25 Years of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

Five years ago, during the 20th anniversary of the stone-cold classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee pondered how his sweeping epic had come to be. He realized that, when deciding between making an action movie or a drama, he chose both. “I wanted it all,” Lee told Entertainment Weekly. “I didn’t realize I was upgrading a B-movie to A.” 

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a lot more than an A-worthy film. When released in December 2000, it earned a shocking $128 million ($218 million today!). The film became the highest-grossing non-English-language film in the U.S., earning ten Oscar nominations and a permanent place in the cultural zeitgeist. This is because Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is much more than just a martial arts movie: it supersedes genre conventions and soars above them, even if that’s not always how people tend to remember it.

Rewatching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a reminder of just how extraordinary an achievement it is. Lee and company were making what should have been a blip on the radar of some dedicated film lovers in the United States. The film is an adaptation of an old Chinese wuxia novel—not exactly box office gold. Wuxia is a specific Chinese genre named for the heroes it follows—figures who can naturally battle to the death in midair and run sideways along buildings. It was never certain that American audiences would fall for a wuxia film with all Asian actors and fully dubbed dialogue. But Crouching Tiger transcends; it is wuxia, and everything else layered on top. The story is a breathtaking swirl of romance and revenge, following a mysterious young woman who steals a famous sword from its renowned warrior. Lee turned this film into a mythic tale of forbidden love, feminist desire, and sweeping balletic action.

Perhaps no director has mastered telling stories of wrenching human desire for lives they cannot lead like Ang Lee. Across an incredible career, Lee has returned again and again to a similar story. From Sense and Sensibility (1995) to Brokeback Mountain (2005), he probes the human desire to live a life unencumbered by social expectation, duty, or even gravity. Crouching Tiger is driven by the dreams of two women, Jen and Yu Shu Lien, whose true desires remain tantalizingly out of their control. The fight scenes, choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping, are nothing short of masterful, yet they ultimately serve as a tale of love, duty, and freedom. 

The Hong Kong film industry wasn’t widely known to American audiences in the ‘90s, so when the cast of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon leapt into action—gliding over terracotta roofs, rosy desert plains, craggy mountains, and swaying stalks of green bamboo trees—the film felt completely groundbreaking. Even today, it retains a bold new vision compared to most modern blockbusters, which, despite being “bigger and better,” often look like green-screen blobs in comparison. 

This is because Ang Lee did something with the wuxia genre that no one had before. On top of high-flying action, Lee added high drama, blending Western dramatic sensibilities with Eastern action. The film also features unusually thoughtful gender politics for the male-dominated genre: Crouching Tiger prioritizes women’s desire to carve out autonomy for themselves, whatever the cost. As they seek out freedom, they literally soar above the earth, creating a story propelled to new emotional heights by its fantastical action.    

This makes it even more stunning that Lee had a cast capable of delivering both death-defying stunts and Shakespearean emotion. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is bursting with excellent actors—particularly Michelle Yeoh’s formidable and disciplined Yu Shu Lien.

Yeoh is the titanic presence animating the film: one viewing is enough to make you wonder why Everything Everywhere All At Once, which dominated awards season two years ago, is often cited as her revelatory moment. In this critic’s opinion, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon remains her finest and most nuanced work—the performance she should have won the Oscar for. However, the reception of Yeoh’s performance in Crouching Tiger was completely different from that of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Any press she particularly received for Crouching Tiger was more focused on her high kicks than her deeply moving work. She was seen primarily as a technical artist—a great stunt woman, but not a great actress. Hollywood struggles to envision her outside the dignified, stoic warrior, repeatedly casting her in variations of Shu Lien. 

As a result, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is often remembered foremost as an incredible martial arts film, rather than a moving drama. Compare Hollywood’s response to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to that of Everything Everywhere All At Once. The former was nominated for ten Oscars, none of which were for acting. 

Above all, it’s Yeoh’s subtle, vulnerable glances that steal the film and reveal Shu Lien’s softness and humanity. In the climax of the film (sorry to spoil a 25-year-old classic), as the man she loves dies in her arms, all of that steeliness and dignity shatters. She cries, urging the naive Jen to be true to her own heart, something she herself failed to do. 

As the 25th anniversary approaches this December, Ang Lee’s classic is a must-watch if you enjoy martial arts movies, romances, or simply Michelle Yeoh. And if none of that convinces you, watch for the viscerally beautiful story—a rarity in most action films, particularly in modern times.  

The stunning and enduring power of this film is perhaps best summed up in its final moments: as Jen contemplates her uncertain future, she recalls a story about a man who jumped off a cliff to make his dreams come true. She leaps into the air too, a moment full of possibility and heartbreaking choice. It’s left to you, the audience, to decide: does she fly, or does she fall?

Ana is a first-year student at Columbia studying History and Statistics

@ana__sorrentino