Handmade heroics

Actress Chen Lijun, who plays Ayuya, says her film debut was a profound learning experience. Drawing on two decades of training in traditional opera, the 33-year-old Yueju Opera star completed 32 scenes in just 11 days of intense filming. Among the toughest challenges was shooting in the desert, where surface temperatures reached as high as 55 C.

In one standout scene, her character charges out of a rolling sandstorm on horseback, bends down to bite off one side of an arrow's fletching — altering its trajectory — and takes down a shielded enemy. The moment has helped propel Chen to greater popularity.

"Traditional opera shares a deep connection with Chinese cinema,"Chen says, pointing out that China's first-ever film, Dingjun Mountain (1905), was a recording of the famous Peking Opera of the same name, and that many early action actors in the Hong Kong film industry came from opera troupes.

Still, she found that her stage-trained martial arts movements were too graceful and stylized for the screen. For the film, she was required to fight with greater toughness and realism, delivering raw, punch-by-punch intensity.

"Some netizens have jokingly called it a 'handcrafted' film in the age of special effects and artificial intelligence. Behind it lie the sweat, dreams and passion of countless action performers," says Chen.

For many insiders and film critics, the movie — featuring a stellar cast that includes action stars like Jet Li and Nicholas Tse — has revived the wuxia genre, which has struggled over the past two decades. It also serves as a tribute to old-school filmmaking techniques in an era when action sequences can be generated by computer in a short time.

Doris Pfardrescher, CEO of Well Go USA Entertainment, an American company in charge of the film's distribution in the United States, told China Daily that the film has clearly connected not only with overseas Chinese audiences but has also crossed over to reach a broader base of foreign fans enthusiastic about martial arts cinema.

She says the success lies in various elements, from having legendary names like action star Jet Li to Yuen, whose reputation carries considerable weight with audiences who appreciate authentic martial arts filmmaking.

"Films like this show there is still a strong international appetite for well-made action movies, especially when they deliver big spectacles and exciting choreography that audiences can't easily get from short-form or streaming content. Even with the rapid changes in the industry — AI, short-form video and evolving viewing habits — we still believe theatrical releases have an important place," she says.