Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; the Warrior; Hero; Zu Warriors etc. Chinese films set in the past tend to be tragedies. Why is this?
Not just the past. The so-called Blood Operas of the eighties/nineties always ended up with everyone dead, too.
No idea why. Fun to watch, though.
Same reason all great Western romances tend to end in tragedy; bliss is an illusion that cannot last, happiness is transient, everything ends in death.
But, hey, you can learn to feel good about it.
My wife likes to watch TV shows with that stuff, and occasionally she’ll share plot summaries from them: so-and-so is a tragic wife whose misbegotten husband drank their fortunes away and ran off with his mistress, leaving her to raise their five kids with various handicaps all by herself while working six menial jobs a day, and the fifth kid is in the hospital again because his weak kidneys are on the fritz and there’s no transplant available…
And I always inevitably comment, “I can’t imagine the appeal of spending my precious time and money on such misery-generating stuff. Why not watch something uplifting and entertaining instead?”