Yes, thanks!  Very interesting stuff.<br/><br/>(Editorial aside)<br/>And...I am struck again by the parallels between Westerns, Samurai films, and<em>wuxia</em>.  Some stories translate back and forth amazingly well (Dashiell Hammet's Red Harvest is Yojimo is Last Man Standing.  Seven Samurai is Magnificent Seven.  And so on).<br/><br/>As for the divide, with Western audiences not understanding wuxia:<br/><br/>When I was watching Red Cliff (international release, not US release), I realized that one of the big problems with the film is that it gives barely enough backstory for the audience to make sense of the whys and wherefores<em>if</em>they aren't already familiar with the epic story arc of Three Kingdoms.  If I hadn't been reading vol. 2 of my copy at the time, much of that movie would have gone right overhead!<br/><br/>At the same time, consider all the elements of the average Western that don't get explained because an American audience is already steeped in the lore.  How much backstory would we have to put into a film about, say, the Alamo before it would make sense to someone who has never studied American mythology* and history?<br/><br/>Food for thought.<br/><br/>(/Editorial aside)<br/><br/><br/>* used here in the literary sense, not the theological one.