Talk:Hero (2002 film)

message: Not quite sure how to fit this in but iirc itsak perlman plays the gorgeous and haunting violin. If I'm right he should get the credit.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wblakesx (talk • contribs) 22:41, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: By western culture. What Zhang wants to discuss in this film is the concept of "Xia", which is a unique concept in Chinese culture. "Xia" refers to people who are powerful (normally by strict martial arts training) and defiant against the ruling class. A "Xia" is normally an outlaw, and always uses his / her great power to help people, especially by punishing corruptions and reinstalling social justice. The concept of "Xia" is unique because many researchers believe it is an opposite by-product of the long authoritarian tradition in China and other east asian cultures.
The point of film is not whether Jet Li killed the emperor. Instead, it is that 1) he always behave on his own. he doesn't care what the emperor thinks or you western people think; he makes decision based on his understanding of his people (TianXia); 2) he proves he has the power to kill the emperor if he wants. He doesn't care about his own life, but he warns the rulers that they cannot do whatever they want because otherwise there are "Xia"s out there and one day another "Xia" can come to claim his head.
That's what a "Xia" means to Chinese culture. Sadly, few Westerners understand.
Sweeper77 (talk) 19:53, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Zorro, Robin Wood, Guillaume Tell, Hercules... and hundreds of others westerners (real or not) fit your description of "Xia", there's nothing unique on it besides the name, concept however is known since the beginning of times. Strumf (talk) 13:04, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: To Say This Film is Advocating Authoritarianism is A Big Misunderstanding

message: I removed this:
"However, Chinese viewers do not feel any discomfort over this ideological issue, due to a long formed historical and cultural imperative indicating that China must be unified. Chinese rulers in different periods have always attempted to unify the country, as they consider that political separation can only be temporary."
The writer is ignoring the views of the Chinese viewers who do not agree with PRC propaganda.
I re-added the above quote while adding "many" before Chinese viewers.  Chinese viewers should obviously not be treated as a monolithic category, but it is also undeniable that many Chinese viewers would not have thought twice about endorsing the message of a unified China.  To call the goal of a unified China "PRC propaganda" is to ignore over 2000 years of Chinese history.  It is undeniable that throughout history Emperors almost always viewed a divided China as a temporary situation that needed to be overcome.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.22.211.34 (talk) 14:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: "Chinese" values

message: I have never heard any such claim except for here and unless something is cited proving that the US military does indeed, get involved/support producers then I feel this should be deleted.
Edit: I guess it does happen, my friend showed me about the Pentagon's 'approval' of the Black Hawk Down script. I guess I was just gullible enough to believe that our military supported the freedom of expression clause in the US Constitution.
:Most Hollywood movies about the military are made with support of the Pentagon. The Pentagon knows the power these movies have they are willing to provide all kinds of support, equipment etc. Often the plots of movies are slightly edited at the request of the Pentagon to get the support and important services from the Pentagon. So Hollywood almost exclusively makes pro-Pentagon movies.
:Nevertheless, the U.S. does not overtly censor American media. In fact, the MPAA is not even a licensed, government-approved body. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.160.121.218 (talk) 00:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How's the US military get involved/support Hollywood film makers? 

message: The section "Cross-cultural translations" has this sentence: Also, near the beginning of the film, a place where games of Go are clearly being played is called a "chess house".
It certainly didn't look like Go to me; in the movie, large round stones were placed in depressions on a stone table using a fork-like tool. It looks nothing like Go, which uses many small stones placed by hand on interesections of lines on a flat table. Even if it was Go, translation is about making things clear to the foriegn audience, and using "chess house" for a place where people congregate to play a strategy game, even if the game clearly isn't chess, is clearly appropriate. I'm going to remove the sentence soon if nobody objects. - dharmabum 22:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Chess House" and Go 

message: This article section Political meaning and Cross-cultural translations seems to be politicized to criticize/oppose/defame the Chinese like by saying critics criticize something while not citing the critics that did so. Even the cited wikisource link is a dud. So, I'm moving the two sections into this talk page and a concensus should be reached whether it should be fixed then returned to the article page or deleted from this talk page entirely.
Snippets begins in nowiki:
==Political meaning==

