So, Shreyas and I chatted a bit today about what we want to cover in our Arthouse Wuxia article, enough that I think I can lay down a basic outline of what we'll probably cover. This isn't a draft yet, obviously, but'll let the rest of you know what we're up to and will be a self-clarification in my own mind.

Origins of Arthouse Wuxia

"Arthouse wuxia" is a term that I basically invented, as far as I know, to describe the series of movies that emerged from a bunch of converging factors.

The first factor was the cinematic style and storytelling tendencies of the so-called Third Generation of Chinese film directors: Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Wang Karwai, and a handful of lesser known (in the West) others. They dig tragedy and beautiful imagry. Watch To Live or Farewell My Concubine or Not One Less or Chungking Express or Ju Dou or 2046 any other film from those guys. Even some Western directors do films in this style when dealing with Chinese/Eastern subjects. Check out The Last Emperor or Kundun.

The second factor was wuxia, a traditional genre of fiction and action movie. Here's where I talk a little bit about the themes of traditional wuxia. Later.

The third factor was rising budgets, thanks to Western film companies investing in Chinese films, Chinese film companies trying to compete with Hollywood, moviegoing becoming more popular among the increasingly wealthy middleclass, and increased investment in movies by Chinese/Hong Kong/Taiwanese people with money. Directors now had the means to realize their distinct visions.

The Films Themselves

The obvious ones (to Westerners): Crouching Tiger and Hero. The soon-to-be-obvious-but-not-yet-released-in-the-West: Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers. The probably-will-never-be-released-in-the-West: Tsui Hark's The Legend of Zu. There are others that are arguable, and new ones are coming out every year (and will probably continue to do so, driven mostly by foreign markets and Chinese directors seeking to imitate Ang Lee's Oscar win).

The Components

1. Emotional trainwreck of competing, mutually exclusive goals among a cast of sympathetic protagonists. People end up dead or emotionally destroyed.

2. Sublime use of imagery, visual effects, and setting.

3. Super-fu.

4. Zhang Ziyi (a joke, mostly, though she is in all four of the films mentioned above and seems to be the stereotypical Arthouse Wuxia heroine).

Why Might You Want to Play in This Genre?

What's appealing about Arthouse Wuxia? Why are there a billion and a half indie games (or projects that aren't full games yet) that are busting at the seams to try to make this happen?

The Metasystem

So the bulk of the article is going to be Shreyas and I laying down a metasystem that you can tack on to an existing system, that'll help drive your game towards imitating Arthouse Wuxia. There are, of course, some systems that will be more appropriate for this than others. The ones we're specifically thinking about are D&D3, Exalted, and Dogs in the Vineyard.

Arthouse Wuxia is also a genre that would work GREAT in GMless systems (so maybe some crossreferencing to Emily's article?) because everything is ultimately character based and about reinforcing inter-character conflict, so throw in some strategic Author/Director Stance and some guidelines for scene framing and the GM can just disappear completely.

So far, it looks like the metasystem works like this (though we're still developing it:

1. A system of passions, which are goals that are mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each character has several passions that they persue, but which, in turn, damage the ability of other characters to persue their passions.

Example wrote: Flying Snow has the passion: Kill the King of Qin, no matter the cost.

Broken Sword has the passion: The Qin King cannot be killed.

Example2 wrote: Passion #1: Destroy the Flying Daggers rebels.
Passion #2: Make Xiaomei (who's secretly a rebel) love me.

You've probably already know this, but I tend to think of Wong Kar-Wei's 1994 The Ashes of Time as one of the first examples of this subgenre.

Actually, I haven't seen that one, Neel. So, I guess I'll be making a trip to the movie store tonight. Thanks for the suggestion.

Also, I've been thinking of ways to tie the article in with the other stuff that's going on. I mean, an obvious way is to talk about how Arthouse Wuxia would work in Unaris and Polaris (since Ben may be contributing some stuff from the Polaris development). I've been wanting to talk about the potential for "he swings his sword (hack: tower) at you" style play in Unaris for a while, and wuxia makes that feasible in way that it might not be otherwise.

