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"at that time, many young people entered the martial arts industry, determined to be like jackie chan or yuen biao. how can we give these kids hope now? if there is no hope, what is the point of learning kung fu?"

author | dengtuzi

editor｜xiaobai

typesetting | die

after bruce lee's death, kung fu movies experienced a period of silence for about five years.

at that time, those who worked in the martial arts industry were so miserable that they had to sell blood because they could not go to work.

martial artists earn more and spend more than they earn, and cannot save any money, so some of them change their careers.

it was not until the early 1980s that sammo hung and jackie chan sparked a new wave of kung fu movies. unlike bruce lee's hard-core martial arts, hung and jackie chan created kung fu comedies. sammo hung was even better, as he mixed kung fu elements with zombie movies, helping golden harvest completely defeat shaw brothers.

on the other hand, the movie "shaolin temple" was a hit in mainland china in 1982. the ticket price was 1 cent and it sold 160 million yuan at the box office, which is unimaginable today. the lead actor jet li also went to hong kong to develop his career, followed by yu rongguang.

in the 1980s and 1990s, there were two schools of hong kong martial arts visual style: one was the hard action style of sammo hung and jackie chan, which focused on rhythm and skills, and the other was the flying style of tsui hark and yuen woo-ping, which focused on "hanging" people and spatial illusion.

the former is easy to understand, the latter requires an example:

in the works of tsui hark and yuen woo-ping, when two people fight each other, it is usually one person doing your thing and i doing mine. the two people get together and move around while fighting, using visual dislocation to make the audience feel that the fight is "very lively". direct combat often uses close-ups.

this method of playing has given many actors who do not know martial arts an advantage, because it saves even the routine moves, and the actors use doubles when performing. the actors do not need to study how to cooperate with the real martial arts. the most representative one is tsui hark's "swordsman", where sam hui, liu zhaoming, cecilia yip, and sharla cheung all transformed into martial artists, flying in the sky and hiding in the ground, and fighting back and forth.

at present, the martial arts movements in most domestic film and television dramas (mainly tv series and online dramas) basically continue the routines of xu and yuan. hong, cheng, including jet li, etc. hard-style kung fu is really becoming less and less, to be frank, almost non-existent.

when jackie chan's kung fu movies were at their peak, he had no qualms about revealing his action scene designs to the american media:

in the past, kung fu movies were about a group of people beating up one person. after you beat me up, i would come forward, with a group of people surrounding me as the background. this looked very fake, like the stage design of peking opera, and the audience would get tired of it after watching it for a long time.

when it was jackie chan's turn to take charge, he emphasized "fast in and fast out". there were only three or four people in one frame, and the camera had to give close-ups, only showing the fists and feet. the pace was so fast that it was hard to breathe.

he was not afraid of others knowing this, because it would be useless even if they knew it.

only he and sammo hung can design such a sense of rhythm.

sure enough, the martial arts action in all domestic tv dramas and movies cannot be designed with hong cheng's sense of rhythm. first, the flying style and technical style dominate, and actors don't have to fight as hard as before. second, the martial arts who can really fight are old, and the new generation of martial arts has no room for advancement. third, the market environment has changed, and the audience is not interested in these. it's okay for a few people to perfectly reproduce classic action scenes on social platforms, but it's hard to buy tickets to watch martial arts scenes with punches and kicks.

therefore, the kung fu films in the mid-to-late 1980s had a lot to do with the audience of the time, entertainment orientation, and economic development.

especially as one of the "four asian tigers", hong kong was generally on an upward trend, and its cultural exports were not inferior to those of europe, the united states, and japan (the korean film industry had not yet developed at that time). kung fu movies quickly became popular in japan, south korea, and southeast asia, and even directly entered hollywood.

acting in movies in hong kong, especially kung fu movies, not only has a great influence, but also makes a lot of money.

therefore, when jet li and others went to hong kong to develop their careers in the 1980s, the two "kids" born in the 1980s also left their mark as child kung fu stars.

they are xie miao and shi xiaolong.

