Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001)
12 Jan 2001 ● English ● 2 hrs 0 mins
In 17th-century China, Li Mu Bai, a great warrior decides to turn in his sword, the Green Destiny to a treasured friend. When the sword is then stolen, it is up to him to retrieve it. At the same time he is trying to avenge his master's death by the evil Jade Fox.
He is joined in his quest by Shu Lien, the un-conceded love of his life. During all of this, they are introduced to Jiao Long Yu, the mysterious and beautiful daughter of a well known family. She is the mysterious link to all these tales. Magical and mysterious, this martial arts drama is also a timeless love story.
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Yun-Fat Chow, Ziyi Zhang
Crew: Ang Lee (Director), Peter Pau (Director of Photography), Dun Tan (Music Director)
Rating: U/A (India)
Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Romance
Release Dates: 12 Jan 2001 (India)
Did you know? The film's action choreographer, Woo-Ping Yuen, was also responsible for the fighting sequences in The Matrix (1999) and its progeny. Read More
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as Yu Shu Lien
as Master Li Mu Bai (as Chow Yun Fat)
as Jen Yu (Mandarin version) / Jiao Long
as Lo 'Dark Cloud' / Luo Xiao Hu
as Police Inspector Tsai / Prefect Cai Qiu
as Governor Yu
as De Lu
as Gou Jun Pei
as May
as Jade Fox
as Maid
as Sir Te
as Auntie Wu
as Bo
as Madame Yu
Direction
Director
First Assistant Director
Second Assistant Director
Production
Producer
Production Company
Co-Producer
Executive Producer
Associate Producer
Line Producer
Distribution
Distributor
Camera and Electrical
Director of Photography
Still Photographer
Key Grip
Camera Operator
Gaffer
Sound
Foley Editor
Sound Effects Editor
Sound Re-recording Mixer
Stunts
Stunt Director
Visual Effects
Visual Effects Producer
Visual Effects Coordinator
Digital Compositor
Film Type:
Feature
Language:
English
Colour Info:
Color
Sound Mix:
Dolby Digital
Camera:
ARRIFLEX 435 ES, Moviecam Compact
Frame Rate:
24 fps
Aspect Ratio:
2.39:1 (Scope)
Stereoscopy:
No
Movie Connection(s):
Dubbed into: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Chinese)
Filming Locations:
Goofs:
Miscellaneous
Within the shots of forest and mountain before the sword-fighting scene in the trees, there is an electrical cable mildly visible gracing the side of a green mountain.
Audio/Video Mismatch
When the movie is spoken in English and Lo is talking about the legend on the wish mountain. He says that the man jumped to save his children. The English subtitles say it is the man's parents he was jumping to save.
Audio/Video Mismatch
When Jen is using her martial arts prowess to defeat everyone in the restaurant, her mouth is out of sync a lot of the time.
Continuity
When Jen stabs Lo with the arrow in Lo's cave, blood trickles out from a spot about two inches above the injury.
Continuity
During the fight between Yu Shu Lien and Xiou Long many floor tiles are smashed by Shu Lien. After Shu Lien discards her heavy metal weapon and continues to fight, the tiles appear repaired.
Continuity
During the fight atop the bamboo trees, the sky is sometimes entirely blue and other times entirely covered in clouds.
Continuity
In the scene in the cave where Jen's hands are tied, the loose ends of the knot change from shot to shot.
Continuity
When Jen and her mother are receiving wedding gifts from Sir Te with Shu Lien, the two older women are chatting with Jen standing plainly in the back of the room, facing the two women. In the next shot, Jen is seen turning to face the room from the balcony.
Revealing Mistakes
Male stunt double visible when Jen lands on the ground after using the "Xuan Piu" move.
Within the shots of forest and mountain before the sword-fighting scene in the trees, there is an electrical cable mildly visible gracing the side of a green mountain.
Audio/Video Mismatch
When the movie is spoken in English and Lo is talking about the legend on the wish mountain. He says that the man jumped to save his children. The English subtitles say it is the man's parents he was jumping to save.
Audio/Video Mismatch
When Jen is using her martial arts prowess to defeat everyone in the restaurant, her mouth is out of sync a lot of the time.
