(l to r) Brothers Striding Cloud (Aaron Kwok) and Whispering Wind (Ekin Cheng) In all regards, The Storm Riders tries to be epic – it has a budget far greater than most Wu Xia films, allowing the construction of huge-scale indoor and outdoor sets and entire villages and cities. Even condensed from the original multi-story epic, The Storm Riders contains enough plot to fuel another entire trilogy of Star Wars films for George Lucas. With the scant attention usually paid to plot by these films, the sweeping canvas that The Storm Riders draws itself across immediately raises the level of expectation. The plot is based on a Hong Kong comic-book Fung Wan (1989– ), which was published in twelve volumes in English translation, Jand comes in at a mammoth 127 minutes (which may not be an extravagant length for a film but is marathon length when one considers the pace at which Hong Kong fantasy/action moves). The Storm Riders emerges as some epic of the genre. The cycle regularly celebrates dizzying melee sequences where combatants exchange sword blows and kicks to the head in mid-air and travel by bouncing off trees or dancing along blades of grass while battling demons and ghosts with paper prayers and feng shui enchantments. This was followed by many similar films including Mr Vampire (1985) and sequels, Swordsman (1990) and sequels, Saviour of the Soul (1991), The Bride with White Hair (1993), Green Snake (1993) and numerous others, before the colossal breakthrough success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

The film that began the cycle is generally credited as being Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) but it was A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) that carried it to a crossover success in the West. Wu Xia grew out of the kung fu and martial arts films of the 1960s and 70s. Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cycle contains some of the most exciting fantasy being made anywhere in the world.

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