The plot of the film, subtitled Wind Rises in the Desert, leaves the door open for sequels. With a story teeming with subplots and locations, future films could easily branch out as Dao Ma encounters more adventures and adversaries.

Yuen explains that Dao Ma is both a skilled swordsman and a bounty hunter. The film’s world of outlaws and fugitives fits nicely with the wuxia storytelling he has mastered over decades.

“The core of Blades of the Guardians is justice, brotherhood and sacrifice,” he says. “These are universal values in all of my stories. Chinese wuxia gives me the opportunity to provide a very stylised rendering of this kind of story.”

“Everyone has their own style and way of working, which is what makes Wu Jing different from Jet Li and different from Max Zhang,” the director explains. “What they have in common is that they are skilled martial artists. Bringing them together makes for very exciting sequences.”

Yuen had his performers undergo several months of training – not just physical workouts, but weapons drills, classes in wire techniques and horsemanship, and lessons in taking falls.

“A film like this is both physically and mentally challenging,” Yuen notes. “Having months to get ready made it easier for the actors. We were shooting in the desert during summer, which is exhausting. But being on location made the film much more real and helped the actors give convincing performances.”

Location shooting took place in breathtaking desert landscapes near Karamay, in China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where Yuen marshalled chases involving more than 100 horses. Blades of the Guardians unfolds on an enormous scale, with more than 1,500 people involved in some sequences.

“We shot from summer to early winter in Karamay,” Yuen says. “It would have been nice to do some scenes in actual winter there, but the weather is just too challenging with a crew this size.

Yuen says that the climactic fight at Mojia Village, the protagonists’ hometown, was the most difficult to execute. The village is set ablaze by Heyi Xuan (Cisha), an unhinged soldier determined to wed – or kill – Ayuya, meaning the performers had to work against a backdrop of raging fire.

The sequence is broken into several separate set pieces, some of them involving horses – animals notoriously averse to fire. It ends with a prolonged fight between Dao Ma and disgraced soldier Di Ting (Tse) that stretches from the village square to the crumbling ramparts of a castle.

“Yes, Tse did many of his own stunts,” Yuen acknowledges of the actor renowned for his action work. “So did many of the other actors. When you are dealing with heavy hitters like these, everyone wants to do their own stunts. It helps to be working with real kung fu actors.”

Today’s action choreographers can rarely match Yuen’s work; few have the experience he has amassed over decades in the industry. His stunts are precisely calibrated and flawlessly executed. The geography within scenes – how characters move and interact – is always easy for viewers to follow.

But according to Yuen, it is never just about the time required to perform a sequence. “It’s more about the clarity of your vision,” he offers. “When I started making films, we simply couldn’t afford to shoot many angles or takes. We had to think scenes through before shooting.

“Nowadays with digital [cameras] it’s easy to shoot a lot – but shooting a lot doesn’t guarantee you’re getting the right shots. Sometimes, the best results come from working with limitations.”

While the carnage proves a delight for viewers who like their set pieces frequent, gritty and gruesome, the endless chases by bounty hunters feel a little hollow after a while. Everything changes in the final third, however, when the violence takes on an emotional dimension following a surprise death.

The desert vistas, meanwhile, leave an indelible impression, providing a stunning visual backdrop to the bloodshed. While the spectacle cannot mask a narrative so convoluted it screams for the breathing room of a limited series instead, it is hard to fault such a muscular effort, especially given how endangered the genre has become.

Blades of the Guardians may not rank among the greatest wuxia films ever made, but it is easily one of the fiercest entries we have had in years.