GLOBAL GENRES—Genre Mixing and Spatiality in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

This contribution is part of a series of posts on genre and the ‘global shuffle’.

Have you ever wondered where films like Blade Runner (1982) or Ghost in the Shell (1995), with their massive, towering skyscrapers and claustrophobic corridors, get their inspiration? Kowloon Walled City (KWC, also known as the “city of darkness”), considered to be the most densely populated city on Earth before its demolition, inspired numerous forms of media, such as films, graphic novels, and video games. Renowned for its staggering architecture and congested wiring and cables covering the skyline, KWC stands apart as its own independent character within Hong Kong media. KWC’s spatial presence across Hong Kong’s global mediascapes reveals more than a visually haunting, post-apocalyptic fortress; it also draws attention to issues of nationhood, personal liberation and social justice that are integral to the genre of cross-border film.

Film genre is the “vital structure through which flow a myriad of themes and concepts [and] through which material flows from producers to directors [and] from the industry to distributors, exhibitors, audiences and their friends” (Kitses qtd. in Altman 14). According to writer and film theorist Rick Altman, film genres are more dynamic than presented. Therefore, they should be viewed as transcendent and demonstrative of stylistic devices or metaphors that establish connections (14). It is from these connections that a massive, postwar fortress like KWC has stood the test of time and carved out its own existence within Hong Kong film genres. Even decades after its demolition, KWC continues to intrigue and inspire compelling works of art. A prime example that led to a resurgence in Hong Kong cinematic features is Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024), directed by Soi Cheang. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, which has become Hong Kong’s second highest-grossing film, foregrounds the spatiality of KWC and Altman’s theory of genre mixing by incorporating nostalgic kung fu/martial arts, neo-noir, and gangster/crime themes all within one feature film.

Dominating a small percentage of Hong Kong’s infrastructure from the First Opium War until the early 1990s, KWC is “most commonly associated with iconic images of the form it took from the mid-twentieth century: an inexplicable, densely packed, and seemingly anarchic urban settlement nestled within British colonial Hong Kong [where] mainland Chinese refugees and Hong Kong residents flowed into Kowloon Walled City” (May). KWC acts not only to historicize but also as a cultural symbol for both its residents and those who wander in. Historically, the rising tensions from China, Britain, and the outbreak of World War II with the Japanese occupation led to an awkward and uncertain political status: KWC was left out of the original treaty agreement between Britain and China, leaving KWC to effectively adopt its own laws and future. From these disputes of territory and mutable borders, KWC became an unintended, lawless byproduct—an enclave within an enclave that absorbed many mainland refugees escaping famine and political persecution. By the 1970s, KWC “…had grown so large within its confines that its over-height buildings were posing a safety hazard to aeroplanes from the nearby Kai Tak Airport (itself notorious as the world’s most terrifying airport due to its proximity to the city centre)” (Morisawa). KWC’s rapid expansion opened internal gaps for cheap labor, illegal drug trade, and prostitution to fill, coupled with a lack of surveillance, all of which made up the overall social ecosystem of the community. Where administrative oversight was largely absent, triad leaders and police officers conspired to regulate, control and profit from the wide-ranging illicit industries that flourished in KWC (Fraser and Li 223). The lived experience of KWC was therefore intimately bound up with experiences of crime and untethered nationhood. However, for Hong Kong it resulted in ad-hoc residences and economic revenue for smaller businesses. While there was also limited access to city maintenance and running water, there have been resident oral histories led by a group of Hong Kong-based community scholars that revealed that KWC had “…strong community ties, affordable housing, and a higher quality of life than international reportage usually depicted” (Blakemore). Moreover, since its demolition in 1993, countless oral testimonials and major photographic, architectural and journalistic accounts have emerged about KWC and revived the enclave via physical and virtual contexts.

