Wu Assassins is set to continue with the upcoming Netflix movie Fistful of Vengeance, and it could turn the series into the franchise that The Raid movies were unable to become. Wu Assassins debuted on Netflix in 2019, with Indonesian action star Iko Uwais portraying its protagonist, San Francisco chef Kai Jin. Early on, Kai learns that he's the newest incarnation of the supernatural warrior known as the Wu Assassin. Kai soon finds himself tasked with stopping five villains known as the Wu Warlords from accessing an ancient power source known as the Wu Xing.
Released as a ten-episode series, Wu Assassins drew praise for its action-packed martial arts fights. Wu Assassins is set to transition from an episodic series to a movie with the upcoming follow-up Fistful of Vengeance. Uwais returns as Kai, with Lewis Tan of Mortal Kombat fame also back as Lu Xin Lee and JuJu Chan Szeto returning as the sinister assassin Zan Hui.
Fistful of Vengeance will undoubtedly continue exploring Kai's place in the Wu Assassin legacy. This makes it and Wu Assassins very different entities from Uwais' breakout in 2012's The Raid: Redemption and its sequel, 2014's The Raid 2. What may end up being the biggest difference between them is that while The Raid films had more of a ceiling on how far they could go, Wu Assassins has more possibilities ahead of it.
Wu Assassins Is Full Of Supernatural & Martial Arts Mythology
While created as an original property, Wu Assassins established a lot of lore, mythos, and even cosmology in its ten episodes. Kai's discovering that he is the Wu Assassin opens the door to a deep history of the Wu Xing, the Wu Warlords, and the thousand monks. Kai learned the ropes of being the Wu Assassin and his place in the history of its lineage from Ying Ying (Celia Au), which itself set Wu Assassins apart as an excellent martial arts series with more of a fantasy basis. Whenever Kai needed to be filled in on the details of his mission, Ying Ying transported him to an ethereal, otherworldly realm to answer his many questions. This supernatural side of Wu Assassins made it something that could be built upon in a unique way.
That's not to say that making the show a gritty action-drama with crime elements wouldn't have enabled it to continue. However, Wu Assassins established a mythology that stretches back centuries that it plugged into a modern setting. This gives the Wu Assassins franchise the freedom to go in many different directions. From continuing to follow Kai in Fistful of Vengeance to prequels or spin-offs, Wu Assassins can grow and expand in many ways. This is a luxury that The Raid movies unfortunately didn't share.
The Raid Movies Are Action Classics (But Could Only Run For So Long)
The Raid films set an extremely high bar for martial arts movies and were very influential on action movies around the world. By the same token, their scope didn't necessarily lend them to Fast & Furious-levels of longevity. The Raid was a contained, harrowing survival story of cops just trying to escape alive from a tenement building that's a hive of killers and psychopaths. The movie kept its story succinct, but it planted the seeds for Rama's story to continue in The Raid 2.
Arriving two years later, The Raid 2 told a much more complex crime story of Rama infiltrating Jakarta's most powerful crime family. Running 150 minutes to its predecessor's 101, The Raid 2 was full of side stories and betrayals converging on each other. While it seemingly laid the foundation for the wildest story of the series in The Raid 3, writer and director Gareth Evans has also said that Rama wouldn't have been heavily involved. The ending shot of The Raid 2 demonstrates this, with Rama declining an offer to join the Goto crime family with "No, I'm done." By ending the way it did, The Raid 2 didn't leave nearly as much room for a direct continuation as Wu Assassins did. The focus on Rama also made spin-offs on other characters a much tougher proposition. Additionally, The Raid films had no otherworldly, historical, or mythological elements to be expanded upon, or even a John Wick-type world to explore. In the end, The Raid movies are undeniably among the best action movies of all time, but they also had a more typical shelf life built into their storytelling.
How Wu Assassins Could Be The Franchise The Raid Was Intended As
The trailer for Fistful of Vengeance keeps a lot of the story of the martial arts film under wraps. What's known about the follow-up to Wu Assassins is that it will involve a revenge mission by Kai, Lu, and Tommy (Lawrence Kao) and a new supernatural enemy they encounter in Thailand. Their old enemy, Zan, is also on the scene again, and the trailer seems to indicate she's acquired some Wu Warlord-level abilities of her own. Meanwhile, the action scenes showcased continue the Raid-style martial arts of Wu Assassins with a dash of wire fu and a good helping of powers thrown in. Essentially, the Wu Assassins franchise follows The Raid's winning formula of martial arts while adding otherworldly elements that didn't fit into its story.
Fistful of Vengeance is also keeping viewers invested in its protagonists as continuing heroes on their next adventure. The Raid movies led by Iko Uwais, being predicated on a cop just trying to navigate terrifying situations with minimal preparation, couldn't position themselves in the same way. With Fistful of Vengeance continuing from where Wu Assassins left off, it doesn't have the same finite premise built into it. Where The Raid was about battling criminals in situations where survival is the top priority, Wu Assassins is more of a good vs. evil struggle. The latter has much more ground to tell an ongoing story with action scenes right out of The Raid movies on its side.
The fact that The Raid movies ended with The Raid 2 with Evans' scrapping his initial trilogy outline is hardly a criticism of them. Both of The Raid films will undoubtedly stand the test of time with their incredible action sequences that utilized Indonesian Silat martial arts style in a horror movie or gangster film-type story. Wu Assassins followed their lead in its approach to its martial arts battles, but from the beginning made it mythos and world-building equally significant. With Fistful of Vengeance as chapter two of the Wu Assassins saga, it just might be able to tell the ongoing story that The Raid movies didn't have the same basis to.