by Nathaniel R
It's a new season of our series Posterized in which we look back at the entire careers of various actors and directors. Last week Spike Lee joints. Today, Malaysia's finest: Michelle Yeoh. The fifty-six year old Asian superstar is currently grande dame'ing it through the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, giving the movie nearly all of its dramatic bite through her excellent nuanced underplaying of the intimidating and at times outright cruel potential mother-in-law.
Yeoh's career is harder to track here in the US since not all of her films are released here. Nevertheless, let's do our posterized retrospective. We've pruned just a bit for lack of quality posters or obscurity but this is nearly everything starting with her first leading role in 1985 in Yes, Madam! (which has apparently been retitled Police Assassins), a dual-lead action vehicle with American actress Cynthia Rothrock (of late 80s B movie fame). Anyway... on to the pictorial survey.
How many of these 34 Michelle Yeoh projects have you seen? Was it more than you expected? The posters are after the jump...
ACT 1 - A NEW ACTION HEROINE (1985-1996)
Police Assassins (also known as Yes, Madam!), Royal Warriors, (also known as In the Line of Duty), Magnificent Warriors (also known as Dynamite Fighters), Easy Money, Supercop, Butterfly Sword, The Heroic Trio, Holy Weapon, Heroic Trio 2: Executioners, Super Cop 2 (also known as Once a Cop), Tai-Chi Master (also known as Twin Warriors), Wing Chun
Super Cop was unfortunately the only one of these pictures to get a US theatrical release. The Heroic Trio movies are batshit insane and feature not just Yeoh pre-international stardom but Maggie Cheung pre international stardom, too! They were released on DVD in the US shortly after the twin international profile raisers for those two stars: Crouching Tiger and In the Mood for Love
ACT 2 - INTERNATIONAL STARDOM (1997-2010)
Tomorrow Never Dies, Moonlight Express, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Touch, Silver Hawk, Memoirs of a Geisha, Sunshine, Far North, The Children of Huang Shi, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Babylon A.D., True Legend.
At 35 Michelle Yeoh was an older Bond girl than producers usually allow us but WOW did that pay off. She's arguably the best one since she's such an equal to 007. Then Yeoh headlined one of the Aughts most unexpected and very best blockbusters, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (for which she arguably should've been Oscar-nominated). From then on she was working in international projects and in smaller parts in American films though the leading work dried up too quickly. Damn you, ageism!
ACT 3 - REGAL LADY YEARS (2011-2018)
Reign of Assassins, The Lady, Final Recipe, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, Marco Polo, Mechanic: Ressurection, Morgan, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2, Star Trek: Discovery Season 1, and Crazy Rich Asians (Reviewed)
For The Lady she got a small Oscar campaign, but until Crazy Rich Asians people haven't been appreciating her long career and charismatic presence enough. We hope she gets a full throttle Oscar campaign this time around.
So, how many have you seen and which was your first?