Continuity
When Jen stabs Lo with the arrow in Lo's cave, blood trickles out from a spot about two inches above the injury.
Continuity
During the fight between Yu Shu Lien and Xiou Long many floor tiles are smashed by Shu Lien. After Shu Lien discards her heavy metal weapon and continues to fight, the tiles appear repaired.
Continuity
During the fight atop the bamboo trees, the sky is sometimes entirely blue and other times entirely covered in clouds.
Continuity
In the scene in the cave where Jen's hands are tied, the loose ends of the knot change from shot to shot.
Continuity
When Jen and her mother are receiving wedding gifts from Sir Te with Shu Lien, the two older women are chatting with Jen standing plainly in the back of the room, facing the two women. In the next shot, Jen is seen turning to face the room from the balcony.
Revealing Mistakes
Male stunt double visible when Jen lands on the ground after using the "Xuan Piu" move.
Trivia:
This film was based on the fourth novel in a pentalogy, known in China as The Crane Iron Pentalogy, by wuxia novelist Wang Dulu.
In 2001, this became the first foreign language film to earn over $100 million in the United States.
"Crouching tiger hidden dragon" is a quote from Chinese mythology. It refers to hiding your strength from others; advice which is followed too well by the characters in the film.
The only martial arts film to date to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
The four main actors all spoke Mandarin, but with different accents. Yun-Fat Chow had a Cantonese accent, Michelle Yeoh had a Malaysian/English accent, Ziyi Zhang had a Beijing accent, and Chen Chang had a Taiwanese accent. Because of the difficulty some Chinese-speaking markets had with the voices, some markets actually had a dubbed version (into standard Mandarin) of the soundtrack.
While Ziyi Zhang's character is obviously highly trained & skillful in martial arts, the actress herself has never had any official martial arts training at all. Instead she uses her dance techniques to learn her moves in these scenes, as if they were a dance rather than a fight (which in terms of creating & filming them is actually not that far from the truth).
The film holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a "foreign" film. It was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Music (Song), Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Film Editing, and Best Costume Design.
Dun Tan had only two weeks to compose and record the musical score.
Taiwanese-born Hong Kong actress Qi Shu was originally cast in Ziyi Zhang's role of Jen Yu and worked on the film for several weeks, until her agent pulled her from the movie to do a Pepsi commercial in Japan. (She has since changed agents!)
According to Yun-Fat Chow, he had to do 28 takes of his first scene on the first day of shooting because he had such difficulty speaking Mandarin. When asked in an interview with Time how he felt about his Mandarin pronunciation, he replied "It's awful".
The film's action choreographer, Woo-Ping Yuen, was also responsible for the fighting sequences in The Matrix (1999) and its progeny.
The film is an adaptation of the fourth novel in a pentalogy, or five-novel cycle, known in China as the Crane/Iron Pentalogy and written by noted wuxia (kung-fu) novelist Du Lu Wang. The novels are "Crane Frightens Kunlun", "Precious Sword, Golden Hairpin", "Sword's Force, Pearl's Shine", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and "Iron Knight, Silver Vase". Much of the story is not about Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien; they are in fact secondary characters who only become important later in the series. When a comic-book adaptation of the fourth book in the pentalogy was slated, illustrator Andy Seto re-watched the film to get inspiration for how to depict the fight scenes.
The Green Destiny Sword used in the movie, along with other weapons in the movie, are made in Taiwan. The swordsmith is actually a neighbor of Ang Lee in his current residence in Tainan, Taiwan.
A computer mock-up of what Yun-Fat Chow would look like as a bald man was generated before the actor agreed to shave off all his hair.
Michelle Yeoh tore her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) during the shooting of an early fighting sequence and had to be flown to the U.S. for knee surgery. She returned to the set at different times to film non-action scenes until the knee had recovered.
In the first night scene, Bo meets two night-watchmen who later give two knocks on clappers/ rods, indicating that it was the 2nd watch of the night. The first watch begins at 7 p.m. and each watch is 2 hours long, so it was after 9 p.m when Jen first sneaks into Sir Te's residence. If we were shown how many times the night-watchmen then sounds the small cymbal/gong, we would know more precisely what time it was between 9-11 p.m.
