How Jackie Chan Filmed the Greatest Combat Scene in Cinema Historical past

Although now in his sev­en­ties, Jack­ie Chan con­tin­ues to look on the massive display screen with reg­u­lar­i­ty. For many world-famous actors, that’s laborious­ly notable, but it surely’s not as if Sir John Giel­gud, say, had spent a long time movie­ing scenes of hand-to-hand com­bat and sus­tain­ing extreme accidents within the per­for­mance of elab­o­price stunts. View­ers of New Police Sto­ry 2 and Rush Hour 4, to call simply two upcom­ing fran­chise initiatives, will certain­ly delight, as at all times, in Chan’s very display screen pres­ence. Nevertheless it goes with­out say­ing that he received’t be try­ing any­factor like what he did in his break­out Hong Kong movies of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, which required a sin­gu­lar ded­i­ca­tion each phys­i­cal and cin­e­mat­ic.

There are additionally followers who argue that Chan reached his peak within the nineties, most of whom would adduce the cli­mac­tic struggle scene above from Drunk­en Mas­ter II. Made in 1994, when Chan was 40 years previous, it got here because the osten­si­ble sequel to Drunk­en Mas­ter, from 1978, by which Chan’s por­tray­al of the tit­u­lar Qing dynasty people hero launched him to star­dom in Asia.

Launched within the U.S. as The Leg­finish of Drunk­en Mas­ter in 2000 — after Chan had last­ly made it state­aspect with Rum­ble within the Bronx and the primary Rush Hour — Drunk­en Mas­ter II met with crit­i­cal aston­ish­ment. “It includes a number of the most intri­cate, dif­fi­cult and pleasure­ful­ly exe­lower­ed motion sequences I’ve ever seen,” wrote Roger Ebert. His judg­ment of the ultimate, steel-forge-set present­down: “It will not be pos­si­ble to movie a guess­ter struggle scene.” The Rossatron video beneath explains how the scene has drawn such reac­tions.

One ele­ment has been key to Chan’s suc­cess from the start­ning: his humor, vis­i­bly descend­ed from the phys­i­cal com­e­dy of West­ern silent stars like Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton, which comes by even within the midst of probably the most intense hand-to-hand com­bat. In Drunk­en Mas­ter II, it’s “not solely a pleas­ing addi­tion to the movie, however a nec­es­sary a part of the sto­ry itself,” by the course of which Chan’s professional­tag­o­nist should achieve con­trol over the type of “drunk­en field­ing” born of his personal fond­ness for the bot­tle. It’s con­trolled drunk­en­ness, in fact, that even­tu­al­ly brings him vic­to­ry in his each automobile­toon­ish and mas­ter­ful final struggle, which required 4 months to shoot beneath the direc­tion of the star him­self (the movie’s actu­al direc­tor Lau Kar-leung hav­ing ced­ed con­trol of the scene because of styl­is­tic dif­fer­ences). Right now, there could also be no action-com­e­dy per­former equal to Jack­ie Chan in his prime. However even when there have been, would any stu­dio permit him a lot of the oth­er secret ingre­di­ent, time?

by way of Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kung Fu & Mar­tial Arts Films On-line

The Solely Footage of Bruce Lee Combat­ing for Actual (1967)

The Grace­ful Transfer­ments of Kung Fu & Mod­ern Dance Revealed in Stun­ning Movement Visu­al­iza­tions

Rad­i­cal French Phi­los­o­phy Meets Kung-Fu Cin­e­ma in Can Dialec­tics Break Bricks? (1973)

Why Is Jack­ie Chan the King of Motion Com­e­dy? A Video Essay Mas­ter­ful­ly Makes the Case

How Char­lie Chap­lin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spec­tac­u­lar Stunts Dur­ing Silent Movie’s Gold­en Age

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.