The Legend of Bruce: The Kung Fu Master
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) was banned in China because of the way
Bruce Lee was portrayed. Bruce Lee’s daugher managed to have the film banned. The irony of that was that so many movies have inacurrately portrayed Bruce Lee in Asian cinema. Why this flm?
Perhaps it is because Hollywood had treated Bruce wrong and rejected him. Bruce should have become famous in America, but it didn’t believe in a macho Asian male. He was ahead of his time.
Some 40 years later, there has been no Asian American leading superstar! Jackie is not American. Not much has changed. Perhaps that is what Bruce Lee’s daughter is fighting against. The continuing whitewashing of Hollywood.
Where is the next Asian American superstar? No where! The legacy died with Bruce. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting. I stopped watching Hollywood films a long time ago. I only watch Asian films.
Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019)
Donnie Yen would portray Ip Man in this fictional account of his visit to America. I don’t believe he ever visited America. This film is fictional. There is a Bruce Lee character in the film. We see how Bruce continues to pop up in films. Yes, Bruce was Ip Man’s student. I fear that we would not know about Ip Man or even Wing Chun today if it were not for Bruce Lee.
The film series on Ip Man doesn’t cover the years that Bruce learned Wing Chun. That would be an interesting film. I doubt it will be made. We don’t want the truth. Donnie Yen possessed a US citizenship at one point. However, he gave it up. Even though he grew up in America, he left. Even though he is in Star Wars, he lives in Asia.
Longstreet: TV Show
Even before Bruce died, he worked hard to created his own persona. In Hollywood, he made $500.00 an hour teaching
martial arts to movie stars. He made friends with some of the most powerful filmmakers in the business in the hopes of furthering his career. In a famous interview, he says, “Be Water.” But the entire dramatic monologue came from the television show Longstreet. He did not tell the interviewer the source of the wisdom.
Bruce was exploiting his own fame. Thus, he was mixing the creative Hollywood persona with his own. Something he did his entire life. Bruce Lee became a legendary figure because Bruce helped to create the legend. His movie star characters became an extension of his own personality. So when he died, filmmakers mixed the legendary figure of Bruce with the Asian kung fu action star he had become. Bruceploitation films became the norm.
However, Bruce had tried to maintain his own artistic freedom. He fought against stereotypes.
The irony is that he helped to create one of the most powerful Asian male stereotypes of them all: the wise kung fu master.
New Fist of Fury (1976): The Fist of Jackie
When Bruce Lee suddenly died, Chinese cinema was trying to discover a new Bruce Lee. Lo Wei, who claimed to have discovered Bruce Lee, thought that someone named Jackie Chan would be the next Bruce Lee.
So Lo Wei who
directed two of Bruce Lee films (The Big Boss and Fist of Fury) made a sequel to Fist of Fury. Lo Wei was right. Jackie Chan would become the next Asian superstar; however, not with this film, and not by acting macho like Bruce.
Jackie actually contemplated leaving show business because of its failure.However, he would return with his comedy kung fu and become a bigger box office star than Bruce Lee in Asia. This film tries to rip off and copy the Bruce Lee formula but with no success. The original cast returns with Jackie as the hero, and it fails. More films have been made about Fist of Fury than any other Bruce Lee film. Jet Li and Donnie Yen tried their versions.
Bruce Lee Goes to Hell (Dragon Lives Again 1976)
Li san jiao wei zhen di yu men, Dragon Lives Again or Deadly Hands of Kung Fu
Directed by Kei Law, perhaps as the best Bruceploitation film ever made, he has made other controversial films like Crippled Masters (1979) whose disabled martial arts stars were actually disabled. He continues to try to make money off of Bruce Lee for he recently made a film about the protagonist Chen Zen, called Juvenile Chen Zen (2004), the main character from Fist of Fury.
Bruce Lee Goes to Hell uses humor and an outlandish plot which makes it one of the best Asian cult films ever. Bruce Lee dies and is reborn in hell, with his sunglasses on. There he meets the King of the Underworld. Chinese hell, diyu, is structured with 10 realms or courts where various punishments occurred to those sent there. Various types of tortures, dismemberments, boiling, freezing, and fires await those lucky enough to vacation hell.
However, Bruce’s punishment is to meet and fight various action characters from Eastern and Western cinema. Thus, a cocky Bruce collides in martial arts battles with other cocky, macho celluloid characters, like the Godfather who looks more like a Sonny Chiba, an over dressed Yakuza star, a copy of Clint Eastwood who is always smoking a cigar and wearing a poncho (Man with No Name), and a well dressed James Bond parody. The racial nationalities of the actors might throw one off, but it ends up working perfectly for this spoof of Bruce Lee.
Both Clint Eastwood and James Bond are played by Western actors while the Godfather is played by an Asian actor. Strangely, a live action version of Popeye appears with his pipe and spinach eating ways. Indeed, Popeyed is played by Eric Tsang who would go on to become one of the Hong Kong’s best actors. And they even throw in some zombies, dressed in black with painted skeletons, some mummies, the Exorcist, and a special vampire: Dracula. Both the Exorcist and Dracula are played by Asian actors.
Furthermore, various martial art characters appear: Kwai Chang Caine from the Kung Fu tv show, the One Armed
Swordsman, and Zatoichi, the blind swordsman. Interestingly, Caine is played by an Asian. Caine, the One Armed Swordsman and Popeyed end up fighting against the other macho characters. He also encounters the French soft porn star Emmanuelle.
