Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (38 page)

At least Jason Statham
earned his “cool.” Although an Englishman toiling in Luc Besson
’s French-financed thrillers, his history of kickboxing, Olympic diving, and street wisdom gave his screen work credibility. Already appreciated for his performances in director Guy Ritchie
’s
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
(1998) and
Snatch
(2000), it was his going mano a mano against Jet Li
in
The One
(2001) that led to his being cast as the title character in
The Transporter
(2002) — co-directed and choreographed by Corey Yuen Kwai
. Its success led to several sequels, as well as a rematch with Jet in
War
(2007) and a memorable team-up with Jet in
The Expendables
(2010).

“I’m impressed with the likes of Jackie Chan
, and Bruce Lee
was a big hero of mine for many years,” Staham said. “[But] martial arts isn’t just about physicality. As Jet told me, it’s the spirit and the mind that breeds an inner confidence and knowledge of life, people, and the world around you … if you keep practicing this kind of thing all your life.”

With Statham’s words of wisdom fading away, American audiences were left with occasional sparks supplied by Jackie, Jet, Corey, Yuen, Zhang Yimou
, and Stephen Chow
(see next chapter), but mostly fizzles supplied by the same people, as well as many blissfully ignorant American screenwriters, producers, and directors. But the man who was ready, willing, and able to change it all was Quentin Tarantino
. Having already wrestled film noir (1992’s
Reservoir Dogs
, 1994’s
Pulp Fiction
) and blaxploitation (1997’s
Jackie Brown
) to the ground, he set his sights on kung fu with
Kill Bill
Volume 1
(2003) and
Volume 2
(2004). U.S. kung fu film fans already had ample reason to be grateful to him. Without his support, it is possible that such classics as
Iron Monkey
(1993),
Shaolin Soccer
(2001),
Hero
(2002), and other kung fu greats in Miramax’s DVD home video library would never have seen the light of American day.

As is his film-loving wont, he hired the best people: Yuen Wo-ping
as choreographer, with David Carradine
, Gordon Liu
Chia-hui
, Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba
, and Michael Jai White
as action actors. He also borrowed from the most memorable sources: the general plot from
Lady Snowblood
(a 1973 chanbara/samurai film), characters from
Kage No Gunden
(a Japanese ninja
TV series),
They Call Her One Eye
(a 1973 Swedish exploitation thriller), and
Executioners
from Shaolin
, costumes from
Game of Death
, and fight scenes from
Sex and Fury
(a 1973 Japanese erotic action film), the Japanese Baby Cart/
Shogun Assassin
series, and many others.

Although starting with the Shaw Brothers
Studio logo, the
Kill Bill
films are best remembered for their samurai sword fights, which is a slight shame, since they are actually Chinese sword fights using Japanese swords (akin to watching a team play football with a baseball, or baseball with a football). Although Tarantino had one of the film world’s great samurai action choreographers on set (Chiba), it’s possible that the globe-hopping production couldn’t afford him and Wo-ping, so the latter did all the action. Therefore, even though samurai sword fighting is as intrinsically different from Chinese sword fighting as fencing is from broadsword battles, the
Kill Bill
characters always squander the single most important move in Japanese samurai sword fights — the draw.

Ironically, the far more violent Japanese version of
Volume 1
is better than the American edit, but both showcase the director’s now established approach. He was no longer really interested in making believable “real world” movies. Now all his films existed in Tarantino-land, where the cinema references are rife, the environment is artificial, the plot is contrived, the heroine’s bare feet are always nearby, and the dialogue is quippy, self-consciously mannered, and purposely-paced. Sadly, a kung fu fight scene between Carradine and Jai White never made it into the finished film (in fact, Jai White’s entire character was left on the cutting room floor), but it didn’t keep the
Kill Bill
s from being superficially entertaining throughout. Unfortunately, despite the presence of Wo-ping and the acknowledgements to Chang Cheh
, Lo Lieh
, and the Liu Chia family, Tarantino apparently didn’t learn much about kung fu from them.

Although the films did respectably at the box office, they didn’t open a floodgate of kung fu fun, despite several studios buying, and shelving, as many Hong Kong action films as they could. Tarantino, like most of the L.A. action filmmakers, moved on to comic books (where, coincidentally, Western superheroes get their powers from without — the sun, radioactive spiders, etc. — while Eastern superheroes get their powers from within). The kung fu in Tim Burton
’s original
Batman
(1989) — attributed to stunt coordinator Eddie Stacey
— is actually quite good. He only moves as much as he has to (which may be attributable to the stiff Batman costume that didn’t allow him to even turn his head), and his basic, open-handed stance is right on. The fighting (credited to stunt coordinator Simon Crane
) is also accurate and excellent in
GoldenEye
(1995) — Pierce Brosnan
’s first, and best, 007 film.

But, for the most part, action films were frozen in ice during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21
st
century. Even subsequent Batman
and James Bond
films lost their kung fu, content to wallow in round house punches and flawed kicks. Clawing for their section of the spotlight was M.M.A., aka Mixed Martial Arts, exemplified by the UFC, aka the Ultimate Fighting Championship — a “biggest s.o.b. in the octagon” competition that mixes boxing with equal amounts of World Wrestling Entertainment-style promotion and barroom brawl ambiance. For audiences who loved anger and muscles, it was a godsend, and, in marketing parlance, “so popular with the kids” that it infected Jackie, Jet, and Wo-ping’s
Forbidden Kingdom
.

