The Brothers Sun follows up Beef’s success on Netflix, taking Asian stories & representation to new heights

Michelle Yeoh in The Brothers Sun on Netflix. Asian actors, stories and franchises have gone mainstream in a manner that few could have predicted a decade ago. (Screen grab from trailer via YouTube/Netflix)

In an action sequence from Netflix’s The Brothers Sun, a team of assassins dressed in dinosaur costumes attacks Charles, the heir-apparent to a stricken gangster family from Taiwan. In the United States now, Charles (Justin Chien) is learning the ropes of his newly adopted landmass. It’s a messy and maniacal little sequence that echoes the eccentricity of a show not necessarily concerned with defining itself. Stories about Asian immigrants living in the US have made windfall gains since the breakout hit Crazy Rich Asians, but with The Brothers Sun following up the similarly whacky Golden-Globe-winning road-rage drama Beef (2023), the streamer’s biggest potential market – Asia – also seems to be its best bet in sourcing stories that if not exceptional, at least look and sound fresh.

The Brothers Sun follows a Taiwanese mob family, one half of which, led by the mesmeric Michelle Yeoh (Mama Sun) lives in the Los Angeles area. Yeoh has finally graduated from number-making cameos to a heavyweight performer capable of illuminating even the dullest of stories. Every time the Netflix show sags, conforms or looks too weary for its genre-hopping shenanigans, Yeoh seems to put her glass of wine by the side and show the kids how it’s done. A conversation she shares with both her sons Charles and Bruce (Sam Li) in the third episode, is a lesson is ratcheting tension, controlling it with finesse and then helping it transition to a storytelling peak.

Much like Yeoh, many Asian stars and creators working in Hollywood are having a bit of moment. Beef, starring the exceptional Steven Yeun and Ali Wong (also set in the Los Angeles area) set the ball rolling by subverting a well-known pop-culture trope – Asians driving.

In The Brothers Sun, these references aren’t highlighted but they exist within the spa-set meetings, the outdoor exercise routines and of course poor driving etiquette. Between the two shows, the majority of the cast and the creators have been of Asian descent. Not only does that point to a growing market for Asian stories, but also to the widening scope to study migration through. Celine Song’s Oscar-tipped Past Lives, for example, is a startlingly epic story of displacement framed through the lens of an unfulfilled romantic prophecy. It almost feels like the kind of film that wouldn’t have been made a decade ago, at least not to the note of acclaim and recognition it has.

In a report cited by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, an independent survey of representation in Hollywood, Asian representation has seen a dramatic rise to 12.5 percent from a paltry 3.5 back in 2007. Asian actors, stories and franchises have gone mainstream in a manner that few could have predicted a decade ago. A part of the reason obviously is streaming’s accessibility and its alteration of the barrier of language. Squid Game’s popularity and the rise of K-drama cults around the world imply that good stories, or at least original stories, are maybe universal despite being earnestly local. It’s probably what has made streaming both necessary and inevitable in a sense. Or as Bong Joon Ho said, while receiving his Oscar for Parasite, “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films”.

The Brothers Sun ably milks Yeoh’s belated global stardom by demanding her to do a lot by doing less. She has this air of menace, of withheld emotional fragility that only really trickles into the narrative as opposed to the bursting unevenly. Even within the Asian artistic community, it shows the emergence of a welcome pecking order. There are now veterans, A-listers, and those waiting in line to make their mark. It only bodes well for the future of cinema and storytelling, that the burden of authenticity is now distributed.

You can tell a culture is beginning to find its artistic feet when you see it casually strut its eccentricities without the shade of embarrassment. The Brothers Sun unravels as a dramedy with cultural specificities that look unconcerned by how they may seem. It takes place in an America where the Asian-ness doesn’t arrive inside quotation marks. Instead, it manifests as an internal conflict. In a scene, Charles watches Bruce do Improv, visibly embarrassed by how unserious all of it feels. Nothing’s really said, but you can practically visualise the length it takes to walk from knowing to adapting. Thankfully, Asian narratives can now walk that length at their own wilful, unembarrassed pace. Let go of the burdens of the western gaze. Dunk into a bowl full of ramen or celebrate at a swarming but homely night market.