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Even after directing a pre-MCU superhero movie, adapting an "unfilmable" book, and pushing incipient digital technology to its limits, Ang Lee still considers Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon "the most difficult movie [he's] ever made."The Oscar-winning wuxia blockbuster, which was released widely in the U.S. 20 years ago Tuesday (an anniversary marked by a new limited edition 4K Blu-ray), had a notoriously grueling production: A draining five-month shoot across China, with an international cast that struggled to master the Mandarin-language dialogue, and audacious fight choreography and stunts, with the actors hoisted into the air on wires to appear unencumbered by gravity in action scenes."It was really an adventure, [with] a lot of frustrations," Lee tells EW two decades later. But at the end of the day, you watch the movie, and I think we accomplished something."Crouching Tiger, which tells the tale of two martial arts masters (Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh), a rebellious governor's daughter (Zhang Ziyi), and a legendary sword, was Lee's attempt to "fulfill [his] childhood dream." It blended the pulpy martial arts films and novels he loved growing up with the nuanced characters and storytelling he'd become known for as a filmmaker — "Sense and Sensibility, but with kick-ass," as Lee puts it."I had my fantasies since childhood," the Oscar-winning director says. It would look better this way, that way.' So I have a lot of things in my head." The film took "everything I was dreaming of," he adds with a laugh, "and put it in one pot."In doing so, Lee was taking on a genre with a long history and well-established conventions in Chinese culture. (Crouching Tiger pays explicit homage to such classic martial arts films as A Touch of Zen and Come Drink With Me, and is based on a wuxia novel from the 1940s.) It's another reason the film was so challenging, Lee says: his ambitious concept was extremely unusual at the time."I bent [the genre]. I learned to respect that, and I still try to bring what they do [to my films]."Making Crouching Tiger also transformed Lee's conception of martial arts as a genre and an art form. We're a film community."And that legacy only adds to the joy of seeing his childhood fantasy fulfilled, his excruciating work paid off, which still resonates strongly two decades on."It's one of those things that, you just feel wonderful, [like] life is worth living," Lee says of Crouching Tiger's success.
As said here by Tyler Aquilina