"John Wayne is a tellibler name for a cowboy!"

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and we were discussing the movie "Hero." I first found it interesting that he loved this film so much because I have yet to find an Asian who doesn't. When I first watched it, it felt a little silly and I felt like the flying and language was out-of-control unreal to me. I had absolutely no context for understanding it and therefore, it wasn't as entertaining for me as maybe it was for my Asian friends who so admire it. Then we got to talking about other Asian movies and how I did enjoy "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon."

Why? Why do I not mind the artsy flying and intense story in the one movie and find the other very hokey?

My friend enlightened me: for the same reason that we might enjoy a John Wayne flick over Will Smith's "Wild Wild West." The art of using the flying in Chinese movies, he explained, is it's own genre in Chinese media and culture just as the western movies are in ours. It made me regret letting my brain heave this movie into my dumpster of non-entertaining films because I think that even that small tidbit of information would have given me a greater insight and helped me to understand the campy/hokey nature of this style of film.