Miraculously, however, another film was in production parallel to
Forbidden Kingdom
— one that critics, journalists, audiences, and even its own studio was seemingly overlooking and/or underestimating. It started almost a decade before with an idea from a studio executive, but his idea didn’t start developing until the early 2000s. By then I had been doing my San Diego Comic Con Superhero Kung Fu Extravaganza for nearly a decade. Apparently someone from the studio had seen one or more of these events, because, out of the blue, I was asked to visit the studio to give a private seminar on what kung fu was, and, perhaps more importantly, what kung fu wasn’t.

That was my first experience with DreamWorks Animation’s
Kung Fu Panda
(2008). Once there I asked the producer and crew if they had already done any research. They said, “Oh, sure, we watched
Seven Samurai
.” My reply: “With all due respect, you’re making a football film and you’re watching baseball movies.” What was scheduled to be a ninety-minute chat became a nearly four-hour seminar. I was pleased with the tutorial and impressed by the production drawings I saw, but the next time I got word of it, everything, except the concept, had changed. The people I had talked to (except a single important one) were no longer with the project.

But that’s where the character designer, storyboard artist, head of story department, layout artist, layout supervisor, puppeteer, visual effects designer, sfx supervisor, art director, writer, producer, and director John Stevenson
comes in. He had started his career on
The Muppet Show
(1976-1981), and considered Jim Henson
his mentor and, in kung fu terms, his sifu. “It was early 2004 when I was asked to take a look,” he told me. “I had been at DreamWorks for a while and had asked (boss) Jeffrey Katzenberg
for my chance to direct a feature film. I had been aware of the project, as it had been in development at the studio for some time, but it had only been officially in pre-production for a few months. At that point, it was a very different movie. Po (the Panda) was actually the least interesting character in that version of the story, which was much more about the efforts of The Furious Five to create the illusion that he actually had martial arts skills.”

But the Panda’s karma was strong. Of all the hopeful directors in all the world, Katzenberg had somehow anointed a knowledgeable, insightful kung fu movie fan. A real kung fu movie fan. “I’ve loved kung fu movies since childhood,” he explained. “Growing up in a little rural village in Sussex, England, nothing could have been more alien. I was attracted to the philosophy and spiritual side of the stories as much as the fighting. I remember Tsui Hark
’s
The Butterfly Murders
as being the martial arts film that blew my mind. I was utterly confused and completely captivated at the same time. I had to know more. The next wuxia
film I saw was a life-changing experience. It was a revival of King Hu
’s 1971 masterpiece
A Touch of Zen
— still my very favorite kung fu movie ever. It convinced me even back then that kung fu films could be art.”

But exactly how would this first-time movie director bring art to a lowly “chop-socky” film at a studio whose previous computer-animated features were seemingly designed only to satirize Disney? “I did not want to make a parody, but a real kung fu movie that was funny,” Stevenson said. “I did not want any pop culture references or popular music cues to break the spell of that world. And no fart jokes! I wanted to try and make the most beautifully designed movie DreamWorks had ever made, and to honor the art and culture of China. And I wanted to have real kung fu sequences, as well thought out and executed as any live action movie.”

A seemingly impossible task in an industry that appeared to be Bruce and MMA-obsessed, but Stevenson had three things going for him. First, Bill Damaschke
, president of creative for DreamWorks Animation, supported his vision, then, second, and third, Mark Osborne
and Melissa Cobb
joined him as, respectively, co-director and producer. “Bill was a great friend and supporter of the film all the way through production,” Stevenson said. “The burden of proof was on us early to prove that all the things we wanted to try that were a bit different from the (then-circa 2004) current crop of films in production were actually going to work. But once we had shown them enough material, they totally got what we were going for and helped us get there. Honestly, it was a very happy and supportive atmosphere all the way through production.”

The Panda’s karma continued to hold throughout the hundreds of crew members. “I picked a brilliant designer called Nicolas Marlett who had worked at DreamWorks for many years, but had never been given the chance to design a whole movie. I was also blessed in that I had a superb visual development team headed by production designer Raymond Zibach
and art director Tang Kheng Heng
. Once we had our cast of characters from Nico, Ramone and Tang designed a mythic Chinese world to compliment them. We were insistent that we were culturally specific; this is China (albeit a fanciful version of a China that never existed), not a generic ‘Asia world’ that would blend elements from Japan
and Korea. Although the mythic world of
Kung Fu Panda
is set in no particular time, we went to great pains to make sure that all the details in terms of architecture, landscape, clothing, and artifacts are authentically Chinese, even if sometimes we blended elements from different dynasties together.

“We spent the first eighteen months concentrating on the story with Jen Yuh Nelson
, our head of story, and our story team. Mark and I were in every meeting and made all the final decisions together about the creative direction of the movie while Melissa ran the production in a marvelously efficient way. Mark’s background is in stop motion animation (he directed the wonderful Academy Award-nominated short film
More
), so it was natural for him to work closely with the animators. Since my background is art-based and I had guided the visual development of the film, I was in charge of ensuring that the world and visual style we had created in the art department was translated accurately to the screen.”