Although inspired in part by the success of films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the film failed to be as successful as its makers hoped, in part due to criticism overseas at a perceived pro-totalitarian and pro-Chinese reunification subtext. Critics also cited as evidence the approval given to the film by the government of the People's Republic of China. These critics argue that the ulterior meaning of the film is the triumph of security and stability over liberty and human rights and that the concept of all under heaven (translated in the English-subtitled release as "Our Land") is used to justify the incorporation of areas such Tibet and Xinjiang within the People's Republic of China and promote the reunification of Taiwan with China.
Additionally, the future first Emperor of China is portrayed in a very sympathetic light while for centuries Qin Shi Huang has been looked upon with scorn as a brutal tyrant by Confucian scholars. A more standard and much less sympathetic portrait of Qin Shi Huang is found in the 1999 film The Emperor and the Assassin.  While it is true that his rule is often brutal, Qin Shi Huang's reign is now looked upon more objectively by some modern scholars for some effective measures such as unifying the systems for language, weights and measures, currency, and for the construction of a national transport network.  In any case, the revisonist portrayal in the film reflects the controversy associated with the historical figure.
However, philosophically, the film can be viewed from a different angle; that of causality. The fact remains that if Qin Shi Huang didn't unify China, there systematically wouldn't be a China. This throws into question the acts of historical events and how people view them in the present; whether the ends justified the means, and can be viewed as a fallacy, hypothesis contrary to fact. 
The film's director, Zhang Yimou, purportedly withdrew from the 1999 Cannes Film Festival to protest similar criticism , though some believe that Zhang had other reasons. However, defenders of Zhang Yimou and his film argue that the Chinese government's approval of Hero is no different from the U.S. military providing support to films such as Top Gun, in which filmmakers portray U.S. armed forces in a positive light. Others reject entirely that Zhang Yimou had any political motives in making the film.  Zhang Yimou himself maintained he has no political intentions whatsoever. 
==Cross-cultural translations==

There has been some criticism of the film for its American-release translation of one of the central ideas in the film, tiān xià, which literally means "all under heaven." During this time in their history, the Chinese people held the opinion (as did many before and after—see e.g. omphalos and axis mundi) that they were the very center of the universe; indeed, the Chinese term for China is Zhōngguó, literally meaning "middle-country" or perhaps more accurately "central kingdom" (though  originally conceived as "the country between heaven and hell", much like Germanic Midgard).  With that in mind, Broken Sword begs Nameless that the King of Qin be allowed to succeed, because the peace he will bring will benefit not just China, but everyone around them (figuratively) — all under heaven (literally). In this case, the term should be interpreted figuratively.
But as the average American viewer is probably unaware of China's self-conception, mistranslating tiān xià as "our land" is a simple way to avoid having to explain it.
Zhang Yimou was asked about the change at a screening in Massachusetts and said it was a problem of translation. "If you ask me if 'our land' is a good translation, I can't tell you. All translations are handicapped. Every word has different meanings in different cultures," he said.
That wasn't the only change in translation. Cries from the soldiers were changed from "Hail!" to "storm," in order to avoid a Nazi/fascist connotation. Others were minor; Nameless addresses the old blind musician (during his fight with Sky) as "Sir" in the Miramax translation. On the import DVDs, he calls him "old man" (actually, Nameless says "lao xiansheng", which means something along the lines of "old gentleman"). Lao can be translated to English as "old". Xiansheng in Chinese is a polite way of addressing men, such as "sir" or "mister" in English.
Snippet ends.
Feureau 21:45, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: A comment in the trivia section stated that in the comic book version by Wing Shin Ma, Nameless killed the emperor.  This was not the case in the Comics One  graphic novel Hero, which is by Wing Shin Ma and is (I think) the comic book in question.  In this graphic novel, not only does Nameless not kill the emperor, but Broken Sword, Flying Snow and Nameless all survive (in addition to Sky, who also survived in the movie).  I edited the comment to reflect this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.166.140.73 (talk) 03:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changed a comment in the Trivia section to correct an error regarding the comic book version. 

