Posted in: Movies | Tagged: action movies, Chinese cinema, Jin Yong, Legend of the Condor Heroes, Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants, tsui hark, wuxia

Legends of the Condor Heroes is Secretly the World's Biggest Movie

Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants might be the biggest movie in the world now, but it's completely ignored in English language media

If you don't know Chinese, you might not know that right now, the biggest movie in the world is Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants. This blockbuster adaptation of Jin Yong's classic wuxia epic novel, The Legend of the Condor Heroes, is one of the defining works of the wuxia genre. It stars Xiao Zhan as hero Guo Jing and is being hyped as director Tsui Hark's biggest comeback in decades. It opened this week for Chinese New Year, the biggest Chinese holiday and movie season of the year, and has already racked up 300 million ticket sales. You wouldn't know any of this because until Deadline reported on the Chinese New Year opening day box office earnings, no Western media had written about it at all.

The original novel of The Legend of the Condor Heroes has an official English translation from a UK and US publisher, all four volumes of it, and is bigger than Lord of the Rings – virtually every Chinese person knows it, and not just in China. Tsui Hark is one of the most influential action directors in the world next to John Woo, who has helped shape action movies in Hollywood and the rest of the world since the 1980s and 1990s, not counting his two forgettable Hollywood-funded Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in the 1990s. Yet there's not a single article written about this movie in English language or Western media, not even the Hollywood trades beyond a report on the box office charts.

The Most Influential Wuxia Novel of Them All

The Legend of the Condor Heroes, first published in 1957, may not be the first Wuxia novel, but it may be the most influential of Jin Yong's sagas. Originally serialised in Hong Kong's Min Bao newspaper that, Louis Cha, who wrote the novels under his pen name "Jin Yong", also ran. It tells the story of Guo Jing, a young martial artist and son of a dead hero raised in exile by Genghis Khan to lead his army to conquer China's dying Song Empire. Guo Jing becomes a master of martial arts and teams up with his love, Huang Rong, to prevent a war between the Mongols and the Chinese empire. He also discovers the truth behind his father's death. Condor Heroes is the wuxia saga that uses the trope of mystical martial arts as a superpower, turning the wuxia genre into the Chinese version of superheroes. The original novel spawned two equally epic sagas, The Return of the Condor Heroes (now also being translated into English) and Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre, featuring Guo Jing and Huang Rong's children and descendants. Jin Yong's novels have sold 300 million copies worldwide, and Condor Heroes has been adapted into over a dozen movies and TV series across Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan since 1958, including Shaw Brothers in the 1970s, and even Wong Kar Wai made a prequel side story in Ashes of Time. Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants is the biggest blockbuster adaptation of the novel to date. Tsui Hark's adaptation covers the climactic arc of the novel and includes a love triangle subplot in an epic saga about war and betrayal. Guo Jing is an unwavering, virtuous hero whose earnestness is made more interesting by the supporting cast, and fans have argued that Huang Rong is a more interesting hero in the saga.

Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants may be no. 4 at the Chinese box office as of this writing after Ne Zha 2, Detective Chinatown 1900, and Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force, but it has the most social media buzz of out of all the 2025 Chinese New Year blockbusters so far with star Xiao Zhan and Tsui Hark in every Chinese media outlet promoting the movie. Xiao Zhan has a huge fanbase in China and abroad, and this movie might have a bigger audience outside China than the other three hits. You wouldn't know this if you didn't follow Chinese language media since any pop culture and movies from China and the East are considered niche in the West despite being huge hits, just like anime is.

Sony has acquired the worldwide rights to Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants and will release it theatrically in the US on February 21st. It's already listed on Fandango.

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