Jonathan Walton wrote: Also, I've been thinking of ways to tie the article in with the other stuff that's going on. I mean, an obvious way is to talk about how Arthouse Wuxia would work in Unaris and Polaris (since Ben may be contributing some stuff from the Polaris development). I've been wanting to talk about the potential for "he swings his sword (hack: tower) at you" style play in Unaris for a while, and wuxia makes that feasible in way that it might not be otherwise.

Let me just say in passing that the old supplement to Champions called Ninja Hero lends itself amazingly well to this sort of thing. I ran two drafts of a Tang dynasty campaign -- rather cruelly called "Manifest Dynasty" and "A Tang in the Fire" -- and some of the kung-fu weirdness that John Kim and pals got up to was truly incredible. I remember the time John tried to swing around a cliff corner on a rope tied to a weapon, planning then to kick off the cliff and fly into the crowd with much coolness, and he screwed up royally and hit face-first (ouch). John bellowed, "Fall of the Cliff-Hugging Pancake!" and slid agonizingly to the ground. Brilliant!

I like crunchy for this stuff, I gotta say. And as you know, you can do all kinds of crazy things with the Champions engine if you put your mind to it. One of the best parts was that the system is sufficiently complicated and time-consuming that when a fight started, everything but everything was about the fight, with all the detail, for really amazingly large amounts of time. It was a blast.

Oh -- and my pal Mark once kicked over one of those big conical things with the zillion little Buddhas and candles to hit somebody, and yelled, "Strike of the Thousand Flaming Buddhas!" Naturally, he hit. I mean, with cool like that, how could he not?

Anyway. If you don't know it, check out Ninja Hero. One of the greatest supplements ever written. The "Shinobiyama" scenario -- yuppie ninja-students wearing ninja outfits in their belt colors (international safety orange, for example), the gift shop, etc. -- is worth the price of admission right there.

BTW, I've seen Zu here in the states. Crappy print, but not that hard to come by.

Jonathan,

A couple of thoughts:

1) How much of the emphasis of the meta-system will be on the “arthaus” and how much on the “wuxia?” I ask because I think it isn’t always all that clear which is what, in for example the Code of Unaris hack example, or in the notion that a bunch of games are just bursting to do it right. (I know your initial post is meant to be just a rough outline, of course.) To what extent, I wonder, are RPG designers trying to get the “arthaus” touch and to what extent emphasizing the wuxia part, or even really neither, but instead more the choreography/kung fu swordfighting without concentrating on issues like loyalty and keeping your word, without straining relationships, without a focus on the imagery. (Note that I don’t have an answer to the question myself; hell, I don’t know that I could sufficiently answer it even in my own designs that play around with the "genre.")

2) I think the most interesting part of the meta-system is the visual imagery stuff, the “shot” framing system. This is something that I think is really rich and open for exploration, as far as actually providing a scaffolding for players to work with that will help inspire beautiful visuals. For the most part, games so far have tended to just leave this part all in the hands of the players – just to pass the ball and say, “Ok, now you describe something great.” Some players are great at this. Others really struggle with it, with the weight of having to do it without any scaffolding.

This part is a huge issue of interest to me, actually. I’ve thought of a couple possibilities in my own games. I have a sub-system idea that I’ve toyed around with for Fist of the Assassin, that is one take on this (although it isn’t worked out yet). The idea was actually for the climactic moment of an assassination itself. The jist of it would be if the player gets a marginal success, the description of the results has to be messy bloody murder. It’s not clean, maybe not quiet either – basically, the mark is dead but it was butchery. Get a solid success, and the results can be described more abstractly, maybe without many visuals/images of the mark at all – the look on his face, the flash of the blade, stuff like that, but without the butchery and blood being all up front. Finally, get a great success and you get even more abstract, maybe not even showing the victim at all, instead using some kind of metaphorical visuals – say a shadow passes over the moon. Or the sun sets. Or whatever. Haven’t worked it out yet, but it’s a data point to compare your own notes against. I think your shot system, even just at a glance, has the potential to do this kind of thing one better.

