Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny

I’ll be honest; I have never watched any of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movies.

I’ve heard they’re good movies and I think I’ve had the interest, I just haven’t had the drive or the opportunity to watch any of them.

Suddenly on Netflix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny shows up and my friend says, let’s watch this!

I was hesitant because I hadn’t seen the previous ones and I didn’t have much of a context with what was going on. According to him, the story was very simple to follow and you didn’t necessarily need to watch the previous films to know what was going on. Was that actually the case?

Sword of Destiny centers on a renowned warrior named Yu Shu Lien (played by Michelle Yeoh) as she travels to a town in the midst of a war with a warrior clan called West Lotus. This town has in its possession a legendary sword called Green Destiny that is coveted by West Lotus and many people around the world. At the same time, a young man named Wei-Fang (played by Harry Shum Jr.) and a young woman named Snow Vase (played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo), come to the town to find them sword themselves. Wei-Fang is looking to steal the sword for his master Hades Dei (played by Jason Scott Lee) of the West Lotus, while Snow Vase is looking to steal the sword to defeat Hades Dei herself.

Wei-Fang is captured but he warns Shu Lien of Hades and his army coming to steal the sword for himself.

In order to protect the sword, a contract is put out to mercenaries willing to come and defend the sword, and that contract goes out to a warrior named Silent Wolf (played by Donnie Yen). He gathers a group of mercenaries to come and defend the sword. The rest of the movie is them defending this sword, good guys versus the bad guys, good versus evil, great visuals and a lot of sword play.

Let’s delve into those good things first. This movie is gorgeously shot. The landscapes and tones of the movie are really well done and just down right beautiful to look at. I also have to say that the swordplay and fighting scenes are just beautifully choreographed. It’s interesting because when I saw Kill Bill, I understood the exact kind of movie it was trying to recreate and now that I’m watching a movie like that, I understand a lot of the nuances and style of the film. I don’t think this movie would have seemed as significant if I hadn’t watched Kill Bill first, so I have to give Tarantino credit for that one. At times it seems ridiculous, but once you understand the style of fighting they’re going for and you get used to it, it’s a lot more fun.

Another thing worth mentioning is that it is very good to see a movie that really gives a lot of roles to Asian actors. I wasn’t a huge supporter of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, but I do recognize that Hollywood just doesn’t give the same opportunities to actors of color that they do white performers. Seeing a movie like this that is all Asian actors is really encouraging to see. I’d like to more roles open up for performers of all races and not require the movies to be Asian martial arts movies. However, this is a good start and a good jumping off point as Netflix does reach a larger audience.

However, while there are a lot of good things about this movie, I will say there are a lot of not so great things about this movie.

The first thing is that the story and a lot of the characters are pretty one note and simplistic. I will say there might be a little bit of a benefit for a simple story as it can portray the narrative as more of a legend. I don’t know if that’s really what they were going for, but having a simple story and simple characters creates it more as a story you might tell around the fire or before bed. However, if you’re talking about a major motion picture, it’s good to have a little more complex characters.

And when you have pretty one note characters, some of that is on the script, but another part of that is on the performers themselves. And with the exception of a couple characters, the actors in this movie don’t really give the best performances.

On top of that, I’m not totally sure if this is a sequel or if it’s a movie that stands on its own. I’m pretty sure Michelle Yeoh’s character is a returning character from the last movies but am I supposed to watch those movies first? Are there characters that I could keep track of better if I had watched the previous movies first? 

I’m not totally sure if this is a complaint or just something I would have rather seen, but I was actually surprised on the lack of violence I actually saw in this movie. For being a movie with a lot of sword play and a lot of extras getting sliced open, I thought I would have seen more blood. But instead a lot of it is done off camera leaving it to the imagination.

Now I’ve seen this done before and depending on how you do it, it can be done really well. Sometimes you really don’t need that R-rated violence and it’s almost more graphic if you don’t see guts flying everywhere.

However, I feel like this movie maybe could have used some more graphic violence, and could have used some blood. While some movies use that PG-13 fighting scenes to make it even more intense, I feel like this movie could have and should have gone for a more Rated R stance and shown some people dying horribly by swordplay.

I understand if the movie was going in a way that has worked for them in the past (again, I haven’t seen any of the other Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movies) but I personally would have liked to see them take advantage of Netflix in this version.

But going back to the simplicity of the story. On top of the movie being simplistic, I feel like it just wrapped up way too conventionally. Bad guys and good guys fight, good guys are victorious. I think these days we like movies that the good guys can win, but it either has to be at great cost, or they had to have worked really hard to make sure everyone got out alive.

This movie unfortunately wraps everything together with a convenient red bow and you don’t necessarily feel like anybody really developed was lost. Sure people die at the end of this movie, but with the not so great writing and the bad performances, while it was a bummer some of the characters died, I didn’t feel it took a huge toll on me by the end of the movie. Honestly, the main reason I was sad some characters died was because I thought they just fought in a cool style and that style wouldn’t be done by that person. This was a bummer because again, this movie is gorgeous, even the fighting, and the loss of someone with a particular style makes the audience lose out on some cool imagery.

If you’re looking for an easy to follow story which is pretty simple with some sub-par performances, a lot of good fighting, and some great visuals, Sword of Destiny might be a fun ride. But if you’re looking for something more complicated, you can probably skip this one.

But those are my thoughts on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. Have you seen it? What did you think about it? What do you think I should review next? Comment and Discuss below. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as requests for future movies and shows I can review on this site.

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I’ll leave you with this. Again, I haven't watched the entire movie, but here is the trailer for the original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Maybe it will inspire me to watch it. Enjoy!