Great Martial Arts Films
Chinese Kung Fu embodies a profound philosophy and a sense of human life and social values (some people therefore call it "philosophic boxing"). Mr. Yen's Ip Man is likewise compelled to demonstrate the dominance of his technique, facing down northern interlopers art drawing in Ip Man” and a rival master of the Hung Ga school (played by Mr. Hung) in Ip Man 2.” The main villains are caricatured foreigners: a glowering Japanese general and karate expert in the first film and a barbaric British boxing champion in the second.
Case in point: Dance of the Drunk Mantis is essentially a sequel of sorts to the classic Drunken Master, not because Jackie Chan's character is in it but because of the returning Yuen Siu-tien, who played his master, Beggar So. Turns out, this guy ran out on his family, and he returns to find a new, adoptive son called Foggy.” When a challenger shows up using an imposing Drunk Mantis” style and threatens Beggar So, Foggy has to learn an entirely new style of kung fu referred to as sickness boxing” to counter the movements of the unpredictable, drunk-style fighters.
Born in the southern Chinese city Foshan, Ip Man (1893-1972) settled in Hong Kong after the Communist takeover of 1949 and devoted his life to the practice and popularization of the Wing Chun fighting style, known for its explosive, close-range strikes.
Jason Momoa was already shredded when he ruled the small screen (and the hearts of women everywhere) as Khal Drogo in "Game of Thrones," but he had to make a few changes to his diet to get the muscle definition to portray Aquaman in the upcoming DC Comics film.
When a DVD version of 36th Chamber of Shaolin hit American shores in 2007, thanks to the now disgraced Weinstein Company, mass US audiences reconfirmed what aficionados had long thought to be true: 36th Chamber is among the best kung fu movies of all time.
Since each faction lacks a distinguished warrior with whose aid they might tip the balance of power in their favour, they each badly want the newcomer on their side, something the samurai figures out within moments, and exploits throughout the movie.
Largely resonating with such a trend of asserting the legitimate role of Chinese culture in constructing a new global vision on the basis of a Chinese transnationalism, an artistic reconfiguration of tianxia also provides strategies by which Zhang reinvents the marital arts film as a way to invigorate Chinese cinema in the international film market.
Although not well-received by Hong Kong audiences, Tsui Hark's visceral retelling of One-Armed Swordsman is an engaging, violent, revenge-begetting-revenge story starring the enigmatic Zhao Wen-zhuo (the man who replaced Jet Li in Tsui's Once Upon a Time in China films) battling the maniacal Xiong Xin-xin.
Less a flesh-and-blood character than an allegorical abstraction, Mr. Yen and Mr. Yip's Ip Man continues the long tradition of the kung fu master hero, exemplified by the much mythologized 19th-century physician and martial artist Wong Fei-hung (incarnated on screen by, among others, Jackie Chan and Jet Li).