The Brothers Sun: Michelle Yeoh's Best Trend Continues

The Brothers Sun: A Blend of Martial Arts and Comedy

Netflix's series The Brothers Sun features Michelle Yeoh as Eileen 'Mama' Sun and continues a great trend that started with Everything Everywhere All At Once. The martial arts dark comedy centers around a Taiwanese family living in California, blending traditional martial arts with modern comedic sensibilities in a way rarely seen. The positive reception of The Brothers Sun suggests that the new series will continue to grow, thus continuing Yeoh's recent trend even further.

Mama (Michelle Yeoh) holds a drill in The Brothers Sun.

Similar Themes in Everything Everywhere All At Once

While Everything Everywhere All At Once centers more around the dramatic aspects associated with families and includes multiverses as a way to further express its themes, the film's similarities to The Brothers Sun lie in both projects' effective blend of the complexities associated with traditional family values, and the cultural clash that comes with younger generations butting heads with older generations. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, Yeoh's Evelyn Wang's central conflict centered around her trying to keep her family together after the reveal of Joy's homosexuality threatens to break apart the less understanding members of the Wang family.

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Quan Wang and Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

In The Brothers Sun, Yeoh's Eileen 'Mama' Sun functions in a similar capacity by withholding the crucial information of the Sun family's reputation as the most renowned and ruthless Taiwanese triad from her youngest son, Bruce, to provide him with a normal life in California. Once her oldest son, Charles, returns after a failed attempt on the patriarch's life, Bruce's life gets uprooted, and Yeoh once again fights tooth and nail to keep her family together. While the premises on display in both projects are similar, their execution and tone differentiate them while still solidifying Yeoh as one of Hollywood's best actors working today.

Revitalized Career After Everything Everywhere All At Once

Since Yeoh's Academy Award win for her work in Everything Everywhere All At Once, she has maintained her momentum by starring in diverse projects, such as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, A Haunting in Venice, and The Brothers Sun. This renewed interest in Yeoh's career resembles the similar success seen throughout 1990s Hong Kong cinema after her performance alongside Jackie Chan in Police Story 3: Super Cop, and again in the 2000s after her work as Yu Shu Lien in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. With appearances in Avatar 3 and Avatar 4, Yeoh's best trend continues courtesy of The Brothers Sun.