One post tagged with "Blades of the Guardians"

“There will always be dreamers roaming the world with sword in hand, always little kids draping bed sheets over their shoulders and wielding brooms as knights-errant, and always newcomers yearning for new legends of the jianghu.”

Among this year’s Spring Festival films, Blades of the Guardians—adapted from the manhua Blades of the Guardians—stands out as something different.

It is one of the rare purely domestic live-action manhua adaptations (note: meaning the original comic is Chinese and the film is made by a Chinese team), and the first domestic live-action manhua adaptation to brave the Spring Festival box office. What’s more, it is an uncommonly seen hardcore wuxia production.

Looking at the cast, the film not only has “the world’s greatest action choreographer” Yuen Woo-ping at the helm, but also gathers Wu Jing, Nicholas Tse, Jet Li, as well as Yu Shi, Cisha, Liang Biying, Lin Qiunan and other action stars spanning five generations.

Looking at the texture—desert, yellow sand, flashes of blades and swords—it easily evokes classic wuxia films like New Dragon Gate Inn, Ashes of Time, and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate.

However, the thick “dimensional wall” between manhua and live action, an increasingly niche wuxia theme, a dazzling array of casting choices, the original’s complex narrative versus the film’s limited runtime—these all make one anxious about the final product.

Is the Blades of the Guardians movie worth watching? Can this “hardcore” wuxia blockbuster, as it claims, revive the glory of Chinese-language wuxia and break the curse that “domestic manhua adaptations always flop”?

01 Purely domestic live-action manhua adaptations always flop​

Counting them up, there have actually only been a handful of domestic live-action films adapted from Chinese manhua.

The earliest domestic live-action manhua adaptation dates back to Mr. Wang, created by Ye Qianyu during the Republican era.

In 1928, inspired by the American humor comic Bringing Up Father, Ye Qianyu wanted to create a humorous, satirical comic focused on the lives of ordinary Chinese people. And so the skinny, comical, henpecked Shanghai everyman “Mr. Wang” was born.

The work was first serialized in Shanghai Manhua until 1937 and was well received. Starting in 1934, the Mr. Wang comics were successively adapted into films, with more than twenty entries released up through the latest one, Mr. Wang: Consumed by Desire, in 1993.

Then came the childhood memory shared by generations: the “Sanmao” comic series created by Zhang Leping. The series was adapted into films four times, in 1949, 1992, 1996, and 2003. Among these, The Wanderings of Sanmao, shot and screened in 1949, was the first domestic feature film publicly released after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Both of the above comics took shape during the turbulent Republican era and bear distinct marks of their times. The “Sanmao” series in particular, through the eyes of the street orphan Sanmao, exposes the bitter lives of those at the bottom of society. Though published in commercial magazines, the theme of “national salvation” was always the main thread of comic creation in this period.

The first contemporary live-action film adapted from a domestic manhua was Go Away Mr. Tumor, released in 2015. Its author, Xiong Dun, depicted her own real experience battling cancer in comic form, publishing it simultaneously on Tianya and Weibo; her positive, optimistic spirit moved countless netizens.

In 2012, Xiong Dun passed away from illness. Three years later, the film Go Away Mr. Tumor, adapted from her comic, was released. It ultimately earned 510 million yuan at the box office with a Douban score of 7.4.

Afterward, Take My Brother Away, created by the comic duo You & Ling, was twice adapted into live-action films: Take My Brother Away released in 2018, and What Happened to Big Brother? in 2021. The former earned 375 million yuan at the box office with a Douban score of 6.8—decent results—while the latter grossed only 30 million yuan with a Douban score dropping to 4.2, a truly dismal showing.

In 2023, the film Under the Light of the Underworld, adapted from the popular manhua The Outcast and directed by acclaimed director Wuershan, was released.

Yet this much-anticipated “dream collaboration” of a manhua-adapted live-action blockbuster saw its reputation plummet after release. Criticisms from audiences included, but were not limited to: drastically altered plot, broken characterizations, vulgar content, shoddy special effects, and miscasting; some angrily condemned the work for “completely failing to grasp the spirit of the original comic.”

In the end, Under the Light of the Underworld earned only 118 million yuan at the box office with a Douban score of 5.1—a crushing defeat.

In addition, there are the manhua-adapted live-action web films Baimen Wujia and Chunhui, which never saw theatrical release.

Baimen Wujia was adapted from the wuxia manhua of the same name that began serialization in 2013, and premiered in 2018. The original comic won first prize for Most Promising Comic at the 4th Xingman Awards, but the Baimen Wujia film scored only 3.9 on Douban, ranking dead last among the domestic manhua adaptations listed above.

