Redressing

Chapter 4 turns to martial arts cinema and argues that Ashes of Time (1994) is a work of fan fiction. An avid consumer of Jin Yong’s novels, Wong Kar-wai has modeled his career after that of the famed writer-cum-entrepreneur. The original score of Ashes of Time furthers Wong’s ambition to be a creator of worlds rather than a mere adaptor. Frankie Chan and Roel Garcia’s music propels Jin Yong’s fiction into a global arena in which wu xia pian coexists with jidaigeki and the spaghetti Western. The new soundtrack for Ashes of Time Redux (2008) brings to light a discontinuity in Wong’s career stemming from the (frustrated) desire to replicate the global successes of Zhang Yimou’s and Ang Lee’s martial arts films. Drawing on the precedent of Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1994), the chapter ends by discussing the curatorial dimension of Wong’s retooling of old tracks by Shigeru Umebayashi and Ennio Morricone, respectively, in The Grandmaster (2013).