My Cultural Diet

Long before the MCU was even a glimmer in Kevin Feige’s eye, Johnnie To created his own superhero world with The Heroic Trio, a deliriously campy and over-the-top film about three superheroines who take on an evil baby-kidnapping cult. As expected from a ’90s Hong Kong action film, The Heroic Trio is filled with wire-enhanced kung fu and physics-defying action — courtesy of Ching Siu-Tung — as Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, and the late, great Anita Mui strut their stuff across the screen. (Indeed, the film literally ends with them sashaying down the street with enough sass and style to make Beyoncé turn green with envy.) One doesn’t look to The Heroic Trio for logic or reason. How else to explain the fact that everyone’s completely oblivious to the alternate dimension lurking just below their city’s streets where an evil cult led by a eunuch seeks to restore China’s imperial line? (Seems like somebody in the Sanitation Department should’ve stumbled across that at some point in the city’s history.) Rather, you watch a film like this for the highly stylized visuals, from the aforementioned alternate dimension to the brutalist architecture to the secret lab filled with blowing paper for other reason than because it looks so. Darn. Dramatic. And speaking of drama, all three heroines have requisitely tragic backstories that — surprise! — are more connected than they realize, and for all of its camp, The Heroic Trio isn’t afraid to get surprisingly grim at times.

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