At the cave scene, Lo sings a song. This song is in one of old Turkish languages (probably Uyghur lang) which still can be understandable in today's Turkish language. Something along the lines of: "............... yiriliyorida, gordum su guzel kiz havar guni, .............. bu guzel aylari, ey guzel kiz havali kiz" As far as I understand, it means; "............. while she was singing softly, I saw that beautiful girl when sun goes down, ...................... this beautiful months, You beautiful girl, cool girl".
Michelle Yeoh did not speak Mandarin, and the script was presented to her phonetically with help from Mandarin-speaking crew members - her Malaysian accent can be heard throughout. Yun-Fat Chow did speak Mandarin (his first language is Cantonese) but native Mandarin speakers thought his accent strained and overdone.
The Green Destiny Sword Li Mu Bai carries translates to Green Dark World Sword - a place where the dead go. The Mu in Li Mu Bai's name translates to a kind of positive jealousy or longing - as in wanting something but probably never getting it.
The stamped documents shown by Shu Lien to the guards at the city-gate before she enters Beijing shows the date "In the of 43rd year of the reign of (Emperor) Qianlong, the sixth month, the eighth day", which is the year A.D. 1778, somewhere in June or July.
According to old Taiwanese newspapers, in 1959 there was a Taiwanese-speaking movie called "Luo Xiao Hu and Yu Jiao Long," an earlier adaptation of Du Lu Wang's novel. The old newspapers noted that this version was also a martial arts film. The leading actress, Hsiao Yan-Chiou, was originally traditional Taiwanese opera actress. After this movie released, Hsiao married, leaving "Luo Xiao Hu and Yu Jiao Long" as her last movie. This movie is thought to be no longer in existence now, and it seems to hold no connection with Ang Lee's "Wo Hu Cang Long" except the adaptation source.
Jet Li was originally cast to play Li Mu Bai, but turned the part down to appear in Romeo Must Die (2000). The role was next offered to Hong Kong singer/actor Leon Lai but he, too, turned it down.
In the hall where Shu Lien first meets Li Mubai, there are two large sets of couplets hung on the wall behind them. The inner couplet reads "(Right) The Tall (Qiao) Tree spreads thousands of branches, but don't they have the same roots; (Left) the Long (Yangtse) River flows into tens of thousand of distributaries, but all have the same source" and is about maintaining harmony. The outer couplet reads "(Right)In Spring and Autumn sacrifices, follow the Ancient Sages' Rites and Customs; (Left) Arraying Left and Right, trace One Family's Generations of Continuity" and is about maintaining tradition.
This is the foreign language film nominated for Best Picture to date with the most number of Academy Award nominations.
In 2001, this became the first foreign language film to earn over $100 million in the United States.
"Crouching tiger hidden dragon" is a quote from Chinese mythology. It refers to hiding your strength from others; advice which is followed too well by the characters in the film.
The only martial arts film to date to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
The four main actors all spoke Mandarin, but with different accents. Yun-Fat Chow had a Cantonese accent, Michelle Yeoh had a Malaysian/English accent, Ziyi Zhang had a Beijing accent, and Chen Chang had a Taiwanese accent. Because of the difficulty some Chinese-speaking markets had with the voices, some markets actually had a dubbed version (into standard Mandarin) of the soundtrack.
While Ziyi Zhang's character is obviously highly trained & skillful in martial arts, the actress herself has never had any official martial arts training at all. Instead she uses her dance techniques to learn her moves in these scenes, as if they were a dance rather than a fight (which in terms of creating & filming them is actually not that far from the truth).
The film holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a "foreign" film. It was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Music (Song), Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Film Editing, and Best Costume Design.
Dun Tan had only two weeks to compose and record the musical score.
Taiwanese-born Hong Kong actress Qi Shu was originally cast in Ziyi Zhang's role of Jen Yu and worked on the film for several weeks, until her agent pulled her from the movie to do a Pepsi commercial in Japan. (She has since changed agents!)
According to Yun-Fat Chow, he had to do 28 takes of his first scene on the first day of shooting because he had such difficulty speaking Mandarin. When asked in an interview with Time how he felt about his Mandarin pronunciation, he replied "It's awful".