Chunhui was adapted from Ruan Yunting’s semi-autobiographical manhua of the same name. Seen through the eyes of a young art teacher named Xiaochun, the work strings together one warm, healing little story after another, attending to students’ psychology while also voicing the teacher’s own confusion. Gently telling readers that “it’s okay to fall behind,” the work soothes readers’ anxieties like a spring breeze.

The film version is a single-episode short, shot on a phone and only 24 minutes long, released in early 2026. But whether it’s Baimen Wujia or Chunhui, judging by results or scale, neither managed effective reach among the general public.

It’s fair to say that the domestic market hasn’t seen a manhua-adapted film with broad reach, impressive results, and outstanding reputation in a long time.

Can Blades of the Guardians break through this time?

02 The most promising adaptation contender?​

The story of Blades of the Guardians takes place in the final years of the Sui dynasty.

The male lead, Daoma, is an armed escort. Carrying a child named Xiao Qi and bearing several blades of varying shapes on his back, he doesn’t do heroic deeds—he just takes escort jobs for money.

One day, his old acquaintance Lao Mo refers a special job to Daoma: escorting the court’s wanted criminal Zhishilang to Chang’an.

Along the way, all manner of jianghu figures—Ayu, Shu, Madam Yanzi, Pei Xingyan—take the stage in turn, each with their own schemes and their own codes of honor. At court, Emperor Yang of Sui, the Yuwen clan, and the various Western Regions tribes each plot their own moves; undercurrents surge in and around Chang’an as a great battle is about to break out along the Hexi Corridor.

Blades of the Guardians combines the seriousness of historical fiction with the romance of wuxia, weaving major historical events and portrayals of famous historical figures into its semi-fictional narrative, giving the story a more authentic texture.

The author, Xu Xianzhe, drew on primary historical sources such as the Book of Sui and the Zizhi Tongjian in creating the work, striving to “write in the blank spaces of history” so the story doesn’t stray from basic historical facts. His research includes boldly imagined and reasonably inferred plot elements, constructing a solid and credible world for Blades of the Guardians.

The various historical buildings, clothing, weapons, and props that appear in the comic also mostly have historical prototypes, subconsciously leading readers to believe such a legend really happened in the final years of the Sui dynasty.

But what draws readers in at first glance is its heavy art style and intensely dynamic battle drawings.

The comic’s lines are rough and forceful, fully conveying the speed, power, and impact of martial arts action, getting readers’ blood pumping; the refined paneling controls the pacing of reading, so that merely looking at the static comic, one can imagine the dynamic moves—like “watching” a movie through the page. The “heavy-industry”-grade art style carries an inherent weathered quality, further highlighting the aesthetics of violence and the cruel era in which the story is set.

The fight scenes are also a major selling point of the Blades of the Guardians film.

Director Yuen Woo-ping is known as “the world’s greatest action choreographer,” and his own résumé is a living history of film action design: Drunken Master, Once Upon a Time in China II, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kung Fu Hustle, The Grandmaster… Classic action sequences from many Chinese and foreign films are his masterworks.

Lead actor Wu Jing is famous for being able to fight and fighting for real. He once trained with the Beijing Wushu Team, won multiple national wushu competitions, and his signature works are essentially all wuxia or action films. Setting aside his controversial remarks, looking purely at his résumé as an action actor, he genuinely lives up to audiences’ expectations for the fight scenes.

Nicholas Tse, Max Zhang, Kara Wai, Jet Li are regulars of wuxia and action films; the moment their names come up, one classic scene after another automatically surfaces in wuxia fans’ minds.

And the several new-generation actors also mostly have martial arts or opera training. Among them, Yu Shi has won awards multiple times in national mounted-archery competitions; the fighting prowess of Cisha, Lin Qiunan, Wen Junhui and others was already proven in last year’s hit film Catch the Shadow; Chen Lijun, who plays Ayu, and Li Yunxiao, who plays Madam Yanzi, are Yue opera performers who rose to fame with their joint performance of the Yue opera New Dragon Gate Inn.

Coincidentally, the prototype for Blades of the Guardians’ male lead Daoma was precisely Zhou Huai’an, played by Tony Leung Ka-fai in the film New Dragon Gate Inn—and Tony Leung himself has taken on the important role of “Lao Mo” in Blades of the Guardians.

Half of Chinese cinema’s action-film “pillars,” and the old and new “flag-bearers” of wuxia film, all gather here—this truly is a spectacle unseen for many years, and perhaps unlikely to be seen again.

