Posted in: Movies | Tagged: Anita Mui, blu-ray, Ching Siu Tung, Criterion Collection, hong kong action movies, in the mood for love, johnnie to, Maggie Cheung, michelle yeoh, the heroic trio, wuxia

The Heroic Trio: Revisiting Michelle Yeoh's First Superhero Movie

The Heroic Trio, Michelle Yeoh's superhero movie from 1993, has dated surprisingly well and still stands up today, now on Criterion Blu-Ray

The Heroic Trio, Michelle Yeoh's first superhero movie from 1993, is getting the Criterion Collection treatment, a lavish 4K Blu-Ray set with the first movie, and its sequel Executioners with supplementary material. The first movie was a hit in Hong Kong and Asia with a major pedigree: it starred Michelle Yeoh, singer-actor Anita Mui (the closest Hong Kong had to Madonna in the 1980s and 1990s), and Maggie Cheung (later known internationally for Irma Vep and In the Mood for Love), the three biggest stars in Hong Kong at the time, directed by Johnnie To before he hit his stride with crime and gangster movies in the mid-and late-90s, and action choreography Ching Siu-Tong.

The Heroic Trio was Hong Kong's answer to the slightly camp superhero movies of the late 1980s and early 1990s, established by Tim Burton's two Batman movies and the since-forgotten blockbuster adaptations of The Shadow and The Phantom. The look of the movie is the neon gothic look of Burton's Batman movies but on a much lower budget, achieved with mostly blue lighting and smog machines rather than elaborately built sets, a Gotham City version of Hong Kong. It was also the first superheroine movie featuring not one but three heroines with a script by a female screenwriter, Sandy Shaw, that doesn't have any of the insecurities or weird Hollywood hang-ups about "vulnerable" female characters or how women don't open blockbuster movies. The movie takes a Chinese perspective to combine wuxia tropes with American superhero conventions. Anita Mui plays the mild-mannered wife of the city's top cop, who's secretly the city's reigning masked vigilante. Michelle Yeoh plays the mysterious henchwoman stealing the city's male babies for a near-immortal imperial eunuch seeking to restore the Monarchy to China, and Maggie Cheung plays a wise-cracking, leather-clad bounty hunter on a Harley who lets her shotgun and dynamite do the talking. It's goofy, campy, and endlessly fun with melodrama and pathos. Anita Mui also sings the bizarre theme song. How does Maggie Cheung blow away that many dudes with her shotgun without reloading? Who cares! It's cool! Where did Michelle Yeoh and Anita Mui get horses from while Maggie Cheung just rides her Harley? Who cares! It's cool! Every frame of the movie is fun, as demonstrated in this fan-cut music video for the theme song that's better than the original trailer:

In 1993, The Heroic Trio might have felt like yet another of the crazy, anything-goes action movies Hong Kong popped out literally every week at the movie theatres, but now it looks like part of the dying golden age of Hong Kong movies. It was rife with political subtext, full of anxiety over Hong Kong's impending handover to Mainland China in 1997, the eunuch wizard Big Bad is a stand-in for an evil China trying to conquer Hong Kong. There was a demented sense of fun in its fight and stunts, with Maggie Cheung as the comic relief of the trio. Anita Mui was at the height of her status as the top pop star in Asia, and Michelle Yeoh played a villain with an air of tragedy who joined the heroes' side in the climax. It's full of common tropes from Hong Kong movies but still feels fresher and more fun than Hollywood's self-conscious, committee-driven storytelling. The sequel Executioners was not as good, with Ching Siu Tung taking over as director, shooting an undercooked first draft script because screenwriter Sandy Shaw became unavailable to rewrite or polish the script. Yet, it still packs a punch as one of the bleakest and most downbeat superhero movies ever made, with the heroines facing a totalitarian government takeover that now feels like China's clampdown on Hong Kong in the last few years. It's ambitious and trying to say something about fascism and sacrifice. Ching Siu Tung's action sequences are slicker and more ambitious, and it's too bad Sandy Shaw never got to polish the script into a movie that could have become a classic.

The state of superhero movies is a hot topic right now with the failure and mess of Madame Web, a deserved failure whose creative decisions were made by clueless people who had nothing but contempt for comic books and superheroes (not the actors or director, who all did their best under circumstances not under their control). Hollywood studios still have internal debates over how women don't open superhero movies. Madame Web is another example of them messing it up to fulfill that prophecy; Heroic Trio succeeded twenty years ago on a budget that probably cost less than the catering budget of Madame Web. Even Executioners manages to be better than every MCU and DC movie of 2023.

Of the three stars, Anita Mui has passed away, Maggie Cheung has retired from show business, and Michelle Yeoh is the last one standing, now an Oscar-winner and major international star who can be picky about her projects, having starred in the first female-led superhero movie of the modern era when nobody in Hollywood noticed but in a film that's a minor classic in Asia that's remembered by people who were kids in the 90s. In 2024, both The Heroic Trio and Executioners have aged better than expected.

The Heroic Trio Criterion Blu-Ray is out on February 20^th and available for pre-order.

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