Crouching Dragon—The Tiger Lily Cut

When the original was released in 2000, it sent thousands of Asia film fanboys into a tailspin tizzy.
“This is going to ruin all our cherished Hong Kong and Japanese exploitation fun!”
Apologists for the film and peddlers of imports did their best to mollify all those nervous Nellies.
And yet - - the mainstream Western world got exposed to and excited by Asian action cinema.
Crouching Tiger made a shitload of money, and, as doomsayers predicted, future Asian fare became ever more tasteful. Easier for the world digestion. The wackiness was on the fade.
All hail ssj for doing his best to return this talky bi-polar film to the crazy roots of Shaw Brothers!

Video - MPEG-4, 960 X 400p. Now this is widescreen. Plenty of dark scenes in this, though I saw nothing amiss. There were quick edits, but one gets so caught up in the goings-on that you don’t pay attention.

Audio - 2 Channel stereo, AAC. 160 Kbps. Subtitles - Yes, some of the best! This reviewer does not understand Mandarin, so I did more reading than listening. The audio seems exactly as the original. Fine for dialogue. Actiony bits by Shanghai Percussion Ensemble terrific. Anytime Yo Yo Ma picks up his cello, naptime.

Narrative - Bit overdone, with references to orcs and goblins and other creep-sters. If creatures get mentioned, then I want to see them. The Iron Chef theme comes and goes worse than a studied accent. Often I had no idea what was going on, plot wise. Jokes not necessarily relatable to ongoing screen follies.

Enjoyment - This is a great antidote to the borefest that the original was. Energy level diminishes in the final act, and jokes start to fall flat. The story tumbles into a confused mess, but I laughed out loud often. ssj has provides several generous extras, as well. Info sheet, trailer, and extraordinary press conference with Michelle Yeoh. Brilliant. I only wish I had a time machine and could kick a copy of this back to 2000 era readers of Asian Cult Cinema.

Drugs, orcs, goblins and dragons oh my!

Super fun edit! I should have known, ssj is hilarious on the regular in the forums and his style of humor really shines through here. The jokes slow down a bit in the second half but it remains funny (and it's because of more great action scenes, so no harm, no foul). Some personal highlights for me are: part with a sword that's a second dick to you, Beijing's Top Chef, snorted brain magic, don't hurt my hair!, super similar really, the preciousss will summon skyrocks down on your ass, plump-ass rump, wrong movie, disturbing my bottom will only lead to sorrow and prepare me a dragon egg smoothie. The new story is pretty out there but funny, which is really all that matters.

Bonus: the subtitled interview is hilarious, as well!

I loved the idea. It would be great to see more fanedits take the same approach. I had difficulty sometimes with pacing and theme. Long, drawn-out fight scenes don't make much sense to me with talk of orcs, drow, undead in the subtitles. Nevertheless, I still recommend this as a courageous and brilliant fanedit. May imitation be the best flattery ssj receives.

Watched this with my firends last night, and we all loved it. Hysterical!

Pros: I can't remember the last time I've watched a film that made me laugh so hard. Most of the new dialogue is just brilliant; its simply absurd, however the author did a great job of choosing where and when to say what. The subtitles are never too long or too short for the amount of words being spoken. Also, the context of the dialogue is always properly reflected by the characters' facial expressions and behaviors. That being said, the ridiculous dialogue becomes 10x funnier by how naturally the characters appear to be speaking it, with the straightest of faces. I don't think a live-shot English spoken version of this fanedit could ever exist, because I can't imagine anyone actually speaking this dialogue without busting a gut, or bare minimum cracking a smile.

Cons: I didn't find some of the plot/subplots really too entertaining, but they are certainly necessary to at least keep some seriousness alive (which I already said, makes the punchlines hit that much harder). All the talk of the orcs, dragon eggs, wyverns (not the zombie pandas- who doesn't love that?) started to get old for me, but I don't know what could fill that void without accomplishing the greatness reached in this fanedit.

Great work SSJ!