01

mainland audiences born between the 1960s and 1990s have an impression of them; they both appear in the films of wong jing and chu yen-ping.

xie miao basically followed jet li's action style, acting alone and fighting anyone who came. this style is still used by him today.

shi xiaolong is different. although he also fights in a tough way, he must have a "pig teammate" to form a contrast. this "pig teammate" is called hao shaowen.

i watched all their movies as a kid—

there was no internet, no anchors, and no sales promotion. there would be no product placement in the middle of a fight. no matter how outrageous the plots arranged by wang jing and zhu yanping were, the actors' action scenes were real. xie miao and shi xiaolong were no less cute than the "uncles and aunts". they were also cute when they were young, with serious little faces that exuded simplicity.

nowadays, i guess fans would consider them as their "sons". unfortunately, this habit was not developed back then. they were just highlights in the mainstream of kung fu movies, not the focus.

the two children continued to act until the end of the 1990s, during which time shi xiaolong also acted in "young justice bao". by the beginning of the new century, the children had grown up, hong kong filmmakers collectively moved north, and the child stars disappeared for a while.

until the 2010s, when jackie chan's movies were still popular, there were still people in the domestic entertainment industry who hoped to create new "action stars", regardless of gender. jiang luxia and others had appeared in hong kong movies. including lin peng, who played wang xifeng in the movie "dream of red mansions: golden jade marriage" released this year. she was once one of the "dragon girls" and also went through a "action girl" route.

but since the beginning of the new century, there have been no new "action stars". during this period, only donnie yen has made a comeback, relying on his kung fu innovation, integrating free fighting and unlimited fighting into movies. during the period of silence, he went to the united states for a period of time and served as the martial arts instructor of "blade runner". after returning to china, he became popular again. but this was more than ten years ago.

what? wang baoqiang?

being a "fighting star" has never been his main career path.

therefore, the "ip man" series can be seen as the last glory of kung fu films on the big screen.

at least for now.

shi xiaolong also played ip man's apprentice in "ip man 2". i didn't notice it at first, but i just thought this guy looked familiar.

at that time, online movies became the battlefield of kung fu movies.

either due to the situation or limited by the subject matter.

02

what caught my attention again was xie miao's "no one in my eyes", with wei junzi as the producer. he is also a fan of hong kong movies. when i first entered the industry, i saw him talk about "hong kong movies in the video hall era" on his blog, so i watched one or two episodes of "no one in my eyes" with reverence. it is really good, and it has some of the chivalrous flavor of tang dynasty's "legend".

xie miao is still agile, and i have seen several modern action movies he has shot, and the design is also very impressive. however, i can clearly feel the gap with the peak era of kung fu movies, and the most direct manifestation is the market reaction.

this involves a professional question:

it is difficult to carry the entire show with just one or two actors as before.

we need to consider the actors we are acting with, and we also need to consider teamwork. especially the latter. there are many people in the mainland martial arts industry who have real skills, but few can produce the action effects of the kung fu movies of the last century. in particular, the status of martial arts in the mainland film and television industry is not high, and they cannot form the influence of hong and cheng. moreover, it costs too much to spend a month shooting a martial arts scene. there are wires and borrowings, so why do we still have to use hard bridges and hard horses?

therefore, it is very difficult to implement the pure kung fu scenes that xie miao wants to perform.

the "flying style" represented by tsui hark and yuen woo-ping mentioned above is the most efficient shooting method. moreover, even so, fighting scenes are not the focus of publicity. there are professional experts on social platforms who can analyze the rhythm of an action scene frame by frame, but it is still in the range of niche appreciation.

for example, when jackie chan was filming "drunken master 2", he asked lu huiguang to do the splits. he practiced for a month and practiced the moves on the set every day. lu huiguang did the splits 2,000 times a day. this kind of strictness is impossible to achieve nowadays.

the effort and reward are not proportional, why do people do this kind of thing?

furthermore, no matter how good the action scenes are, it still depends on who is acting.

for the same action, most audiences cannot understand the tricks when watching a fight scene, but the evaluation will be completely different depending on who is doing the fighting. can a side flip by xie miao, a child kung fu star, be the same as a side flip by a popular idol?

ultimately, it is the overall environment that is making the space for kung fu movies smaller and smaller.

the new generation of audiences have not yet formed a group scale in their acceptance of kung fu movies. the audience is small, the subject matter will be restricted, and the space for the martial arts group to display their talents is small, resulting in a small living space for martial arts and even kung fu movie actors.

