Martial arts movies of martial arts culture

After the movies were introduced to China, kung fu movies became a major feature of Chinese movies, a major contribution to world movies, and also brought martial arts into a new field. Kung fu movies, also known as martial arts movies, martial arts movies, martial arts movies, etc., are movies characterized by exaggerated kung fu fighting. It’s hard to count how many Kung Fu movies there are in China. Ancient costume martial arts TV dramas also account for a large proportion of Chinese TV dramas.

In 1928, Star Film Company began filming "The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple", which was China's first martial arts film and China's first series of films. 18 films were filmed in total. It received great acclaim upon its release, and many subsequent films followed suit, pushing the martial arts film to its first climax.

Huang Feihong was a martial arts master in China during the late Qing Dynasty. Since the 1950s and 1960s, Hong Kong has produced more than 100 Huang Feihong films based on his story. They are the most popular films in the world based on the same theme. The movie series with the most episodes. Bruce Lee, with his iconic shouts, nunchucks and sharp Jeet Kune Do, brought Chinese movies to the attention of people around the world. For many people who don't understand Chinese culture, understanding Chinese movies starts from watching Bruce Lee's movies, and understanding Chinese martial arts also starts from Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee also became the world's most famous Chinese martial artist because of the movie. Although Bruce Lee was the one who truly introduced Chinese martial arts to the West, his film was not the first Chinese Kung Fu film to be screened internationally. The first Chinese kung fu film to be officially commercially screened overseas was "The Best Punch in the World" produced by Shaw Brothers in 1971, directed by Cheng Changhe and starring Luo Lie. The film was screened simultaneously in 1,000 mainstream theaters in the United States, with unprecedented success. After Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan's movies once again conquered the world's audiences with their modern backgrounds and relaxed and humorous style.

The movie "Shaolin Temple" also set off a new style of martial arts movie craze in China and even the world's film industry in the 1980s, and made Jet Li, a young martial arts champion, an international movie star in one fell swoop. As a result, films such as "Shaolin Kid", "North and South Shaolin", "Kapok Kasaya", "Wu-Tang", and "The King of Southern Boxing" came out in droves, setting off a nationwide upsurge in martial arts. Later, he played the role in the "Once Upon a Time" series directed by Tsui Hark and became deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

Most of the actors in Chinese kung fu movies have martial arts background, and many of them are martial artists. For example, Kwan Tak-hing, who has starred in most Huang Feihong series, is a Cantonese opera actor. Then Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Zhao Wenzhuo, etc. are all martial artists. Liu Jialiang and Liu Jiahui are the descendants of Huang Feihong. During filming, actors need to actually fight, so kung fu movies gave birth to a new film profession - martial arts instructors. At first, martial arts instructors only appeared in Chinese kung fu movies. Later, Western movies also introduced this profession in the pursuit of more exciting fights.

On March 26, 2001, the kung fu film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" directed by Taiwanese director Ang Lee won the Best Film Award at the 73rd Academy Awards for its fresh action and Western-style ideology. Foreign language film and other four awards, this is the first time a kung fu film has won this honor. This also triggered a stylistic shift in Chinese martial arts movies. After "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", many well-known mainland directors rushed to make martial arts films. Each time they were large-scale productions with excellent teams, invited well-known Asian actors to star, and actively promoted commercials.

The characteristics of this batch of films are: the scenes, movements, music, etc. are beautiful and sophisticated, and are quite artistic. The plots, dialogues, etc. also avoid the previous vulgarity and directness, and pursue certain literary effects and connotations in terms of conception. However, these films generally received more negative reviews than positive ones. Many critics believe that directors who are very famous but have no experience in kung fu movies want to cater to the market and show their talents, so they produce these kung fu movies on a large scale without any substantial breakthroughs. There are many things that are self-defeating, such as being overly artificial in pursuit of the so-called artistic effect, the dialogues not breaking out of old clichés, the plot narrative being long and unpleasant, or confusing, etc.

In contrast, kung fu movies or Chinese martial arts are becoming more and more popular in the international film industry. Not only in the East, but also in Western countries, movies with kung fu as a selling point have been made, and more and more martial arts scenes have been inserted into TV programs. The most obvious example is the Hollywood movie "The Matrix" (The Matrix is ??also translated as "The Matrix" or "The 22nd Century Murder Network"). The film perfectly combines science fiction themes, computer stunts and Chinese Kung Fu, and has achieved great success around the world.

In order to pay tribute to Chinese Kung Fu films, the famous Hong Kong comedian Stephen Chow also used computer stunts to film "Kung Fu", which was released at the end of 2004 and received widespread acclaim.