3) Another thing that’ll be important, I think, is how the meta-system interfaces with different games. I think I can see how the passions themselves and the “shot” framing system will be relatively easy to develop as systems that can be used immediately with all manner of other systems, no problem. The kung fu pool itself, where things really have to interface with the system of choice, is going to be the hard part. I wonder whether you could design that as well as something that is integrated with the other elements of the Arthaus Wuxia system and which doesn’t necessarily have mechanical connections to whatever system someone is using it with. It produces changes in the SIS independently of those produced via the mechanics of the other game system. And maybe it has some kind of priority in the elements that it covers. This is all brainstorming, of course, and not very deeply thought out, but I’m thinking, say you use the regular game rules, like in Exalted you would use the charms and combat normally to produce what it produces. But if you have a bunch of kung fu points built up via the arthaus wuxia system, you can use those to make stuff happen that you couldn’t do with the mechanics of the other game, or at least not all at once. So it isn’t actually adding bonus dice or whatever to your Exalted rolls. It’s doing stuff like taking extra actions that are resolved using it only, or making extra changes to the setting or the situation that you couldn’t have done with Exalted. Basically it’s a way of breaking the rules.

So say I’m in a D&D combat, and I have some of these points built up in the Arthaus Wuxia scaffold. I take my five foot step and unload with a full attack of some kind, which does it’s HP damage as usual. At any point, I could pull out some arthaus points and make pretty important changes to the field of battle. Like I could use them to have my character move anywhere I want to, or I might have him run up a wall, or I might have a shadow cross the moon while I leapt over my foe, or whatever. And that would just happen, and we’d move the figures accordingly. Or I could do my full attack and then spend some of my Arthaus Wuxia afterword to say that my guy then springs back and floats across the river, putting it between myself and my opponent. Or whatever. And the only way for my opponent to even keep up would be to have Arthaus Wuxia pool in effect as well, which could be used to keep up with me.

So all that is to say, I think it’d be most interesting of the metasystem doesn’t interface mechanically with other game systems in a concrete way, instead interfacing directly with the SIS according to its own rules. You might even be able to spend X points, for example, to just destroy your foe, who couldn’t do anything about it if they didn’t have the points to also mess with the SIS directly.

This may be similar to what you were already thinking. I’m intrigued by the possibilities of a meta-system that works with any RPG you want to use it with. I think something with its own internal logic that is used alongside the system is one interesting way to get around the problems of making things compatible with all manner of games on a case-by-case basis.

Also, there’s an interview with Ang Lee and James Shamus here from before Crouching Tiger was released that has some interesting information about the early developments of the arthaus angle you’re taking (which I am not sure I totally buy, actually, but I can buy in enough for present purposes ;-). You have to scroll down a ways to get to the actual interview, and it might take a minute to load because the link is to the internet archive page of it – the site itself is gone gone gone.

Rich

Rich, your thinking parallels what me and Shreyas were developing almost to a T. Yes, lots of games try to do wuxia because of stuff like Crounching Tiger and get the fu without the feeling and the visuals. We're trying to put the feeling back in games that already support a significant amount of fu (D&D3 has lots of fu at high levels, Exalted of course, and Dogs could have fu no problem, you just add in descriptions when you See/Raise, Unaris is a no brainer too).

So the accumulation of fu/tension is really about scene framing, not necessarily supernatural oomph, which maybe wasn't clear in the original. After all, you can still cast Magic Missile or pull an Exalted stunt without fu. However, with the metasystem tacked on, it's just fluff. It's not important to the story, really. There's no conflict. It's like when Nameless splits the brush to show off his sword skills. Cool and beautiful, but no real emotional power. However, when you throw fu down, everything gets jacked up a notch emotionally and effects wise, or even abstracted to an almost symbolic level. You could use "Balance" to walk on a cloud. You cast Magic Missile and a giant swarm erupts towards your target. You can Block tidal waves and whatnot. And you're doing it because your Passions have been threatened to the point that you can't take it anymore.

At least, that's the idea. All your thoughts are great. I'm definitely going to be re-reading them before we write up more stuff. Most people who imitate wuxia focus just on the surface level stuff, and we're definitely trying to dig a bit deeper.

These thoughts are no Athena, springing from my head fully-formed. I'm just streaming consciousness here...

As I see it, we have between 2 and 4 components (depending on how you count them) here, which can be recombined in various ways:

1. The passion structure.
1a. Zhang Ziyi, or wuxia-appropriate characterisation.
2. The visual style.
2a. Shot-framing system.
2b. Distinctive wuxia imagery.
3?. Fu.