Judging from the trailers already released, the action scenes take up a large portion of the film, and all are well executed. The long-missed on-location desert shooting, real actors on real horses, real blades against real steel—these make audiences feel as if they’ve dreamed their way back to the golden age of wuxia cinema, eager to regain that satisfying, “fists landing on flesh” sensation.

03 A maximally compressed jianghu, a narrative fraught with peril​

However, what determines a film’s reputation isn’t just the action scenes—it’s also the story.

Unfortunately, Yuen Woo-ping’s track record as a director and screenwriter Yu Baimei’s past results don’t seem able to reassure audiences…

The Blades of the Guardians manhua has two main plotlines, overt and hidden: the overt one, centered on Daoma and his companions, is the jianghu line recounting the conflicts along the road from the Western Regions to Chang’an; the hidden one, centered on real historical figures with alternating narration, is the court line revolving around official history and political struggle.

The film appears to have cut the court line entirely, focusing its lens solely on the jianghu. Given the film’s limited runtime and the story’s sweeping setting, dual-line narration would risk dropping one thread while catching the other, so this choice is understandable.

But the film’s script also spans a very long period of time. Judging from the trailers, the film may cover most of the important jianghu-line plot from chapter 1 to chapter 168—and bear in mind that Blades of the Guardians has only 172 chapters total since it began serialization in 2015 (per Bilibili Comics), and these are interspersed with a great deal of side stories, ensemble narratives, and flashbacks.

One of the charms of Blades of the Guardians’ story lies in how it cares about every microscopic life caught in the tides of the era. Even villains, supporting characters, and extras are shaped with depth and realism. Consequently, the main plot of Blades of the Guardians advances slowly, while the side stories branch out lush and abundant; countless vividly drawn characters populate the stage, together composing a wuxia world that is vast yet richly detailed.

Compressing everyone’s story into a single film inevitably means simplifying character motivations and “label-ifying” complex characters so audiences can quickly remember them. In that case, the depth of characterization is bound to suffer.

And the removal of the court line leaves the original’s brilliant portrayals of historical figures with nowhere to go, inevitably weakening the work’s sense of historical weight. The vivid gallery of characters and the heroic struggles of larger-than-life heroes so dazzling in the comic may never be seen in the film—or at least not in this film.

Moreover, that “dimensional wall” from comic to live action isn’t so easily crossed either.

The Blades of the Guardians manhua skillfully alternates literal and figurative depiction to create an intense sense of atmosphere. What readers see on the page isn’t necessarily “objectively happening”—it may be a character’s inner thoughts made external, or an intentional symbolic, impressionistic technique by the author.

The comic techniques used in past live-action films mostly appeared in exaggerated, comedic, non-serious narrative contexts, but Blades of the Guardians clearly doesn’t suit that path. If the handling of seriousness misses the mark, the solemn plot can easily turn into a chuunibyou flare-up, breaking the immersive viewing experience.

In addition, there are certain traits unique to comic characters that can easily achieve stunning effects in the original but are hard to replicate in reality.

Take Pei Xingyan for example. In the comic, Pei Xingyan is tall and imposing, with deep-set features and a bold manner; his very entrance carries an air of menace, the very image of a great general who could take an enemy’s head amid an army of ten thousand. But ask about his age—he’s only 17!

The extreme contrast between his ferocious appearance and his youthful age adds a layer of cuteness to the character’s ferocity, enriching his persona.

However, perhaps because a suitable “max-level teenager” is too hard to find in reality, this contrast was unfortunately flattened in the film version, and Pei Xingyan became a generic “dashing young general,” diluting the character’s anchor point.

Similar casting regrets are also visible in characters like Ani and Di Ting. Voices of dissatisfaction with the casting appeared early in the film’s promotion and remain loud to this day. Even if you’re not a fan of the original, you might still avoid this film because you feel some actor doesn’t fit their role.

04 Manhua, cinema, and wuxia—a three-in-one self-rescue​

While I have regrets about some of the adaptations, I don’t believe audiences are obligated to read the original manhua in advance before watching the film.

When a work undergoes cross-media adaptation, trade-offs are inevitable, and works that “drastically adapt” the original and still win acclaim are hardly rare. For example, Brigitte Lin’s Dongfang Bubai in Swordsman II, though never endorsed by original author Jin Yong, became a generation-defining classic in the hearts of many viewers.

But this raises a question: even if the film succeeds, to what extent can its glory flow back to the manhua?

The plight of domestic manhua is a well-worn topic—after the bubble burst, the once-flourishing comic platforms have dwindled to three mainstream players: Kuaikan Comics, Tencent Comics, and Bilibili Comics.

