A couple of weeks ago I made the trek out to Toronto to Day-Vuh’s place to watch a DVD called “Hero“. It stars Jet Li and Day-Vuh insisted it was an amazing film. He was understating it. Hero is just a magical piece of film making that unfortunately has yet to be released in North American markets. Here’s what some of the critics said about it:
“Zhang Yimou may have dipped his cinematic pen in mere genre, but in doing so, he has inscribed a masterpiece.”
— Richard Corliss, TIME MAGAZINE“A dazzlingly lensed, highly stylized meditation on heroism and the point at which individualism conflicts with the common good.”
— Derek Elley, VARIETY
Now there are some rumbling about there being a sequel. If you’ve seen Hero you’ll understand why I have a hard time imagining how they could do a follow-up film. Harry Knowles over at Ain’t It Cool News put it best:
I’m not really sure how anyone could possibly conceive of doing a sequel to HERO, I personally felt the ending was magnificently FINAL in it’s imagery and for the narrative itself. For those of you, who have seen the first film, please respect those that have yet to see the movie and that have been waiting patiently in the hopes that Miramax would in fact one day release this film which was nominated for Best Foreign Film… LAST YEAR.
See? Told ya he knew everything.
This is absolutely not true. Yimou’s next film is another kung fu epic starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau and Zhang Ziyi and he’s already gone on record saying that he will not do another kung fu film after that.
Plus three of the major characters are dead by the end of Hero. There’s not nearly enough left to do a sequel with … you could do more with the historical progress of things, but the character work is all over …