Attacking these in reverse: The underlying system, I think, can handle the ubiquitous, non-emotional fu; this has the benefits that it opens up options for play and saves us work. All we'd need to do is discuss how you capture different feels with different games...Hero has a lot more non-emotional fu than Crouching Tiger does, to draw on the two examples that I remember clearly, so you'd need an undersystem with a strong fu structure in place to handle things like the split paintbrush and the collapsing scroll piles.

The visual style, I think, might be a better place to interface than the actual fu, if we are to subjugate the fu to that of the other system. The really amazing part of Crouching Tiger, visually, isn't really that everyone does cool martial arts, but the soothing whoosh of wind-tossed bamboo leaves and the broad shots of Jen and Li Mubai playing Jesus on the river surface. I really like your idea from Fist of the Assassin, Rich. I basically agree that this is the toughest and most interesting component to tackle.

So another thing that Jonathan alluded to, but didn't say outright, is that some characters just seem more at home in the genre than others...this is basically a discussion in the use of Passions, but I think it's a little more subtle than just setting characters in opposition to one another—that Flying Daggers example where one character has two Passions that obliquely come into conflict, for instance. I guess that part of the importance of this article (It's starting to sound like a very lengthy article!) is that it's these complex emotions more than anything else that tie the movie genre together; I'm in conflict about whether it should be possible to lift them out of the other subsystems or not, even though I'm such a big detractor of subsystems in general. I just feel like a strong, stable emotion mechanic is so useful outside the visual genre that we're dealing with that we'd be doing something really valuable by making it independent. But at the same time, that risks making it less good for the wuxia application.

So, I'm going to ignore the current Presidential election stuffis and type up all my notes from yesterday, which I basically spent getting my thoughts together about this wuxia business. Shreyas just stumbled across something WAY WAY COOL (look in the Theory section under "Sword of Damocles") that might end up becoming the basis of the new Passion mechanic, but let me throw down what I was coming up with yesterday too, seeing as it's probably better to get everything out on the plate:

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Initian thought: a Fudge/Nobilis style table of feats, where the effects get wider in scope and effectiveness the more points you spend, and I leave it up to Shreyas to generate some points through Passions.

Why This Is Terrible: resource systems have severe failings if people don't know when and how to spend their resources; you give them freedom, yes, but freedom they can't utilize still isn't agency; it's a carrot they can never have, like the American Dream.

So what about automatically triggered cinematic effects [which could be causes by Shreyas' Sword]; generate the guidelines for what occurs and let them pick the exact content and how it fits into the existing SIS.

Is the scope of an effect directly connected to the shot, the mental picture in the mind? No. Example #1: Extreme Long Shot, overhead, of someone jumping over a lake. Example #2: Medium Close Up of someone's confused expression and, behind them and blurrily in the distance, a human form dropping to the ground on the far side of the lake.

Random Argonauts Thought: "damage" done during wuxia effects had no mechanical correlation in HP/Fallout/whatever. You are only dead or injured if the wuxia effects declare that you are. In this manner, you can keep kung fu fighting after the base system says that you are dead or incapable of moving (Xiaomei at the end of Flying Daggers).

Normal combat is about muscles and fists. Wuxia combat is about passions and emotions. Inspiration: Time Combat in Continuum, Mind Hits & Soul Hits in In Nomine, Decking Conflicts in Shadowrun (so I hear).

Can you hit someone with a Passion, as if it were a spell or magic weapon or something? Instead of punching someone you hit them with Undying Love for My Father, which does no damage in the base system but has wuxia effects. Sort of Dogs-meets-Nobilis.

Targets: other characters bodies, other characters emotions, the environment, yourself, their weapons, specific body parts, specific events, etc. Anything that can be the focus of a shot can be the target of a Passion.

Are Passions invoked or triggered or both? Maybe you can trigger the invokation of Passions in other by threatening their Passions [more of Shreyas' Sword would be appropriate here].

Passions could just be additional Traits in Dogs, additional Charms or Feats in Exalted or D&D, perfectly weaving themselves into the existing system. You wouldn't have to give into your Passions, as in Dogs, unless they were directly threatened, but the Passionate would almost always have an advantage of someone who was holding back their Passions, since they can step outside of the base system and take action. The Passionate are not limited by what is possible.