The film's action choreographer, Woo-Ping Yuen, was also responsible for the fighting sequences in The Matrix (1999) and its progeny.
The film is an adaptation of the fourth novel in a pentalogy, or five-novel cycle, known in China as the Crane/Iron Pentalogy and written by noted wuxia (kung-fu) novelist Du Lu Wang. The novels are "Crane Frightens Kunlun", "Precious Sword, Golden Hairpin", "Sword's Force, Pearl's Shine", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and "Iron Knight, Silver Vase". Much of the story is not about Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien; they are in fact secondary characters who only become important later in the series. When a comic-book adaptation of the fourth book in the pentalogy was slated, illustrator Andy Seto re-watched the film to get inspiration for how to depict the fight scenes.
The Green Destiny Sword used in the movie, along with other weapons in the movie, are made in Taiwan. The swordsmith is actually a neighbor of Ang Lee in his current residence in Tainan, Taiwan.
A computer mock-up of what Yun-Fat Chow would look like as a bald man was generated before the actor agreed to shave off all his hair.
Michelle Yeoh tore her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) during the shooting of an early fighting sequence and had to be flown to the U.S. for knee surgery. She returned to the set at different times to film non-action scenes until the knee had recovered.
In the first night scene, Bo meets two night-watchmen who later give two knocks on clappers/ rods, indicating that it was the 2nd watch of the night. The first watch begins at 7 p.m. and each watch is 2 hours long, so it was after 9 p.m when Jen first sneaks into Sir Te's residence. If we were shown how many times the night-watchmen then sounds the small cymbal/gong, we would know more precisely what time it was between 9-11 p.m.
At the cave scene, Lo sings a song. This song is in one of old Turkish languages (probably Uyghur lang) which still can be understandable in today's Turkish language. Something along the lines of: "............... yiriliyorida, gordum su guzel kiz havar guni, .............. bu guzel aylari, ey guzel kiz havali kiz" As far as I understand, it means; "............. while she was singing softly, I saw that beautiful girl when sun goes down, ...................... this beautiful months, You beautiful girl, cool girl".
Michelle Yeoh did not speak Mandarin, and the script was presented to her phonetically with help from Mandarin-speaking crew members - her Malaysian accent can be heard throughout. Yun-Fat Chow did speak Mandarin (his first language is Cantonese) but native Mandarin speakers thought his accent strained and overdone.
The Green Destiny Sword Li Mu Bai carries translates to Green Dark World Sword - a place where the dead go. The Mu in Li Mu Bai's name translates to a kind of positive jealousy or longing - as in wanting something but probably never getting it.
The stamped documents shown by Shu Lien to the guards at the city-gate before she enters Beijing shows the date "In the of 43rd year of the reign of (Emperor) Qianlong, the sixth month, the eighth day", which is the year A.D. 1778, somewhere in June or July.
According to old Taiwanese newspapers, in 1959 there was a Taiwanese-speaking movie called "Luo Xiao Hu and Yu Jiao Long," an earlier adaptation of Du Lu Wang's novel. The old newspapers noted that this version was also a martial arts film. The leading actress, Hsiao Yan-Chiou, was originally traditional Taiwanese opera actress. After this movie released, Hsiao married, leaving "Luo Xiao Hu and Yu Jiao Long" as her last movie. This movie is thought to be no longer in existence now, and it seems to hold no connection with Ang Lee's "Wo Hu Cang Long" except the adaptation source.
Jet Li was originally cast to play Li Mu Bai, but turned the part down to appear in Romeo Must Die (2000). The role was next offered to Hong Kong singer/actor Leon Lai but he, too, turned it down.
In the hall where Shu Lien first meets Li Mubai, there are two large sets of couplets hung on the wall behind them. The inner couplet reads "(Right) The Tall (Qiao) Tree spreads thousands of branches, but don't they have the same roots; (Left) the Long (Yangtse) River flows into tens of thousand of distributaries, but all have the same source" and is about maintaining harmony. The outer couplet reads "(Right)In Spring and Autumn sacrifices, follow the Ancient Sages' Rites and Customs; (Left) Arraying Left and Right, trace One Family's Generations of Continuity" and is about maintaining tradition.
This is the foreign language film nominated for Best Picture to date with the most number of Academy Award nominations.
