Blue Eye Samurai is ‘revenge’ for one of Hollywood’s most underappreciated action directors

06.11.2023 - 14:05 / polygon.com / Michael Green

Jane Wu understood the journey of a young warrior slashing her way through a male-dominated hierarchy of power. Though Amber Noizumi and Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) co-created the new Netflix series Blue Eye Samurai, they found the hard-R animated epic’s soul in Wu, a storyboard artist, director, and martial artist whose unsung role in blockbuster action over the last 20 years made her an obvious choice to oversee the series’ direction. Blue Eye Samurai follows Mizu, a young woman of mixed race in 17th-century Japan, who masquerades as a male samurai to find four white men hiding out in the country — and the one who’s likely her father. Wu’s ascent in the action and animation industries wasn’t as bloody as Blue Eye Samurai, but it was as rigorous.

“It was so eerily relatable how Mizu felt as a woman going through Edo Japan, when women were really seen as decorative things,” Wu tells Polygon. “I absolutely related to the anger she felt. I was able to channel that anger. And it was very cathartic.”

Wu’s frustration with the “bro club” of Hollywood action work comes out in full force in Blue Eye Samurai, which rewires razor-sharp swordplay for the John Wick era. Mizu slices arms, bounces across mountains, and tears herself apart on her quest to find answers. It’s genuinely astonishing, and when Wu’s name pops up in the credits as supervising director, it’s obvious why. Wu’s CV is littered with milestone projects, having storyboarded for the better-than-anyone-would’ve-expected animated series Jackie Chan Adventures and Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot to Game of Thrones and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The filmmaker hit my personal radar when I discovered she choreographed all the best moments in The Avengers’ Battle of New York. Marvel knew it had to be in the Jane Wu business, recruiting her eye for Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Age of Ultron. Her style — which combines a knowledge of physics and fluidity, a wry comic timing, and her training in the martial art wushu — nearly got her jobs directing Chinese blockbusters, although COVID-19 threw a wrench in those plans. She doesn’t have any regrets, though — she’s exactly where she wants to be.

While Wu’s fingerprints are all over modern action, Blue Eye Samurai finally puts her name in the spotlight in a major way. She didn’t waste the opportunity. Wu says she funneled two decades of dealing with workplace microaggressions right into the show’s action, which hits hard.

“And the hits have to hit hard,” she says. “That’s part of my martial arts background and having watched so much action in my upbringing, from Hong Kong cinema. I appreciate a good hit. I want you to feel it. That’s the whole idea of what we do when