For Chinese legends, Nobody's perfect

Drawing inspiration from traditional culture, Hong Kong director breaks new ground with contemporary homegrown superhero tale, Xu Fan reports.

From animation to TV shows and live-action movies, over the decades, Hollywood has established a "world" in which both superheroes and ordinary people reside. For example, audiences can see Spider-Man swinging around on the streets of Brooklyn or Batman silently safeguarding the citizens of Gotham City.

So, could China — a country with thousands of years of history and a rich cultural legacy — have its own superheroes living with us in the modern era? This audacious question has been lingering in the mind of Hong Kong director Derek Hui for a long time.

The answer finally arrived when he was shooting the countryside comedy Coffee or Tea? in 2020. During an occasional gathering with some of the cast and crew, one of the actors, Peng Yuchang, recommended that he read The Outcast, a popular comic series.