KWC’s recent resurgence across diverse media has allowed for a ‘second life’ in which its “…reconstructions are less about the lived space of the Walled City itself and more about the idea that it represents: a self-sustaining social ecology that emerged in the cracks between the forces of ‘collaborative colonialism,’ a multistoried space of anarchic urbanism in which crime and corruption were deeply embedded” (Fraser and Li 222). KWC has since become a timeless trademark in the realm of cultural memory. Across a spectrum of cultural reconstructions such as film, graphic novels, and online gaming, KWC has come to represent a manifestation of the simulacra, in which ‘reality’ is replaced by systems of signs and symbols (Baudrillard, 1994). This reconstructed memory of KWC exists in the loopholes of pluralized communal memories, each its own copy of what once was. As a result of this reconstructed memory, KWC’s spatial existence has since been redeveloped as a “different facet of the contemporary crime-media nexus in Asia” (Fraser and Li 223); essentially partaking in a mix of genre play. In an interview for the 77th Cannes Film Festival, Cheang was asked about KWC and his intentions behind his research and reasons for selecting it as the primary focus for Twilight of the Warriors. For the set design, there was a blend of physical reconstruction of tin material, wires, and makeshift shops but also CGI during post-production by aligning, compositing, and matching layers of images and visual effects. Cheang opens with questions of how to replicate the terrifying yet sentimental complexities of what was also considered home for residents of many nationalities and walks of life. He further remarks on how:

The challenge would be the setup. Could we create the same essence of the space? The other thing was the action. I wanted it to be a little different from the action that we are generally kind of accustomed to. The good thing was that the story was also adapted into a comic book, and so looking at that, I saw it had a very specific vision for the action. We used that as a tipping point to then go into creating a new kind of action choreography that made reference to the old Hong Kong style but also allowed for it to be a little bit new in the process. (Hullender 2024)

This ‘old Hong Kong style’ Cheang refers to reveals a demarcation between film depictions of KWC from the period before demolition and those from the period after. Where early films such as Brothers from the Walled City (1982), Long Arm of the Law (1984) and Crime Story (1993) use KWC as a backdrop for crime and lawlessness – ‘a slum to escape from’ or a no man’s land of darkness and crime – they nonetheless take care to show a version of the lived experience in KWC (Fraser and Li 225). In more recent years from post-demolition, representations of KWC have taken a turn as a symbol of nostalgic communality, thrilling aesthetics or anarchic urbanism, as seen in Hollywood interpretations such as Bloodsport (1988) and Batman Begins (2005). Additional genres include cyberpunk and neo-noir, which all contribute to generic concerns for clarity and consistency throughout cinematic studies. This mix of genres within cinematic representations of KWC subsequently coincide with Altman’s question in Film/Genre where he asks: “…what is it about genres that makes them so easy to mix?” (132).

To answer this question in the realm of Hong Kong cinema, genre mixing does not always consist of mutually exclusive categories. However, in some cases with specific category types, genre mixing becomes more indiscriminate. For example, the generic application of Hong Kong neo-noir[1] and martial arts within the context of Hong Kong and KWC can be seen as a result of the geopolitical “…fear and uncertainty concerning the handover of the sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997” (Chan 10). While there were familiar characteristics of the martial arts genre in Twilight of the Warriors with certain key factors of manual combat and stylized fast-motion cinematography, Cheang explains in an interview with Zolima CityMag that while shooting and researching during the early stages of the film: “…I got to thinking the Walled City was kind of like the situation in Hong Kong. I chose 1984 for a reason. At the time, everybody asked ‘who am I?’ Were we British or Chinese?” (Kerr).

In tracing the genealogy and development of popular generic trends in Hong Kong cinema, viewers can see that there has been a “presumed transformation or repositioning of colonial subjectivity” as well as the Hong Kong imagination (Chan 29). This shift in colonial subjectivity in the eyes of the viewer gives rise to possibilities in Hong Kong genre mixing since categories “…such as nationality, are so dependent on history that they may give rise to such anomalies as dual citizenship or statelessness” (Altman 32). This representation of statelessness parallels with the fluidity of genre that is depicted in Twilight of the Warriors via mainland refugee Chan Lok-kwun (played by Raymand Lam Fung), who scrapes for money across dangerous jobs in the slums of Hong Kong in order to acquire a passport. The characters in Twilight of the Warriors find themselves left to the mercy of stateless limbo, external decisions, and vicious triad wars, all while being protected by the walled city. This is reminiscent of the neo-noir genre. By adding themes of brotherhood, loyalty-and-betrayal, and recognizable, choreographed fight scenes that harken back to older Hong Kong films, Cheang succeeds in demonstrating precisely how “genre is first and foremost a boundary phenomenon” (Grindon 42). Boundaries that provide a glimpse into sociopolitical conflicts contribute to genres becoming compatible with one another.

