Brandon Lee in Rapid Fire (1992)

After his father, Bruce Lee, died in 1973, there was a lot of anger in losing him, so Brandon did not practice martial arts. However, later he started to learn again. As his movie career started to take off, he started to train with Bruce Lee’s students like Dan Inosanto.

In one of Brandon Lee’s best fights from Rapid Fire, he fights Al Leong where he demonstrates some trapping moves that originate from Wing Chun. His technique had improved drastically from his initial Hollywood fight with David Carradine in Kung Fu the Movie (1986). He helped to choreograph those fights in Rapid Fire.

In films like Rapid Fire, he started to choreography the fights. Just as he was reaching his peak in the film the Crow (1994) is when it all ended.

Brandon Lee in the Crow (1994)

Was Brandon following the legacy or a curse?

Like father like son, Bruce Lee started his career as the Green Hornet, a comic book character while Brandon Lee ended his career and life as a comic book character, Eric who is killed while seeing his fiancée raped and murdered. Eric Draven as the Crow returns as the undead and revenges the double murder. Ironically, Brandon accidentally is killed on the set just a few weeks before marrying his real life fiancée, Eliza “Lisa” Hutton.

The film was not quite finished, but because most of the key scenes had been shot, the decision was made to finish it. When it was released in 1994, it was Brandon’s biggest success. Though a sequel and even a television show were created, none could match the success of the original Crow.

Another Game of Death

Had Brandon lived, he might have made some incredible martial arts films. Rapid Fire proved he had some skills and could created artistic fight sequences. In some strange manner, his death parallels the death of his father.

In Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) , there is a eerie scene where Bruce Lee has premonitions of death. He fights a Demon of Death on his grave stone which looks similar to Bruce Lee’s real grave stone.

What makes this scene even scarier is the fact that the Demon then sees Brandon (Iain M Parker) as a kid. Bruce fights the Demon to protect Brandon. The film was being created while the Crow was being filmed and was not released until after the death of Brandon. The film, released on May 7, 1993, was dedicated to the memory of Brandon Lee who died on March 31, 1993.

Curse of the Dragon[s] (1993): Death of Bruce and Brandon

Tom Kuhn and Fred Weintraub (producer of Enter the Dragon) produced a documentary released before the death of Brandon Lee which included an interview with Brandon.

 When completing the Game of Death (1978) after the death of Bruce Lee in 1973, there is a scene where Bruce Lee is shot and hurt on the set while filming Fist of Fury. Ironically, paralleling a scene in the Crow, Brandon is shot and wounded on the set. However, he dies in real life from the shot.

Both Bruce and Brandon were born in the years of the Dragon and are buried in Seattle, Washington, side by side.

The inscription on Bruce Lee’s grave stone, 1940-1973, age 32:

Your inspiration continues to guide us toward our personal liberation.

The inscription on Brandon Bruce Lee’s Grave stone, 1965-1993, age 28:

Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.

Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it?

Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

For Brandon and Eliza
Ever Joined in True Love’s

The film, The Crow, was almost complete when Brandon died on March 31, 1993 by accidental shooting on the set. He was to marry Eliza “Lisa” Hutton on April 17, 1993. Like his father, his last film became a huge success.