Towards a Scene/Shot Framing System

So you and the other player roll a bunch of dice. 4-sided would be better, but 6-sided would be easier to find. Each player needs a different color. Let's say it works out like this:

Jonathan: 1 1 1 2 3 4 4 6
Shreyas: 1 2 2 4 5 5 5 6

Now you put all the dice in order, with one player getting precendent somehow. Let's say that Shreyas has precedent.

1 111 22 2 3 4 44 555 6 6

Each die is a shot. Each grouping of the same number (all the 1's, all the 2's, etc.) is a sequence, a series of shots on the same general subject. All the dice together are the scene. Once you sun out of shots, the scene is over and a new scene begins.

Maybe when you do your shot, you pick up the die and roll it, which gives you what kind of shot it is:

1 - ELS (Extreme Long Shot)
2 - LS (Long Shot)
3 - MS (Medium Shot)
4 - CU (Close Up)
5 - MCU (Medium Close Up)
6 - ECU (Extreme Close Up)

But then that kind of screws up the chance for natural progressions in shots, where you slowly move in or draw out according to the demands of drama. But maybe the randomness would be okay. Who knows.

Also not clear: who determines the subject of a particular sequence. Maybe the player who doesn't get precedence can choose the subject? Maybe they can alternate between having precedence in a sequence and choosing the subject? Maybe the person with the most shots in a sequence can choose the subject?

Also I'm not completely satisfied with precendence. Maybe the person who has precendence can rotate? How often? Every scene? Every sequence? I also wish there was an easy way to mix up your shots in a scene, so you might have a -- 11111 -- arrangement. These are all kinks that need to be worked out.

Also, still don't know where these dice are coming from. Maybe Shreyas can get the Passions involved to tell us how many dice each person gets to draw on. Dice here tell us several things: more dice means more shots and therefore more control of a scene, but more shots also mean that a scene is either A) very fast, since action sequences take lots of shots, or B) very long and very important, needing additional shots.

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I've got a bunch more stuff, but that's all the system-related bits. The rest is an outline of how to structure the article, which I'll try to post later. I also just surfed around and gathered a bunch of info on cinematography and different types of shots, which I'm planning to read and process tonight, assuming I'm not distracted by these friends who want to go out to a bar.

Shreyas, your copy of House of Flying Daggers is in the mail, so hopefully you'll get it in the next few days and we can use it as background.

More of my work from the past few days:

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Arthouse Wuxia Outline

Fei Xue: Why didn’t you deflect my sword?
Can Jian (with her sword stuck in him): This way, you’ll believe me. (Hero, 2002).

The emerging film genre that could be dubbed "arthouse wuxia" developed from the confluence of several independent factors: the tradition of supernatural martial heroes in Chinese fiction and cinema, the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers following the market into popular genres, and the warm reception and subsequence financing of these projects by the West.

Paragraph on the wuxia tradition in literature.

A few paragraphs on the history of wuxia cinema up until the early 90's, Tsui Hark, Yuen Wuping.

Paragraph on the Fifth Generation of directors + Wang Karwai.

Paragraph on Chinese art films and the market response, East and West.

A paragraph on each of the arthouse films.

Arthouse Wuxia:
The Ashes of Time (Dong Xie Xi Du), Wang Karwai, 1994.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo Hu Cang Long), Ang Lee, 2000.
Hero (Ying Xiong), Zhang Yimou, 2002.
House of Flying Daggers (Shi Mian Mai Fu), Zhang Yimou, 2004.

A paragraph on the critical elements of arthouse wuxia.

A paragraph on the czech word, litost, which is the essential emotion of arthouse wuxia characters, a kind of vengeful self-destructive passionate angst.

Roleplaying’s attempt to recreate wuxia.

Roleplaying Wuxia:
Oriental Adventures, AD&D, Gary Gygax, 1989.
The Ultimate Martial Artist, Hero System, Steven S. Long, 1994.
Mystic China, Ninjas & Superspies, Erick Wujcik, 1994.
Hong Kong Action Theater!, Gareth-Michael Skarka, 1996.
Feng Shui, Robin D. Laws, 1996.
Kindred of the East, White Wolf, 1998.
Exalted, White Wolf, 2001.
Oriental Adventures, D&D3, James Wyatt, 2001.
Refreshing Rain, Shreyas Sampat, 2002.
Wushu, Daniel Bayn, 2003.
Pagoda, Jeffrey Schecter, 2004.

