Twenty years of kung fu in this punch, can you stop it? Huo Yuanjia
The Chinese New Year film Huo Yuanjia, released on January 26, 2006, was Jet Li's last martial arts film.
In the end, "Huo Yuanjia" achieved a mainland box office of 105 million yuan, followed only by Zhang Yimou's "Full of Golden Armor" and Feng Xiaogang's "Night Feast"; the Hong Kong box office of HK$30.2 million, the annual champion; North America 24.63 million US dollars, plus screenings in other countries and regions, the global total box office reached more than 68 million US dollars.
"Huo Yuanjia" invested 70 million yuan, and achieved such box office results, which can be said to be successful.
Such box office results, on the one hand, benefit from Jet Li's box office appeal, on the other hand, are gimmicks such as "Jet Li's last martial arts movie"; there is also the top distribution ability of China Film Group and gold medal producer Jiang Zhiqiang, and so on.
However, the turmoil and controversy of "Huo Yuanjia" in that year continued, and the Douban score barely rushed to 7.0 after 15 years, and after its release, it was also sued by Huo Yuanjia's descendants.
Because Jet Li gave great expectations to "Huo Yuanjia", he added a lot of his own ideas and human life concepts to the film; and in order to increase the schedule, the 140-minute director's edited version was cut to 104 minutes, and many important contents were deleted.
Later, the rating of "Huo Yuanjia" gradually increased, all thanks to the audience who watched the 140-minute full version online.
Compared with kung fu classics such as "Huang Feihong", "Taiji Zhang Sanfeng", and "Jingwu Hero" of that year, "Huo Yuanjia" is not Jet Li's representative work in terms of overall quality; but on the quality of martial arts alone, it is still the top, and even the last peak of Jet Li's kung fu movies.
After "Huo Yuanjia", Jet Li has also starred in more than 10 movies, most of which are action movies, including "Mulan", which was only released in 2020, and Jet Li has also shot again.
In terms of the quality of martial arts dramas, none of them can reach the height of "Huo Yuanjia", including the 2011 3D martial arts movie "Dragon Gate Flying Armor".
Jet Li is the male protagonist of "Huo Yuanjia", or the producer, the biggest decision-maker in the whole film; the martial arts instructor is yuan heping, the world's first martial artist, and the opponents in the film are mainland kung fu masters such as Ma Zhongxuan and Chen Zhihui, as well as international masters from many countries such as Australia, Thailand, Yingde and other countries.
Because of the high requirements of the boss Jet Li, director Yu Rentai spent 2 years and visited many countries to finalize the selection of the master actor:
Including Australian wrestler Nathan Jones, who plays The American Hercules Obi yin;
World Free Fighting Gold Belt Shangedi Leiye, playing the British boxing champion Peter. Smith;
British swordsman Antony Delong, who plays Spanish swordsmanship champion Anthony. Garcia;
German spear master Brandon Rhea plays the Belgian Royal Cavaliers head coach Hans. Herso;
Thai Muay Thai Olympic gold medalist Som Lukamsin plays Yunnan Cunyong.
The martial arts style of "Huo Yuanjia" is between "Huang Feihong" and "Jingwu Hero": "Huang Feihong" is dashing and freehand, "Huo Yuanjia" is harder and harder; "Jingwu Hero" integrates Chinese and Western, and "Huo Yuanjia" is more traditional and pure.
In the 140-minute director's cut version of Huo Yuanjia, there are more than 10 martial arts scenes, including Zou Zhaolong's ring fight, but not those scenes of practicing and fighting with children.
The first martial arts drama was a duel with his childhood rival Zhao Jian in the high-level ring.
Zhao Jian is played by Ma Zhongxuan, also a martial arts champion, China's first batch of martial arts athletes; as early as 1993, he cooperated with Jet Li to play the Shaolin Temple master brother in "Taiji Zhang Sanfeng", that is, in LuoHan Tang and Dong Tianbao' competition with The Yin Trick; later in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", he starred in the Iron Wall God Fist Rice Dart who was taught by Yu Jiaolong.
The main reason why this scene is good is that the opponent is strong and can show the texture of fist to flesh; in addition, the two-story ring, Jet Li did not use a stand-in, and even Wei Ya did not hang, the fight was wonderful and exciting.
