Hong Kong action cinema!!!!! When it first came about in the 1920’s the directors were focusing more on the Wuxia style,emphasizing mysticism and swordplay and telling tales of herioc sword warriors. But this was politically suppressed in the 1930s and replaced by styles in which films showed more down-to-earth unarmed kung fu, often featuring the all time hero Wong Fei Hung (mainly played by Kwan Tak Hing). Kwan Tak Hing became a hero figure to at least a couple of generations of Hong Kongers by playing historical folk hero Wong Fei Hung in a series of about one hundred movies, the first was the true story of wong fei hung (1949) through to crushing the fire formation (1970).

The New School Wuxia wave started by taking male-oriented action films to the centre of Hong Kong cinema, which had long been dominated by female stars and genres aimed at female audiences. Stars such as Cheung Pei Pei were casted along side male action stars to continue the tradition of story telling of women in Wuxia films. King Hu a legendary director back in the day also made his own Wuxia films with independant productions in taiwan such as the massive hit Dragon Gate Inn (1967) which was also remade with Donnie Yen in the lead.

In the 1970’s Hong Kong cinema would become the Kung Fu wave, with massive stars such as Bruce Lee, Lau Kar Leung, Sammo Hung,Gordon Liu and Jackie Chan. Alot of people say that a certain movie in 1970 started of the craze and that movie was Chinese Boxer starring Jimmy Wang Yu, but you also had the legendary Shaw Brothers film company and they were banging out movies such as Vengence the same year. Also on the scene was Bruce lee, an American-born, Hong Kong-raised martial artist and actor who was impressing everybody around China and the world with his incredible kung fu. Bruce Lee only completed 4 movies before his death in 1973, they were The Big Boss, Fist Of Fury,Way Of The Dragon and Enter The Dragon. He was cinema’s first ever global chinese star, everybody was amazed by his power and skill (The One Inch Punch), Lee also starred in a US TV series at the time called The Green Hornet (currently in the process of being made into a hollywood movie).

When Bruce Lee passed away, film companies were searching very hard to try and find the next “Bruce Lee”, they started with knock off movies with lookalikes calling themselfs “Bruce Li, Bruce Lo,” – You get the picture. Also in the efforts to manufacture a “new bruce lee” they tried to turn to other fighters such as Jimmy Wang Yu and Angela Mao.

Angela Mao

Lo Wei who worked with Bruce on a few movies also had another young actor trying to make his name for himself, he was Jackie Chan. At the time Jackie was starring in movies with a director he didn’t even like, and after failing to gain many fans Lo Wei decided to loan him out to seasonal films with director Yuen Woo Ping placing him as lead in his movie Snake In The Eagles Shadow (1978). The movie was a overnight box office smash hit and from that moment on everybody knew who Jackie Chan was, then came his second outing and again it was lead by Yuen Woo Ping.  Drunken Master was even bigger than Snake In The Eagles Shadow and created its on style of kung fu,(kung fu comedy) which Jackie Chan became the front person for. Chan’s clowning may have helped extend the life of the kung fu wave for several years.
Nevertheless, he became a star towards the end of the boom, and would soon help move the colony towards a new type of action.
In the 1980s, he would forge a slicker, more spectacular Hong Kong pop cinema that would successfully compete with the post-Star Wars summer blockbusters from America with movies such as Police Story and Project A.

Jackie Chan - Drunken Master 2

Part 2 Coming soon