not a frame was created with computerized digital effects. Instead, the actors were outfitted with thick cables, and hoisted from construction cranes. Like human yo-yos. they were lifted and thrown across ceilings, lakes, and trees — often to heights greater than sixty feet. Finally, Michelle got a serious injury during her first fight scene with co-star Zhang Ziyi
.

“I was doing a forward jump kick that I’ve done thousands of times,” she told
USA Today
, “but I had a mishap landing. My knee just gave out.”

Ang shot around her as she went for an operation and intense rehabilitation.
And when it was all over, after more than two years of intense work, they had only spent a bit more than fifteen million dollars, launched the career of the ethereal Zhang Ziyi
, and created a fitting culmination to the career of a woman who had never before played the villain: Cheng Pei-pei
.

“I’m the good girl!” she laughed. “But the film was very good, very important, so I did it.”

Very important, indeed. Not only did it introduce Western audiences to a genre the Eastern audience had come to take for granted, but did it with an artistry never before communicated. Despite the talents of King Hu
, Chu Yuan
, and all the others who made the genre famous, only Ang Lee
made that small, seemingly obvious, connection that explained why these seemingly normal swords-people could soar across the tops of trees and even fly: their bodies were doing what their hearts could not.

American, European, and Canadian audiences were invigorated by the soaring images that embodied the powerful passions of the exotic (yet somehow powerfully normal) swordswomen, desert bandits, perverse villains, and heartsick martial arts masters who filled the film. It was the first fully realized, universally understood kung fu “art film” — a great wuxia
movie, a wonderful tragic romance, and simply a remarkable film made by an exceptionally courageous and dedicated filmmaker.