After that, Huo Yuanjia fought in the ring one after another, brushed up the data wildly, and gradually played the name of the first in Jinmen, accepted many apprentices, and quickly lost the family property.
The second martial arts drama was caused by the apprentice, and in order to stand out for the apprentice, Huo Yuanjia challenged Jinmen's strongest opponent Qin Ye in the Guyue Building of his friend Nong Jinsun.
Qin Ye is played by Chen Zhihui, a master of Shaobei Quan, deputy director of the National Steering Committee of Shaobei Quan in China, and later in Zhen Zidan's "Ip Man", he played the head of Liao Jiaquan who went to foshan's newly opened martial arts hall.
This Qin Ye was the head of the Iron Knife Gate, so this big battle was better than the knife, and the big battle between the two people almost demolished a Guyue Building.
Of huo yuanjia's total investment, more than 10 million yuan was used to restore the old street in Tianjin, and this Guyue building accounted for more than half of the budget.
Previously, Jet Li's most wonderful knife battle should be the tower duel against Qian Xiaohao in "Taiji Zhang Sanfeng". Zhang Junbao in the movie, in order to save people, at the same time full of grief and anger of being betrayed by his brothers, so he fought very strongly.
In the sword battle of "Huo Yuanjia", Huo Yuanjia was suppressed by the desire of Jinmen First for too long, coupled with the blindness of the apprentice, to a realm of enchantment, almost a Buddha blocking the killing of Buddha. Moreover, after signing the life and death certificate, the two were desperate to slash, very dangerous, huo Yuanjia's knife was cut twice.
In the final hand-to-hand combat, the tragedy was even worse, Qin Ye's sternum was convex, and all kinds of altar jars and wooden frames were shattered, and the visual effect was very shocking.
The third martial arts drama is when Huo Yuanjia was thinking about it in the mountain village, and he met a strong man from a neighboring village to make trouble.
The village hero who took the lead was played by the Thai boxing king.
Compared with the previous fierce and domineering, at this time, Huo Yuanjia began to converge on the killing qi, no longer blindly attacking, but defensive counterattack, using ingenuity to softly kegang.
However, this scene was also cut very badly, playing for less than 2 minutes, too hasty.
Obviously, here is Jet Li's most core expression of "Huo Yuanjia", so that Huo Yuanjia has gradually grown from a brave and fierce martial artist to a martial artist with a heart for the world.
The fourth martial arts drama should be regarded as Huo Yuanjia returning to Tianjin and then going to the ring to challenge the American Hercules Obiyin.
Jet Li, who is less than 170 in height, wants to defeat the giant of more than 2 meters and 10 meters, which is an impossible task from the perspective of modern people, because the magnitude difference is too much.
Therefore, this scene is too exaggerated and not wonderful.
After that, Huo Yuanjia faced the four masters of the four kingdoms, picking four in one and playing five games in a row.
Among them, the first three European masters are fists, guns, and swords, followed by a three-cut stick against a Japanese samurai sword, plus a hand-to-hand combat.
The first three consecutive battles can be regarded as the fifth martial arts drama, and the two battles with Japanese martial arts in the back are counted as the sixth martial arts drama.
In the fifth martial arts drama, Huo Yuanjia won in a clever word, especially the red tassel gun against the European long gun.
The red tassel gun is not long enough, so Huo Yuanjia deliberately attacks closely; the opponent is angry and breaks the long gun, at this time the red tassel gun is longer, Huo Yuanjia timely retreats to a distance that the opponent cannot attack, and easily forces the opponent to retreat.
The final sixth martial arts drama, as the grand finale, was portrayed in the most detail and played for the longest time.
In fact, because the actor who played the Japanese samurai was not a practicing family, although he used a lot of stand-ins, he was not as good as the two major battles in Tianjin.
However, three consecutive big battles showed Jet Li's all-round martial arts.
From the red tassel gun to the Chinese long sword, to the steel three-section stick; at one point, it was cut into two short sticks, and the weapons were exchanged with each other's Japanese samurai swords.
Among them, the most difficult three sticks, Jet Li dances smoothly, tigers and tigers.
These scenes should be the movie after the "Shaolin Temple" trilogy, Jet Li used the most traditional weapons.
Therefore, if you don't care about the audience's sermons and forced ideological output of Jet Li, the martial arts drama of "Huo Yuanjia" is still worth the ticket price.