Director Yuen Woo-ping revives the wuxia blockbuster with Blades of the Guardians
Hong Kong martial arts choreographer and director Yuen Woo-ping returns with an epic wuxia, starring Wu Jing and Nicholas Tse
It has been more than seven years since Yuen Woo-ping last directed a feature film.
In the sprawling plot, Dao Ma fights rival bounty hunters, soldiers from several clans, former friends and allies, and Shu the “Jade-Faced Ghost” (Yosh Yu Shi), a notorious swordsman who eventually joins him on his journey.
Biao Ren (or Blades of the Guardians in English), the source material, first appeared in 2015. Now collected into a dozen volumes, the series has been seen by millions on apps and streaming platforms, adapted into an animated television series and translated into Japanese and German.
“The graphic novels are rich with details and characters,” Yuen tells the South China Morning Post. “We tried to stay true to the characters and major plot points in the series, but due to [the runtime constraints of a film], there could be a lot more to explore.”