This search for KWC since its demolition has resulted in a conjuring of space that no longer exists. Not only to retrieve but to define what the KWC once stood for is a challenge that contemporary writers and directors like Cheang must face. Considering the postcolonial history and cultural meaning behind KWC, viewers are confronted with multiple cultural meanings. In films like Twilight of the Warriors, KWC is remediated and rearranged as a new spatial experience that resolves discordant and seemingly eschewed tropes from before its demolition where “the cultural memory of a city that was too grimy, anarchic, and monstrous to even exist is re-affirmed” (May). Twilight of the Warriors therefore makes way for a more nuanced second life for KWC by reappropriating the nostalgic themes of martial arts, like brotherhood and loyalty, and neo-noir themes, like underground crime and lawlessness. Lastly, focusing on KWC allows for blurred boundaries within nationhood and statelessness that opens possibilities for a mix of genres. The mixing of genres allows for more pronounced relationships and themes that were not prominent in older depictions in Hong Kong cinema. In the same way that there are borderless and fluid notions of statehood within KWC, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled Insuccessively anchors the KWC’s spatial presence and reinvents it as a timeless, cultural memory.

Works Cited

Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. British Film Institute, 1999.

Blakemore, Erin. “Inside Kowloon Walled City—a Lawless Metropolis Where Anarchy Reigned in Hong Kong.” History, 16 Oct. 2025, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/kowloon-walled-city-history.

Cannes 2024: Interview with ‘Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In’ Director Soi Cheang | Fantastic Pavilion. https://fantasticpavilion.com/cannes-2024-interview-with-twilight-of-the-warriors-walled-in-director-soi-cheang/Accessed 12 Oct. 2025.

Chan, Kim-mui E. Elaine. Hong Kong Dark Cinema: Film Noir, Re-Conceptions, and Reflexivity. Springer International Publishing AG, 2019. East Asian Popular Culture Ser.

Fraser, Alistair, and Eva Cheuk-Yin Li. “The Second Life of Kowloon Walled City: Crime,

Media and Cultural Memory.” Crime, Media, Culture 13, no. 2 (2017): 217–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659017703681.

Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre Reader IV. University of Texas Press, 2012.

Kerr, Elizabeth. “The Kowloon Walled City Comes to Life in a Surprise Action Hit.” Zolima CityMag, 2024, https://zolimacitymag.com/kowloon-twilight-of-the-warriors-walled-in-action-movie/.

May, Lawrence. “Virtual Heterotopias and the Contested Histories of Kowloon Walled City.” Games and Culture 17, no. 6 (2022): 885–900. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120221115398.

Morisawa, Masaki. “Kowloon Walled City: An Accident of Hong Kong History.” The Gale Review, https://review.gale.com/2024/07/30/kowloon-walled-city/.

What Is Neo Noir? Definition and Essential Examples | No Film School. https://nofilmschool.com/neo-noir-meaning. Accessed 15 Oct. 2025.

[1] Neo-noir is the reimagining of the genre of film noir, which was a term coined by French film critic Neo Frank for movies that had an emphasis on criminal psychology, violence, misogyny, and the breaching of a previously steadfast moral system (Hellerman).

Biography

Georgiana Yasumura is an assistant lecturer and a doctoral student in the Comparative Media and Culture program at the University of Southern California, where her research focuses on the intersections of grief and mediated realities within AI platforms and video games. Some of her academic interests delve into Okinawan transcultural literature and media.