03

among the online movies with a box office share of over 10 million in 2024, action films accounted for nearly 70%, including "black and white" with a box office share of 37 million, "suit thugs" with over 28 million, as well as "no one 2", "beat the violence" and "the evil" etc.

among them, xie miao's "northeast police stories" and "arrogant" series are benchmarks, with a douban score of more than 7 points, which is very good for action movies.

after the release of "drunken punch" directed and acted by shi xiaolong this year on august 3, it topped the trending movie searches on tencent video and iqiyi. it also invited a number of hong kong and taiwan actors including hao shaowen to join the film, which aroused great emotions.

after retiring from the big screen, the two actors are still able to occupy a place in online movies. relying on the popularity of internet entertainment platforms, kung fu movies still have a chance to breathe.

but one thing needs to be faced:

xie miao is 40 years old this year and shi xiaolong is 36 years old this year, both of them have entered middle age.

among their predecessors, the younger ones, donnie yen is already 61 years old, and collin chou is 57 years old.

xie miao and shi xiaolong are still able to keep the quality of kung fu films at a certain level while they are still in their prime. who will be able to inherit their legacy when they get old?

this is a problem.

just five years after bruce lee's death, the kung fu film trend has revived. the main reason is that his filming at the time also helped a group of martial artists who had crossed over from opera to the film industry to have a certain influence. he even planned to sign a contract with hollywood and bring his martial artists to the united states for development, but unfortunately he died young.

at that time, the overall space of the hong kong film market was very large, and different types of films were needed to fill the market. the new style of kung fu by hong and cheng came at the right time. they also each had a group of brothers who were good at fighting and able to endure hardships, and each of them had unique skills.

for example, yuen biao is the "king of somersaults", yuen wah is the "first generation of suit thugs", yuen wu is famous for being "not afraid of death", and chin kar lok is the "benchmark of martial arts substitutes" -

what he couldn't do meant that no one could do it.

now what?

xie miao and shi xiaolong have no successors.

in five years, or ten years, the question of who will inherit and develop the mantle of kung fu films has become increasingly prominent.

in the past twenty years, there have been no young actors who could become famous with just one movie if they had good fighting skills, good looks and audience recognition.

apart from xie miao and shi xiaolong, a group of middle-aged actors such as andy on and chen guokun are older than them and cannot support the influence of a movie.

looking around, they are already the "youngest" kung fu actors.

04

the most recent work that influenced mainland action design was the 1998 version of cctv's "water margin". at that time, yuan heping was invited to be the action director. he directly copied the moves in "fist of fury" into the scene where yan qing fights optimus prime.

since then, mainland action directors have gradually become dominated by mainlanders. zhao jian, who played "zhao tianba" in "the lion king", became zhang jizhong's personal martial arts director after returning to the mainland, and inherited the martial arts characteristics of the "flying apsara school".

i have always called the action scenes of tsui hark and yuan heping "flying school", and i have no intention of derogating. the audience does not care whose moves are genuine, but requires that they look good.

in the early 1980s, before mainland filmmakers had exchanges with hong kong filmmakers, fighting scenes also emphasized set moves, but they were less entertaining to watch. "shaolin temple" was an exception. after that, the styles of "kapok robe" and "mirage" gradually moved closer to hong kong kung fu films. the trend of going south to learn from masters also started with "the lion king". mainland colleagues learned a lot of visual effects presentation techniques, which greatly helped the quality of their works.

until sammo hung and jackie chan grew older, the factors influencing a kung fu film gradually shifted from action scenes to the brand of the actors themselves. this required the continued training of a group of young actors who had influence on the audience and the market in the sub-industry of "martial arts masters".

but now it seems that there is a lack of kung fu actors.

many young martial arts actors have to work part-time jobs besides being a stunt double, and it is difficult for them to make a living, let alone have the energy and attention to devote to action design. the heyday of a martial arts actor earning several months' salary in a month is no longer there.

in the past, when filming fight scenes, people required that “the audience should feel pain and the fight should be real.”

now when it comes to "real fighting", many martial artists will slack off. because yu rongguang said it well:

"what's the point of spending a few hundred bucks a month?"

sammo hung once said:

"at that time, many young people entered the martial arts industry, determined to be like jackie chan or yuen biao. how can we give these kids hope now? if there is no hope, what is the point of learning kung fu?"

without market demand and career goals, xie miao, shi xiaolong and others can only continue to struggle.

in "drunken punch", shi xiaolong reminded me of the handsome child that year, and xie miao started out earlier than him.

i really cherish the fact that i can still see some realistic kung fu today, and i know they can still generate some market response.

i don’t dare to think about what happens next.

this is not a problem specific to a particular actor or a particular industry.

this is a market, or a trend of the times.

there is no way to avoid it, no matter how good your fists and feet are, they can do nothing about it.