The Dragon Inn trilogy revolves around an inn setting across different timeframes, featuring distinct characters with varied agendas. Each film showcases enemies or unwelcome guests entering the inn, prompting the protagonists to defend, fight, or ambush them. Despite fantastical elements like dragons and flying swords, the narratives focus on power dynamics and personal battles rather than typical fantasy tropes, exploring the mental and emotional effects of violence on characters. The inn serves as a haven, safe-house, or battlefield, with its owner often playing a central role in protecting it from harm while pursuing personal motives. Despite different settings and characters, all films end with significant ramifications for the inn, its owners, and the factions involved.
China, year 1457. The Minister of Defense is executed, and his children are sentenced to exile by order of the tyrannical Tsao. Fearful of future revenge from the young people, Tsao sends cruel soldiers to murder them, but a brave group of swordsmen can change the course of the battle at the Dragon Inn.
During the Ming Dynasty, Tso Siu Yan, a power-crazed eunuch who rules his desert region of China as if he were the Emperor, ruthlessly thwarts plots against him and sets a trap for one of his enemies at the Dragon Gate Inn.
Three years after the infamous Dragon Inn was burnt down in the desert when its innkeeper Jade vanished. A new gang of marauders had taken over - innkeepers by day and treasure hunters by night. The inn is the rumoured location of a lost city buried under the desert, and its hidden treasure would only be revealed by a gigantic storm every 60 years. The gang used the inn as a front to locate the lost treasure.
