Hero: How Chinese is it?

Abstract

It is often claimed these days that we are currently waving goodbye to the old American twentieth century and saying hello to the new Chinese twenty-first century. If such assertions carry any weight and legitimacy, then the production and release of Hero (Yingxiong, Zhang Yimou 2002) constitutes a moment of great symbolic importance. Billed as the ‘first Chinese blockbuster’ (Zhang 2003), Hero is a large-scale martial arts epic based upon the old legend of Jin Ke assassinating Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty. The film is commonly discussed as an attempt on the part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) technologically and aesthetically to upgrade the commercial viability of its cinema industry. More than this, by taking the Chinese film industry to new levels of international competitiveness, Hero is widely interpreted as representing a specific threat to Hollywood. Demonstrating both China’s intention and its ability to engineer a large-scale challenge to America’s continuing dominance of global markets, Hero is thus presented as a harbinger of things to come.