1103 Once Upon a Time in China: The Complete Films

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I can think of a couple possible reasons Once Upon a Time in China and America isn't treated as part of the main series. One is that it wasn't a Golden Harvest production and was made by Charles Heung's Win's Entertainment (which also made Last Hero in China while Tsui and Li were on the outs). It also wasn't an "official" Film Workshop production due to some sort of existing arrangement between it and Golden Harvest, so Tsui was technically only involved in an individual capacity. Another is that Tsui had apparently intended the TV series as his sendoff to the character and was convinced by Heung to revisit the franchise after their successful collaboration with Li on Black Mask.

[swo17]

Is there perhaps some contractual obligation that it not be put on the same tier as the rest of the series? Because Eureka treated it exactly the same way

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

That could be a possible consequence of Golden Harvest and/or Film Workshop's non-involvement. But in the case of the Eureka set it's a bit stickier, since they had to exclude the two intervening entries. So even if there weren't a contractual issue, I think it made more sense to bill their set as a "trilogy" and relegate the sixth film to the bonus features.

[Mr Sausage]

I first saw the Jet Li films in high school (and again a few years ago). I've only now got around to IV and V. IV is not quite as awful as I was expecting, but it is a flimsy movie, serving mainly as a greatest hits compilation of the series. Zhao Wen-Zhuo is a poor replacement for Jet Li. He can fight, but his acting is flat and he shows no screen presence. I saw someone online call him the George Lazenby of Wong Fei-Hung. The film is often ludicrous, with Billy Chow punching horses unconscious like it's Blazing Saddles, and lugubrious death scenes for characters we've seen in, like, one other scene. V on the other hand proves only Tsui Hark directs good Once Upon a Time in China films. It's a rousing pirate adventure, mostly dropping the historical/political themes that had become rote by the third in favour of simple, straightforward adventure comedy. Surprisingly, a lot of the gags land, and some are hilariously dark, like Aunt 13’s casual pirate murders. It may be the most purely fun entry. If I were to rank the series, it'd be I, II, V, III, IV, VI

[therewillbeblus]

Glad you enjoyed V! It's my favorite entry, but also has more of what I'm looking for in these types of films than the more narratively and thematically sociopolitical-driven first two installments. My ranking would be: V, I, II, III, VI, IV (the last two are essentially tied as utterly terrible, but at least the sixth installment has like one cool death near the end- really scraping the bottom of the barrel here!)