Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a complicated film that seems to be part fantasy and part reality. In most kung fu films, it is not hard to figure out who the hero is. It is the kung fu fighter who is the best and beats all his opponents. However, in this film, there are several "heroes," and at least one of them is a woman, a girl, really. That is very unusual for a kung fu film, because usually women are not very big in the plot, and certainly not fighters themselves. To top it off, Jiao Long, the young daughter of an official, is one of the "heroes" of the film, and can fight almost as well as the master Li Mu Bai. Thus, this story has far different heroes than most king fu tales. Women are rarely heroes, and in this film, the women actually outlive the male hero, which is even odder.
Another difference in this film is how the master in portrayed. Li Mu Bai is called an "idiot" at one point, something that is very different from most kung fu films, where the master is always the wisest, the best, and never questioned. Sometimes he appears weak, and the young girl and other warriors best him at times. He proves that he is indeed a cunning warrior by the end, and fights in very unusual places, such as the tops of trees, but he is certainly not invincible, like most kung fu heroes are portrayed. He also dies in the end, and all his mastery of the kung fu arts and mysticism cannot save him. This is another big difference from most other kung fu films, because the hero does not die. The young girl returns to her true love at the end of the film, but she also "flies away" to make her lover's dreams come true, so essentially, she dies too.
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