Wuxia Review: Snake Films to Watch in Honor of the Year of the Snake

Three Lady White Snakes: L-R: Joey Wang from Green Snake, Eva Huang from The Sorcerer and the White Snake, Zhang Zhe (Mandarin voice actor) White Snake.

This year, 2025, marks the Year of the Snake. Accordingly, the most popular tale (tail?) for this cycle is one of Lady Bai, Bai Suzhen a.k.a. Madame White Snake. The Legend of White Snake (Bai She Zhuan) is considered one of the Four Great Folktales of China. Some trace the story to the 9th century, but it solidifies in the 16th century, and over time, it grew into many variations. Lady Bai is a snake spirit seeking immortality who disguises herself as a human but then falls in love with a mortal. Beyond the star-crossed lovers, Lady Bai has a sister, Xiaoqing (‘Little Green’), who is also a snake spirit. There’s also often a Buddhist priest pursuing Lady Bai, like Van Helsing chased Dracula. The monk is Fahui from Jin Shan temple and seeks to exorcise Lady Bai as a demon. Beyond the romance, Lady Bai and Xiaoqing aspire to ascend to human incarnations and consequently achieve enlightenment and immortality. 

The Legend of White Snake is a magical fantasy, part of the Chinese Xianxia genre, which is parallel to Wuxia. Wu means ‘martial.’ Xian means ‘immortal’ as in Immortal Studios. Xia, the same suffix for both terms, means ‘knight errant’ or ‘hero.’ It connotates chivalry and honor. Wuxia is about martial arts-oriented stories, although there are sometimes elements of magic and sorcery. Xianxia is about demigods and demons and there’s always martial arts although swords tend to be wielded more like magic wands. When applied to Hollywood, Xianxia is akin to Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings whereas Wuxia is like John Wick. Something like The Matrix could fall right in between. These genres often overlap.

This notion of magical beasts spending thousands of years cultivating their spirits to become human or immortal runs through a lot of Chinese mythology. With the influence of Buddhist reincarnation and Daoist spiritual cultivation, the journey of incarnations levelling up is interwoven in many myths. It’s a compelling metaphor for how we all strive to reach mastery within our disciplines and the inconvenient obstacles that impede our progress, obstacles like distracting lovers and interfering adversaries. 

The Legend of White Snake can also be seen as a critique of Buddhist asceticism; Lady Bai is not necessarily evil. In fact, she aspires to enter the mundane human world, often sacrificing centuries of cultivated qi to help her human husband. Nevertheless, Fahui is psychotically bent on capturing and imprisoning her beneath some holy pagoda, akin to the Ghostbusters trapped ghosts in their industrial containment units. In Fahui’s view, humans and snakes (or any other type of demon) cannot intermingle.

The Legend of White Snake has been retold in Chinese opera, television serials, manhua (Chinese manga, a transliteration of characters), and of course, movies. One of the guiltiest Kung Fu movie pleasures is Green Snake (1993). 

Green Snake was directed by Tsui Hark, a master of Wuxia and Xianxia cinema. The ever-mysterious Joey Wong plays Lady Bai (Bai means white, just in case you didn’t know). Her sister Green Snake is played by the always demure Maggie Cheung. And the exorcist monk is martial arts star and real-life wushu champion Vincent Zhao. It’s wonderfully campy with pre-CGI effects but nevertheless, achieves some eye-popping visuals. And all three actors totally sell the fantasy, replete with romance, humor, tragedy, and serpentine sensuality. 

Vincent Zhou is brilliant as the obsessive Buddhist exorcist Fahui. And in the 90s, Joey Wang and Maggie Cheung are at the top of their divadom. From their slinky titillation, the film moves into some big questions of sibling rivalry, good vs evil, delusion vs reality, emotion vs detachment, and what it means to be human. 

Underlying the fable are some hard challenges for Buddhism, all wrapped in the slithery coils of Joey and Maggie as they sashay in their silken dresses, training for a glimpse of enlightenment. The opening imagery of deformed humans wallowing in carnal crudeness, then with a ring of a Buddhist bell, Fahui escapes into meditation symbolized by a drop of water sending out ripples. It’s a deeply resonant scene for any Buddhist. 

Maggie delivers a commanding performance that evolves from campy to vampy, to her perfect portrayal of trying to cry when you don't have emotions, to when she finally achieves tears. She's still mesmerizing. The special effects hold up fairly well, even the snake puppets and prosthetics, all things considered. It's amazing how Tsui Hark achieved his visions without CGI. Best of all, there’s a swordfight between Joey and Maggie. 

In 2011, Jet Li took over the role of the exorcising monk Fahui in It's Love a.k.a. The Sorcerer and the White Snake. It’s ironic because Zhao took over the role of Wong Fei Hung in the Once Upon a Time in China series after Jet left due to a break with the director, who was none other than Tsui Hark. The Sorcerer and the White Snake is CGI designed for 3D. 3D films can be cheesy, and in this, the snake sisters have conspicuous boobs. That’s so cheesy because snakes don’t have boobs. That would make them mammals, not reptiles. Nevertheless, 3D CGI snake sisters with prominent boobs is strangely entertaining.

The fights are all magical - lots of flying about and projecting qi blasts. There are sword fights, but they are magical qi-projection swords. They are more like Harry Potter wands than swords. Nothing wrong with that. Totally counts for sword fights. Unfortunately, the film feels dated now. It was a nascent merging of wire work and CGI, which comes off crude by today’s standards. Beyond that, the film is uneven, vacillating between a love story and an effects-laden actioner. 

More recently, a trilogy of wonderful, animated feature film versions slithered out of Light Chaser Animation Studios, White Snake (2019), Green Snake a.k.a. White Snake 2 (2021) and White Snake 3: Afloat (2024). If you haven’t tuned into Light Chaser, White Snake is a good starting point. The studio has created a ‘New Gods’ universe that retells classic Chinese myths with a modern flair. White Snake introduces the ancient Xianxia world. Green Snake takes a sharp turn into a steampunk Xianxia world that Light Chaser created for its groundbreaking film Nezha Reborn (2021). It almost stands outside of the trilogy because White Snake 3: Afloat picks up right where the original film left off. It tells a more conventional version of the legend, parallel to the 1993 and 2011 films with Fahui in hot pursuit of Lady Bai. It transforms the original to a sort of prequel to the well-known legend. 

There are dozens of other interpretations of the Legend of White Snake in cinema. There’s a lost two-part Shaw Brothers film that dates all the way back to 1926, and dozens of other movies made for the small screen throughout Asia. However, the ones listed here stand out, so much so they received international distribution when they debuted. With the Year of the Snake, the Legend of White Snake teaches us about shedding skins, self-cultivation, heroic ambiguity, the challenges of remaining honorable, the quest for immortality, and most of all, forbidden love. And this year, understanding forbidden love and the sacrifices needed to nurture that intimacy seem more relevant than ever. 

By Gene Ching

Immortal Squad, Martial Arts Editor & Action Choreographer

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