Not to mention a stream of western martial artists, from Jean-Claude Van Damme to Jason Statham.Įqually significant was the export of action film-makers such as John Woo and Yuen Wo Ping, the latter famously giving The Matrix its distinctive action flavour. By that time, Lee had also reinvigorated the Hong Kong film industry, which has sent a flow of actors westwards ever since: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Maggie Cheung and, of course, Michelle Yeoh. The 70s kung fu craze fed into everything from comic books (Marvel’s Stan Lee once described Lee as “a superhero without a costume”) to pop music. The success of these films caught Hollywood’s attention at last, but, even with his classic Enter The Dragon (released a month after his death), Lee wasn’t trusted to carry the movie alone, so Jim Kelly and John Saxon were cast alongside him. When Hong Kong students were resisting Chinese authoritarianism in 2019, they adopted Lee’s maxim: “Be water.” It wasn’t just local audiences Lee became a universal symbol of defiance: a man of colour seeking to express himself with the tools he had available. In The Way of the Dragon, he saves the family restaurant and tears a strip off Chuck Norris at the Colosseum.
He stood with the oppressed factory workers and against criminal corruption in The Big Boss in Fist of Fury, he embarked on a one-man crusade against colonial oppression in 1920s Shanghai (and, by extension, British-ruled 1970s Hong Kong), forcing his Japanese adversaries to literally eat their words, describing China as “the Sick Man of east Asia”. As well as displaying his dazzling physical skills, Lee’s movies were narratives of resistance. Returning to Hong Kong in 1971, Lee churned out four movies in two years, and exploded into global superstardom. Either way, he auditioned for the lead role, only to be passed over in favour of David Carradine, who had neither Chinese ancestry nor any knowledge of martial arts. Lee’s involvement in developing the show, which followed a Shaolin monk in the old west, is contested. The final insult came with the 1970s TV series Kung Fu. Photograph: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images Physical yet cerebral … Bruce Lee on the set of Tang Shan Da Xiong.
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