Viewing Tsui Hark’s Paradigm Shift through the Lens of the ‘Detective Dee’ Series

By analysing the three Detective Dee titles—Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (2013), and Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (2018)—film critic Po Fung explores how Tsui Hark shifted the focus from the world of jianghu to the imperial court in his wuxia films.

Tsui Hark’s early wuxia films largely focused on noble and valiant heroes of jianghu—the world of martial arts outlaws—who defy and even despise corrupt imperial authority. By contrast, what stands out in the Detective Dee series is Tsui’s relinquishment of this position of rebellion against despotism and corruption. Instead, he takes the stance that no matter how rotten the powers that be, as long as they exist in some form, the die is cast and the status quo should be upheld at all costs.

This shift in focus from the world of jianghu to the imperial court is most obvious in the first film of the series, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. The story opens with the case of two imperial officials who have erupted into flames. Empress regent Wu Zetian (Carina Lau) tasks imprisoned detective Dee Renjie (Andy Lau) with investigating the mystery. Dee finds himself embroiled in the political struggle between Wu, who is about to be crowned China’s first female emperor, and the royal house of Li headed by Prince Li Xiao (Yao Lu). As a subject, where Dee places his allegiance is no small matter. Yet he does not seem to care about the power struggle and instead adopts a neutral stance as he investigates the spontaneous combustion of the officials. When he uncovers his old friend Shatuo Zhong’s (Tony Leung Ka-fai) plot to assassinate Wu during her coronation by toppling a colossal Buddha statue that is under construction, Dee goes all out to stop the scheme. He condemns Shatuo and tells him: ‘Crush the throne, and all officials—civil and military—will die in your hands. You will have caused more deaths than the evil empress’. The latter claim is pure speculation, as the dissenters Wu would kill in an uprising most likely outnumber all the officials in the palace. Therefore, Dee’s statement is no more than a false and empty statistic used to justify his behaviour to the audience.

The views of the film’s creator are revealed in the finale. Due to Dee’s intervention, the Buddha statue collapses at a skewed angle, missing the officials and only threatening the safety of Wu. Dee could have let Wu be crushed to death. But, instead, he risks his own life to save her. Essentially, Dee’s only motive for dismantling Shatuo’s plan is to protect Wu Zetian, who holds all power. In his previous condemnation of Shatuo, Dee said his friend’s plot would ‘bring disaster to country and people’. The logic behind this statement is clear: dictators must not die, no matter how egregious their actions. If they die, the country will fall to pieces and millions will suffer. Of course, one only has to look to the past to disprove this claim. There have been plenty of coups in Chinese history that did not end in social disintegration or the death of millions. According to Dee, however, the deaths that Wu has caused and will continue to cause is beside the point, because she stands for a state of stability that should be defended at all costs. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is not afraid to portray Wu as a schemer or have Dee label her as an ‘evil empress’, as long as her depiction carries emotional depth. As Wu’s right-hand woman, Shangguan Jing’er (Li Bingbing), is about to die, she asks the empress if she has ever been in love, and Wu replies in the affirmative. After Wu is saved, she dismisses her staff and humbly accepts Dee’s chastisement. This respectable gesture of magnanimity redeems Wu in viewers’ eyes and shows them that Wu deserves Dee’s all-out attempt to save her. Moreover, at the end of the film, the following words appear on the screen: ‘In the year 705 AD, Wu Zetian announces her abdication to the crown prince, thereby fulfilling her pledge to Dee Renjie’. This claim is just a lie meant to fool the audience. Anyone with the least bit of knowledge of Chinese history knows that Wu’s decision to step down in 705 had nothing to do with honouring a pledge. Instead, it was the result of the royal chancellor Zhang Jianzhi taking advantage of her old age to overthrow her.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame marked the completion of Tsui Hark’s transition from the world of jianghu to the imperial court. The film also set the tone for its prequels, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon and Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings. Both films are about foreign conspiracies, and they portray foreign tribes that were oppressed by the Tang empire as perpetrators instead of victims. In Rise of the Sea Dragon, a fictional eastern island is caught in a war between the Tang dynasty and the kingdom of Fuyu. The island inhabitants are in dire straits, and not only do they want revenge, they also use dark magic to harm the emperor and his ministers in an attempt to overthrow the Tang dynasty. There’s an interesting theme that runs through the Detective Dee series: enemies, whether internal or external, always target the top echelons of the kingdom, and Dee Renjie’s mission is always to protect the imperial powers, the rationale being that the country would crumble without them. Following this theme, The Four Heavenly Kings also depicts the victims of the court as the perpetrators. The backstory explains how a tribe known as the Wind Warriors used sorcery to help the Li family establish the Tang dynasty. Prince Li Shimin incarcerates the tribal chief who predicted that he would assassinate his brothers in a coup for the throne. After becoming the emperor, Li also brutally massacres the Wind Warriors. Under a new leader, the tribe uses dark magic to seek retribution against Li. Dee makes no attempt to redress the grievances of the Wind Warrior clan; his sole responsibility is to protect the emperor and, even more so, Wu Zetian. In the end, Dee succeeds in thwarting the Wind Warriors’ pursuit of the emperor and empress. He even recruits an eminent monk with special powers to force the tribe to accept its fate and stop undermining the stability of the Tang dynasty. Dee is a hero who believes that stability overrides everything and that the key to maintaining that stability is the protection of the powerful, especially the supreme leader, Wu Zetian.

The Detective Dee series can be seen as a prime example of the post-2010s phenomenon of Chinese wuxia films being repackaged as crime-case fiction. Today, those who discuss the history of martial arts literature generally consider chivalrous gong’an—also known as crime-case fiction—novels from the Qing dynasty to be wuxia stories. Although wuxia novels follow many of the conventions of chivalrous gong’an novels, especially in its descriptions of wuxia warriors and martial arts, the term ‘wuxia novel’ did not appear until the Republic of China. The fundamental difference between wuxia novels and the gong’an novels of the Qing dynasty lies in the nature of the criminal case. In a typical chivalrous gong’an novel from the Qing dynasty, warriors may hail from the world of jianghu, but they always eventually accept the imperial throne as the preeminent moral authority and submit themselves to serving the court’s representatives. During the Republic of China, Manchu rule and the monarchy came to an end. Hence, long-form wuxia novels, starting from early works such as Lu Shi’e’s Eight Great Swordsmen Immortals (1917) and Xiang Kairan’s Marvellous Gallants of the Rivers and Lakes (1922), either revolve around jianghu vendettas that have nothing to do with the court or are about overthrowing the emperor and rejecting imperial authority. In this sense, the wuxia novel can be viewed as a pro-revolution document. This rebellious spirit continues in later wuxia novels and films, which are mainly themed around jianghu’s existence outside of imperial control. After 2010, however, wuxia films in China underwent a change. The majority of titles made during this time feature heroes on imperial missions. Only with the backing of the court can these heroes vanquish traitors and enemies of the state. As a result, wuxia films started to become more like chivalrous gong’an stories from the Qing dynasty. While martial arts heroes in past films were led by civil ministers, the repackaged wuxia films of today show that heroes who possess both brains and brawn could be tasked directly by the imperial court to maintain social stability. While it was once said that ‘the noble hero uses his skills to break the law’, in today’s era, ‘the noble hero uses his skills to enforce the law’.