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Hero

Hero
“In the first state, man and sword become one and each other. Here, even a blade of grass can be used as a lethal weapon. In the next stage, the sword resides not in the hand but in the heart. Even without a weapon, the warrior can slay his enemy from a hundred paces. But the ultimate ideal is when the sword disappears altogether. The warrior embraces all around him. The desire to kill no longer exists. Only peace remains.”
-King of Qin, 秦始皇
‘Hero’ depicts a ruthless emperor in a war-torn China and his battle to conquer the seven warring states of Early Imperial China. He stops at nothing to achieve his goal of becoming the first Emperor by uniting these seven states under his authority and uses totalitarian ideas and the Chinese idea of Legalism to achieve his goal. The protagonist, a local prefect of the Zhao state, comes to the King of Qin after supposedly defeating the King’s most sought-out rivals. The movie begins with the protagonist, Nameless, explaining that he has no name so this name was given to him. The movie is based around this conversation that Nameless has with the King of Qin, going back and forth between flashbacks and the King of Qin discovering the truth about Nameless, that he and the other assassins sent him on a mission to kill the King in order to keep the seven warring states separate and away from the King’s attempt at emperorship. The movie incorporates many important aspects of both cultural and historical China and sends an overall message to not only the people of China, but also the world. Its popularity in China and Hong Kong is something that is undeniable as the movie is a preface to the beginning of the age of the dynasties.

The movie Hero is set in Early Imperial China in 221 BCE, with seven warring states that make up most of what we know as China today. The region of the Qin Empire, ruled by a King only known in this movie as the King of Qin but in China known as 秦始皇 Qin Shi Huang, makes up a large portion of the...