The fight at the end with the Exorcist becomes a homage to the Bruce Lee fight against Han in Enter the Dragon. The Godfather takes his shirt off to fight Bruce, who look like the Bruce from the Big Boss, because of his white shirt. Bruce from Enter is fighting Bruce from the Big Boss. If it makes no sense, then it must be right? Right?
The music samples by Frankie Chan heavily borrow from a variety of sources: Enter the Dragon, James Bond films, and The Godfather.
Bruce Lee: Bruce Leung Siu-lung
Godfather: Ie Lung Shen
Clint Eastwood: Bobby Canavarro
James Bond: Alexander Grand
Popeye: Eric Tsang
Dracula: Hsi Chang
Emmanuelle: Jenny
Bruce Leung Siu-lung would make about ten films with the name of Bruce in them, either Bruce Leung, Bruce Liang, Leong. Leung, Liang, and Leong are all version of Dragon.
Bruce: Hong Kong Master (1975)
Challenge Me Dragon (1975)
Little Superman (1975)
Four Shaolin Challengers (1977)
Po Jie (1977)
The Tattoo Connection (1978)
Sometimes he would also costar in other Bruceploitation films, not as Bruce. He costarred with Bruce Li in Bruce Against Iron Hand (1979) and costarred with many Bruces in Clones of Bruce Lee which had Bruce Le, Dragon Lee and Bruce Thai.
Bruce Leung would go on to have a revival in his career playing a kung fu master in Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and in the big hit Gallants (2010), but he would drop the Bruce and just be known as Leung Siu-lung.
Sammo Hung in Enter the (FAT) Dragon (1978)
(Fei Lung gwoh gong
)
The opening scene is perhaps one of the most remarkable fight scenes in the Enter the Dragon (1973). Interestingly, it was almost not made. Bruce Lee added it in as an afterthought thinking that having an opening fight scene would help the film. It was the last fight scene Bruce Lee ever filmed, and Lee’s thin appearance perhaps foreshadows his own health problems.
He had lost much sleep and weight making the film. The fight scene helped to make Sammo noticed in Hong Kong films though he was already making a name for himself as an action director.
After Bruce Lee died, Sammo would later make a film Enter the Fat Dragon (1978) which paid homage to Lee. The scene of interesting in that film is when Sammo participates in a fight scene for a film of a Bruce Lee imitator and criticizes the actor for doing a poor job.
The memory of Lee must be respected demands Sammo. Of course, a fight scene breaks out with the two trying to out Bruce Lee each other. The Bruce Lee imitator tries to beat Sammo up with his best Lee-like moves while Sammo easily out does the wannabe with his own Lee-like moves. The wannabe is good at making sounds and looking like Lee, but Sammo shows that it is more than looks that made Lee a superstar.
Game of Death (1978): Legend of Billy Lo
This remade, rethought, and reconstituted version of the film makes use of Bruce Lee’s own life, by mixing fact and fiction,
by grabbing elements from his films and making Game of Death about Bruce Lee and not finishing the original script.
Sammo who starred in Enter the Dragon in the first fight was also brought in to help complete the Game of Death, a Bruceploitation version. Instead of keeping to Bruce Lee’s original story, a new story revolves around a movie star in trouble with organized crime. Scenes from his other films are used. The original version was more philosophical.
Enter the Bruce Li, The King of Bruce Clones
The death of Bruce Lee in 1973 posed a big question: Who will be the next Bruce Lee?
Though no one stepped forward, copycats did seem to multiply. Enter Bruce Lo, Bruce Leung, Bruce Le, Bruce Rhee, and Bruce Li. Whenever I hear that
someone is not impressed with Bruce Lee, and claims to have seen a Bruce Lee film that was not good, I always suspect they saw Bruce Li or another imitator in a film that says Bruce Lee.
Often the DVD cover has a picutre of the real Bruce Lee, but he is not in the film. To make things more confusing some of the same stars in Bruce Lee films are in Bruce L***/R** films.
Originally, Bruce Li, Ho Chung Toa, (1950) was offered the part of Bruce Lee in Game of Death. He declined. He went on to become the most famous Bruce Lee imitator.
He made a large quantity of films about Bruce: Bruce Lee: The Dragon Story (1974); Good Bye Bruce Lee His Last Game of Death (1975); Bruce Lee vs Superman (1975); Bruce Lee the Man, the Myth (1978); Exit the Dragon Enter the Tiger (1976); and Blind Fist of Bruce (1979). These are just a few.
Bruce Lee Stereotype: They Call Me Bruce (1982)
Korean stand up comedian, Johnny Yune, had a television show and made this movie and a sequel of sorts, They Still Call Me Bruce (1987). Fame for an Asian in America is still hard, so he went to Korea and had his own talk show for a while. Of course, he made appearances on M*A*S*H*. They Call Me Bruce made fun of the Bruce Lee stereotype!
Dragon The Bruce Lee Story (1993): Fact and Much Fiction
Directed by Rob Cohen who also helped to write the screenplay, this biography is loosely about Bruce Lee. Many of the
fights were fabricated to make the film more interesting.
So it suffers from Bruceploitation, crafting a narrative around the legend instead of focusing completely on the facts. In this film, Bruce Lee’s father fights some sort of curse about his son. So the legend continues.
However, the film remains very entertaining and helped to make Bruce even more popular.
Jason Lee, the star of the film, never made it in Hollywood. He did star in some films, but his career was short. He has charisma, and he helped to make the film a success. However, who even remembers him now? He has become another forgotten Asian American star.