message: i would've thought the use of color in portraying different POV's is quite central to not only the purely aesthetic aspects of the movie, but also the plot itself as it is through the shifting POV's that we begin to understand the film, but searching the article for anything remotely related only turns up a broken link ( http://arrchives.tribe.net/thread/391f1714-3a19-4b2e-a115-baa5f20395ac )
thoughts?
yes, it's used to great effect when Nameless tells the Emperor about how he came to defeat the lover warriors:  first he tell a lie depicting them as futile persons and the photography is red;  then, the Emperor counters that by having known them personaly and thought they were noble (blue);  finally, lie uncovered Nameless decides to tell the truth (white).  Very symbolical, very aesthetically pleasing.  These narratives within narratives, the photography, the direction and the music are what turn this movie in a masterpiece, regardless of the simple story itself or any hidden agendas causing discomfort in free-thinkers...
I've added a few mentions of the color themes to the plot summary.Warren Dew (talk) 05:12, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  theme of color throughout film not relevent? 

message: what style(s) of martial arts were used in this film? Tkjazzer 05:28, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  what style(s)? 

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BetacommandBot 05:09, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Hero poster.jpg

message: In the plot section, the Emperor is always reffered to as the Emperor even while he was still King. Is this correct?--213.250.13.163 (talk) 18:37, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right. The word "King" should be more approriate. In Chinese "huang" means "emperor", "wang" means "king", so he could only be called "Emperor" after he unified China.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.255.59.114 (talk) 06:32, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Emperor or King?

message: From the text as written, it implies that Nameless' lethal assassination technique is the ability to inflict a non-fatal wound while appearing to be fatal to onlookers. From my memory, I thought his technique 'Death within ten paces'/'The Fatal Ten' was the ability to strike exactly how he wanted within the aforementioned distance, thus allowing for the non-fatal aspect while still making it a lethal technique. I'll review the scene where Nameless describes his technique and make the according changes to the synopsis. Oni no Akuma (talk) 15:25, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right. His technique allows him to hit his target with perfect precision within ten paces. This allows him to fatally or non-fatally wound his target as he chooses.78.86.61.94 (talk) 23:14, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Unstoppable technique

message: One of my favorite parts of this movie is when the king suggests that the Hero has underestimated someone, and when the hero asks who, the king simply says "me."  It's the only instance in the movie when he uses the informal "wo" to address himself.  At all other times, he uses the Chinese equivalent of the the royal we, the characters for which I haven't been able to identify.  The English subtitles make no distinction between the two, however, translating both simply as an informal "I."  Does anyone think this issue is worth mentioning in the section concerning the translation? 
-Sam  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.199.195.234 (talk) 21:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation 

message: In one of the endings to the video game Jade Empire, the PC can choose to sacrifice themself so that order can be brought to the Empire. Should this be mentioned anywhere? Was it even a conscious attempt at a parody, or simply a Chinese archetypal situation coming to the fore again?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.90.55.168 (talk) 07:19, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  2003 Jade Empire "parody" ending. 

message: From my understanding/memory of the film the protagonist had been an orphan with no name so he was named Nameless. The article describes him as being nameless. Have I made a mistake or should this be rectified?78.86.61.94 (talk) 23:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  nameless/Nameless 

message: I think that much of the controversy concerning Authoritarianism and personal liberty are answered in one of the most important (and IMHO, overlooked) scenes in the film, the "twentieth sword ideogram" unfurling above the throne of the King / Emperor. The necessity of violence is explained as a transient state, and that to continue to rule through violence for very long will be opposed by increasingly powerful people as the proper time for violence continues to recede in the past. ("Arrogant dragon will have cause to repent." Hexagram 1, Quien, line 6 [the top line], I Ching) I think it would be a good idea to have this ideogram, in some form, somewhere here on the Wiki, as I wonder if it has any historical basis. -- TheLastWordSword (talk) 15:03, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Twentieth Sword 

message: I think the article could use a little info about this if anyone has it. Specifically, I was curious where filming locations were. Autumn Wind (talk) 18:58, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Production and Filming 

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