Posted in : Movies , News| Tagged : action , Brigitte Lin , chinese film , Invincible Swordsman , Jin Yong , smiling wander , Swordsman 2,the proud , tsui hark , Wong Jong , wuxia
Invincible Swordsman pointlessly remakes Tsui Hark ’s Graeco-Roman Swordsman 2 which also wipe off a major part of the original movie that it a strike .
Article Summary
While we in the West are waiting forTsui Hark ’s blockbuster adaptation ofJin Yong ’s wuxia classicLegends of the Condor Heroes : The sheik , another adaptation was released in China and Hong Kong days before the self-aggrandising result opened , namelyInvincible Swordsman;itis , unfortunately , an utterly pointless and toothless remake ofSwordsman 2 , a hit produced by Tsui Hark and directed byChing Siu - Tung . The original was recut , you could say butchered , by Harvey Weinstein when Miramax take hold of the rights and retitledLegend of the Swordsman . Jet Li may be the lead , but the original version was a huge bang in Hong Kong and Asia and not only made Brigitte Lin an international ace but an LGBTQ icon .
Invincible Swordsman is A Complicated Remake of a Complicated Adaptation
BothSwordsman 2andInvincible Swordsmanare adaptations of Jin Yong ’s novelThe Proud , Smiling Wanderer , which had been given a straight adaptation previously in a Shaw Brothers movie in the 1970s . The wuxia story is about carefree swordswoman Linghu Jong , who gets drawn into a war between martial art sects , including his own , with the most powerful opposition , a castrate named Donfang Bubai , which translate into " Asia the Invincible " or " The Undefeatable East " . Asia the Invincible alter himself to read the magical martial arts from a mystical whorl . Asia the Invincible require to conquer all of China by defeating all the other martial prowess sects .
Tsui Hark vary Asia the Invincible inSwordsman 2into an androgynous female - present character and spew Formosan starBrigitte Lininstead of a homo . Jet Liplays wine-colored - loving hero Linhu Jong as he seek to avert the battles and battue of the soldierly arts world but gets sucked in nonetheless . He meet Asia the Invincible during a peaceful moment and slip her for a damsel . They become attracted to each other through their reciprocal sexual love of wine , each unaware they ’re supposed to be verify foeman , especially when she subsequently set up her programme of conquest and butchery into activity . Brigitte Lin ’s public presentation overshadowed Jet Li and the rest of the mold and made the photographic film a Brobdingnagian bang in Hong Kong and across Asia . It become Lin into an external megastar all over Asia and also an LGBTQ icon . Jin Yong reportedly hate the movie because Tsui Hark turning Asia the Invincible into a trans adult female changed the main drive of his original novel and tot up a love story that was n’t there before .
permit ’s be clear , Invincible Swordsmanis a remake of Swordsman 2 , not a close adaptation of the book . Shameless Hong Kong schlockmeister producerWong Jingseems to be troll buff of the original and Tsui Hark by remaking Swordsman 2 and releasing it before the premiere of Tsui Hark ’s new Jin Yong blockbuster which is arguably the biggest wuxia action at law blockbuster of 2025 . Wong Jing can farm and aim a beneficial movie when he need to , but this is not one of them .
That plot stay the same inInvincible Swordsman , which means Jin Yong would have hated it , too . What Wong Jing has done is made Asia the Invincible a curie woman , perhaps because LGBTQ characters are erased from Mainland Chinese movies and televisino . This fleece the story of the surprising and transgressive love story between Linghu Jong and Asia the Invincible . Despite a higher budget and slicker yield note value thanSwordsman 2 , this remake just feels more bloated .
Invincible Swordsman is Like if You Ordered Swordsman 2 from Temu
Brigitte Lin was one of the big Chinese stars in Asia before she retired in 2004 , and it wasSwordsman 2that shoot her to superstardom due to her androgynous looking at and steely blaze that do both human race and char , straight and LGBTQ , to fall in erotic love with her . There is no path a remake or recasting could surpass her because she played Asia the Invincible with the expressiveness of a classical silent picture actress where the slightest vellication or interchange in her face could speak volume . Kitty Zhang(dressed to seem like Brigitte Lin and ironically a Tsui Hark find when he be sick her as a Rosalind Russell - esque businesswoman in his early 2000s crank funniness about New Chinese womenAll About Women ) does n’t have Brigitte Lin ’s range or expressiveness and has zero chemistry with Pb actorTim Huangwhen they ’re hypothesise to be in love .
As of this writing , there is no information on whetherInvincible Swordsmanwill get a North American or European release . Thetrailerdoesn’t even have English subtitles though the release print do . It might be break up up by a banner in the US , but at the import , there is no tidings of a Western release . But it was fun to write about this because it ’s always fun to write aboutSwordsman 2 . You should just wait for Shout ! Studio ’s upcoming remastered re - release ofSwordsman 2instead .
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