The living space for domestic comic creators is far from rosy: some comics can only occupy the downstream derivative niche of web novels already validated by the market, while riskier original comics struggle along, axed mid-run or abandoned by their authors as a matter of routine.

Even among domestic original comics, Blades of the Guardians is an outlier: page-format, black-and-white, read right-to-left—running contrary to the current mainstream trends of domestic comics and invisibly raising the barrier to entry. Despite its excellent reputation, the Blades of the Guardians manhua has yet to demonstrate a matching ability to monetize.

Even if the film succeeds, it doesn’t mean success for the Blades of the Guardians IP as a whole. The general audiences who make up the bulk of ticket sales don’t care whether it’s a manhua adaptation—many may not even know it has a comic original. Whether the casting is faithful or the plot changed—things the original fans care about—mean nothing to general audiences; for them, the first Blades of the Guardians they encounter is the film, and Daoma is simply the Daoma played by Wu Jing. Those willing to seek out the comic after watching the film are, after all, a minority.

What’s more, the film industry itself isn’t doing so well either.

After Ne Zha 2 became a smash hit at the start of last year, none of the several key holiday windows that followed produced a hit film to carry the torch; not until Zootopia 2 was released at year’s end did the overall box office warm up somewhat, though overall it remained bleak.

On the other hand, short videos, micro-dramas, AI comic-dramas, and other cheaper cultural products with faster feedback are stealing people’s attention. According to QuestMobile’s video content industry report, in 2025 the supply of films on online video platforms rose somewhat, yet their share of views declined slightly, accounting for only 2.2% of total views across the four platforms—iQIYI, Youku, Tencent Video, and Mango TV.

In other words, even on streaming platforms with lower barriers to consumption, people are increasingly unwilling to watch movies.

As it stands, the 2026 Spring Festival slate has no obvious super-headline film, and overall expectations are lower than in previous years. And how many viewers the wuxia genre can still attract is itself an uncertain factor.

Think back: what was the last theatrical wuxia film that sparked nationwide buzz, earning both acclaim and box-office success? Brotherhood of Blades? The Grandmaster? The Final Master? Or something else? Whichever it was, it’s already a work from over a decade ago.

Good wuxia doesn’t rely on piling up visual spectacles with special effects; it relies on solid, grounded moves, placing extremely high demands on choreographers, directors, and actors alike. This is a genre where, without real kung fu, you can’t take the stage. “Lack of good scripts,” “a generational gap among action actors,” “special effects flying everywhere,” “no chivalric spirit”—these are audiences’ most common complaints about current wuxia films.

Wuxia animation is caught in a similar bind. Compared with purely physical combat, animation is naturally better suited to—and better at realizing—more fantastical genres like magic circles and immortal arts. Pure wuxia animation faces not only technical challenges but also an emotional-threshold crisis of “not thrilling enough, not hype enough.”

When investment and return are out of proportion and satisfying wuxia works grow ever scarcer, it seems to seal the fact that “wuxia is dead.”

And yet, whenever a big production claiming to be “orthodox wuxia” launches, good or bad, it draws widespread attention; also in recent years, several wuxia-themed games have been enthusiastically embraced, with some sparking massive discussion before even officially releasing.

Some non-wuxia IPs have also launched wuxia-themed events to much acclaim, such as Wuthering Waves, Love and Deepspace, and Path to Nowhere. And the twelfth-anniversary installment of the Spring Festival stalwart Boonie Bears series likewise carries a strong wuxia flavor (the kung fu bear theory, that is).

Perhaps it isn’t that audiences have abandoned wuxia, but that the market has overdrawn audiences’ trust in wuxia-type works—audiences still crave quality wuxia that looks good and fights well.

And right at this moment, Blades of the Guardians arrives.

A well-funded production team, an original of proven quality, a cast with formidable “combat power”—these make Blades of the Guardians the meeting point of manhua, cinema, and wuxia as they explore the road to self-rescue.

As a second-generation anime fan who yearned for the wuxia world since childhood, I sincerely hope Blades of the Guardians can deliver a good story, bring a jianghu legend of gratitude and vengeance settled with a sword, and make a few new ripples on the jianghu.

The age of cold weapons is long gone, and wuxia may well become a niche genre in the end. But there will always be dreamers roaming the world with sword in hand, always little kids draping bed sheets over their shoulders and wielding brooms as knights-errant, and always newcomers yearning for new legends of the jianghu.

This may be an opportunity, or it may be flowers in a mirror and the moon in water—illusions all. As for how much it’s really worth, we’ll only find out on the first day of the Lunar New Year.

​References: The Beijing News: “Blades of the Guardians” Season 1 wraps with a score of 8.8—interview with original creator Xu Xianzhe on history and imagination