Art & Creativity Quote by Ang Lee

Ang Lee is selling taste as much as he’s selling a project: the soft-spoken assertion that his entry into martial arts cinema wouldn’t be about macho choreography or genre credentialing, but about re-framing what the genre can carry. The phrase “struck me” does quiet rhetorical work. It positions the decision as intuitive, almost inevitable, not calculated market positioning - even as it very clearly is a strategic, global-facing choice.

Calling out “a very strong female character” signals a deliberate pivot. Wuxia had long featured formidable women, but often through the lens of pulp archetype or tragic romance. Lee’s emphasis reads like a translation note for Western audiences: this isn’t just kicks and swords; it’s interiority, repression, longing, duty - a narrative seriousness anchored in a woman who can’t be reduced to love interest or side quest. The subtext is legitimacy. He’s reassuring viewers who might dismiss “martial arts film” as lowbrow that character is the point.

Then there’s “classic Chinese textures,” a tellingly tactile phrase. Not “history” or “tradition,” but “textures” - surfaces, fabrics, architecture, gesture, restraint. It’s aesthetic diplomacy: an appeal to authenticity without getting trapped in nationalist piety. “Abundant” hints at curation-as-excess, a lushness meant to seduce the eye and confer cultural weight. Lee’s intent is to fuse art-house prestige with genre velocity, making the cultural specific feel universally legible - and bankable - without flattening it into a postcard.