Johnnie Yip on why ‘Super Wok Explosion’ is the crime series he’s been waiting for

Super Wok Explosion is the crime series I’ve been waiting for. It’s honestly like Denis Villeneuve and Nicholas Winding Refn got a troubled child. It’s raw, realistic and has the same over the top neon-clad aesthetic as any of Refn’s work. And the soundtrack has the same deep, ominous ambient as Benjamin Wallfisch’s Blade Runner 2049 bass drones and Cliff Martinez’ melodic synth riffs from The Knick.

Timon tells a story about a struggling hero that’s way past his expiration date trying to achieve an epic revival for glory. Rainman’s ambitions are like Oliver Stone’s Alexander the Great and he’s ready to go to the end of the world to achieve an almost Napoleonic status. As the main protagonist, Rainman antagonizes a bunch of troubled Asian kids who just want to do drugs and party. Their raves involving an abundance of ketamine and ecstasy are only momentarily separated by stealing and joyriding exotic cars and armed robberies.

But none of it feels like the nocturnal escapades of a group of teenage junkies. Their lives have all the carelessness of present-day youth culture and is superfluously a comment on that. But an eye for detail can sense that Timon’s real motivation to depict the “Super Wok gang” as he did, is to depict the group not as the root subject, but a symptom of modernity. It’s a weird twist of events where a group of second-generation Chinese who came to the land of liberty to seek prosperity, long to return to return to the land they fled from – that is a unique concoction of collective communism and free-market capitalism, without becoming too political or philosophical. At the end of the day, it’s a dramatic crime drama that doesn’t try to be too pretentious.

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At the same time, Chinatown struggles with problems of its own, where the same thing could be said about any neighborhood or community in the United States struck by racism, astronomically high rents and an increasing wealth gap.

The story of an old generation (Sidney Chow and the tongs) struggling to make room for the new generation (among which Rainman, Phil Hop, Kingsley Chiu) is depicted via long, aesthetically pleasing shots in a Chinatown back-alleys and high-rise apartments that feel depressingly empty and dystopian. Bright neon colors cast by Cantonese shop signs and windows contrasted by dark shadows decorate almost every scene. But at the same time it has the cozyness of red lanterns, messy interiors and Chinese dragons.

The series starts off smoothly and leaves you wondering about where this is going, but quickly pulls the viewer along in a rollercoaster that is true to its title: “Super Wok Explosion”. It’s a classic tragedy of a hero rising to power and falling down with a bang, leading up to an explosive catastrophe where the viewer doesn’t know who to root for, nobody gets away unscathed and nobody really ends up getting what they were after. And at the end of the day you’re left wondering, what was it all good for?

In conclusion, to me, Super Wok Explosion is what I expected of Martin Scorcese’s Revenge of the Green Dragons before it came out but in the style of a stylistic realism that doesn’t move away from visually electrifying the viewer as much as the story tries to. Where Revenge of the Green Dragons lacked the memorable scenes of Casino or Goodfellas, I feel like Super Wok Explosion is chock full of memorable characters and moments. The creator definitely used some artistic liberties, but does a unique take on what ‘modern Chinese organized crime’ looks like – as little is known about them. I can honestly see this go into a William Gibson depiction of a futuristic triad where hackers and corporations fight it out in cyberspace. While it definitely calls to fantasize, it all feels real and substantiated, and as a fellow Chinese American doesn’t leave me cringing in my seat.