2. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
It's Based On The Book... "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" By Wang Dulu Do you remember when everyone went nuts for this movie? "You gotta see it... I mean, it has subtitles and Chinese actors in it, but...
wow... those martial arts sequences were to die for." Okay, so nobody ever put it quite like that, but you get the gist: C
rouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was, of course, the first foreign language movie that really took western movie-goers by storm and brought attention to the fact that there were other countries in the world capable of working cameras and hiring actors and you know,
making movies. What a lot of good honest folk don't know, however, is that
Crouching Tiger was based on a novel written by a guy named Wang Dulu in the 1930s. This novel also happened to be the fourth installment in his "Crane Iron" series, which is comprised of five books in all. The first three novels were, like, skipped out for some reason when it came to making them into movies, presumably because "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" had the best name.
How Close Is It To The Book? No idea. No English translation of Dulu's novel exists, so there's no way to tell unless you can read Chinese. You may be surprised to learn that I don't. You still want me to tell you what the differences are, though? Uh, okay... the sword talks in the book. The sword talks and it goes on adventures and it marries Michelle Yeoh's character at the end. It's really awesome. How's that?