Our new system/meta-system, whatever it ends up looking like.

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Additional Bibliography

Expensive Wuxia:
A Man Called Hero (Zhong Hua Ying Xiong), Andrew Lau, 1999.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo Hu Cang Long), Ang Lee, 2000.
The Legend of Zu (Zu Shan Zheng Zhuan), Tsui Hark, 2001.
Shaolin Soccer (Shao Lin Zu Qiu), Stephen Chow, 2001.
Hero (Ying Xiong), Zhang Yimou, 2002.
The Twins/Vampire Effect (Qian Ji Bian), Dante Lam, 2003.
The Twins Effect II (Qian Ji Bian II: Hua Du Da Zhan), Patrick Leung, Corey Yuen, 2004.
House of Flying Daggers (Shi Mian Mai Fu), Zhang Yimou, 2004.
Kung Fu Hustle (Gong Fu), Stephen Chow, 2004.

Wuxia action choreography was developed and, eventually, sold to the West by a handful of individuals, most prominently: the Yuen Brothers and Tony Ching.

Yuen Wuping (action choreographer):
Drunken Master (Zui Quan), Yuen Wuping, 1978.
Once Upon a Time In China (Huang Fei Hong), Tsui Hark, 1991.
Iron Monkey (Shao Nian Huang Fei Hong: Zhi Tie Ma Liu), Yuen Wuping, 1993.
Wing Chun (Yong Chun), Yuen Wuping, 1994.
Fist of Legend (Jing Wu Ying Xiong), Gordon Chan, 1994.
The Matrix Trilogy, The Wachowski Brothers, 1999-2003.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo Hu Cang Long), Ang Lee, 2000.
The Legend of Zu (Zu Shan Zheng Zhuan), Tsui Hark, 2001.
Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004.
Kung Fu Hustle (Gong Fu), Stephen Chow, 2004.

Yuen Cheungyan (action choreographer):
Charlie’s Angels, McG, 2000.
Daredevil, Mark Steven Johnson, 2003.
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, McG, 2003.

Tony Ching (action choreographer):
A Chinese Ghost Story (Qian Nü You Hun), Tony Ching, 1987.
The Swordsman II (Xiao Ao Jiang Hu Zhi Dong Fang Bu Bai), Tony Ching & Stanley Tong, 1991.
Dr. Wai and the Scripture with No Words (Mao Xian Wang), Tony Ching, 1996.
Shaolin Soccer (Shao Lin Zu Qiu), Stephen Chow, 2001.
Hero (Ying Xiong), Zhang Yimou, 2002.
House of Flying Daggers (Shi Mian Mai Fu), Zhang Yimou, 2004.

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I'm going to begin working from this over the weekend and hopefully have a draft of the background section by Sunday or Monday, which I'll then send to Shreyas for him to add/edit/flesh out. Then we can nail down the system and tack that on to the end. Obviously, as I write the thing, some of these "a paragraph on ____" will stretch to two or three, especially as Shreyas gets his chance to add stuff on.

Any further suggestions for the bibliography would be really helpful, both in roleplaying and cinema (and heck, if anybody's got a good grasp of wuxia literature that would be a HUGE help, cuz I'm going to have to trust what I can find through Google). I know Chris mentioned Ninja HERO, but I couldn't find info on it anywhere.

Those paying attention will notice that I don't really consider The Legend of Zu to be arthouse wuxia anymore. After watching a whole bunch of recent wuxia that I bought yesterday, I think the "expensive wuxia" is a catagory of its own, and doesn't necessarily share the artistic sensibilities of Ang Lee, Wang Karwai, and Zhang Yimou's contributions to the genre. See A Man Called Hero or The Twins Effect I & II for a great example of really-top-notch-but-not-artsy wuxia, which is what I've basically decided The Legend of Zu is. It's entertainment first, not art.

Strangely, I also stumbled across a very strange wannabe arthouse wuxia film called The Legend of the Flying Swordsman (Xiao Li Fei Dao), where the actors are second-rate, the design looks like a gothy Korean music video, the script jumps all over the place and wants to be indy, and everybody dies in the end. I'm of two minds about making reference to it (I can't find it listed on IMDB or anywhere else), but I think it would be a great example of how NOT to do arthouse wuxia. We'll see.