《尋秦記》 (Back to the Past): A Speculative Future of Hong Kong & Hong Kong Cinema

In a media world that is always chasing novelty and newness, 尋秦記 (Back to the Past) (2026) boldly orchestrates a media event for fans to indulge in the rawest Hong Kong nostalgia. The film serves as a sequel to the very popular TV show of the same name (English: A Step into the Past) (2001), broadcast on TVB more than two decades ago. People’s enthusiastic anticipation for the film is an extension of that TV show fandom, and there are so many fan-made reels and celebrity news on social media leading up to the film’s release. The media event leverages the star power of TV actors and actresses such as Louis Koo, Jessica Hsuan, Raymond Lam, and Sonija Kwok. (Raymond Lam’s performance in this film really shines, much like his role in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024).) Their characters speak a shared language to those who grew up watching TVB in the 2000s, probably the last generation that habitually watched programmed TV. Without this context, audiences would easily find the flaws in Back to the Past unforgivable.

Louis Koo has said the film is meant to be a happy movie; indeed, Back to the Past presents a rather counterintuitive optimism about Hong Kong. Time travellers in the film, including the protagonist, all harbor some kind of yearning to go “back” — not to an abstract future or a general modern society but to a very specific city called “Hong Kong.” In the film’s depiction, Hong Kong is a forever home that offers all the delicious dim sum, pineapple buns, and lemon tea. True, nothing is more seductive than food when it comes to the taste of Home Kong. But for those who are “stuck” in a different world from home in reality, Back to the Past‘s blind optimism can massage their homesickness to the same extent as the happily-ever-after barbecue ending of a TVB drama can.

Many critics of the film Back to the Past (2026) point to its incoherent plot, which is indisputable. I want to point out a lesser-known fact: both the film Back to the Past (2026) and the TV show A Step into the Past (2001) are adaptations of writer 黃易 (Wong Yi)’s novel 尋秦記, published between 1994 and 1996. It would have been really nice to have Wong Yi help craft the story on screen; unfortunately, the writer passed away some years ago. The production team of Back to the Past could have substantially polished the story with a little more budget for plot development (since writers are so poorly paid everywhere!). Although Back to the Past was a financial success by the numbers overall, it wasn’t a very shrewd commercial effort in this sense. If anyone is ever interested in another Hong Kong soft sci-fi, they should look up 朝花夕拾 Life is a Moment (1987). Directed by Teresa Woo San, starring 夏文汐 (Pat Ha) and 方中信 (Alex Fong), the film is a faithful adaptation of 亦舒 (Yi Shu)’s novel of the same name.

Action, which is often a major selling point of Hong Kong cinema, works just fine in Back to the Past (2026). Louis Koo tries to mesh action with different sci-fi elements, which, I find, makes the action scenes less likable. To be fair, tech-heavy genres like sci-fi are still nascent in Hong Kong cinema, which is better known internationally for its “rawness.” In one of Jackie Chan’s earlier interviews, he claims that Hong Kong only thrives on labor-intensive genres, such as the OG action and martial arts films Chan himself made; the city lacks the hardware and software to support genres like science fiction. What Jackie Chan said might not hold true in the future, as with support from mainland Chinese investors, filmmakers like Louis Koo have been investing in more sci-fi projects. One notable example prior to Back to the Past (2026) was the high-budget sci-fi action movie 明日戰記 (Warriors of Future) (2022). We still have to see if sci-fi can be a commercially viable formula for Hong Kong cinema to somehow sustain its brand in the Chinese-speaking market.

I am usually critical of the very narrow, chivalrous-male worldview that a lot of sci-fi novels endorse, such as 倪匡 (Ni Kuang)’s Wisely series. But, given that sci-fi is still very much defined and dominated by white men,* I can humbly accept the bromance in Back to the Past (2026) this time because, at the very least, I can see some handsome Hong Kong guys on the big silver screen in a mainstream theater in Los Angeles.

* Many sci-fi novels I have come across aren’t written in the most flattering way. I am not sure if this has to do with the segregation of science and the arts. I only learn a little more about this genre from Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (2006) and Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others (2002), both of which won the high-profile Hugo Awards and have been adapted into film/TV. Machinehood (2021) by S. B. Divya is also a pretty nice one that is not western/male-centered.