Jet Li played many historical figures in the 90s, such as Huang Feihong, Zhang Sanfeng, Fang Shiyu, Hong Xiguan, etc., so Jet Li has always had plans to play Huo Yuanjia, but has not put it into action.
It wasn't until Jet Li saw a news report in 2003 that he really made up his mind.
That report said 280,000 people committed suicide in China in 2003
He thought, "That number is shocking. Everyone has parents or siblings, almost everyone will involve 10 people's painful feelings, then these 280,000 people will affect two or three million people, why do so many young people have to give up their lives? ”
So he wanted to put a concept of being a person into this film: although people can't choose the beginning of life, they must be strong and have the courage to go to the end.
After the collapse of the film company established in the 90s, Jet Li rarely participated in the creation of the film as an investor.
However, this film is excluded, he is not only the lead actor, but also a major investor, involved in the determination of the entire style of the film.
In the end, he and director Yu Rentai established the creative direction for the film
1. An entertaining action film, for which in addition to showing Chinese kung fu, Muay Thai, boxing and other martial arts will also appear;
Second, to carry forward the spirit of Chinese martial arts, I hope that the audience can understand after watching this film that "violence is not the solution to the problem.".
Indeed, these two ideas run through the film.
The film tells that Huo Yuanjia has been obsessed with martial arts since he was a child, but his father does not want him to become a martial artist, so he does not let him learn martial arts.
Yuan Jia and his playmate secretly copied the Huo family's boxing score, and then practiced hard every day, defeating the little bully with hard work, and since then, his confidence has increased greatly, and he has also formed the understanding that force can solve everything.
With his understanding and enthusiasm for martial arts, the roots of martial arts became deeper and deeper, and he later became a well-known martial artist in Tianjin.
As an adult, he was too sharp, competitive, brave and fierce, looking for people everywhere to test martial arts, listening to the "First in Jinmen" fluttering, and even received a bunch of fox friends.
In the end, he was harmed by these "friends", because of the misunderstanding, he threatened Qin Ye to sign a life and death certificate on the spot to compete with him.
Although Yuan Jia won, he lost the lives of the two people he loved most in his life, his mother and daughter!
The big mistake was forged with one hand, and Huo Yuanjia, who was in pain, was dazed, like a walking dead, wandering on the road.
Hou lived in a remote village in anonymity, and was taken care of by the villagers' grandmother-in-law and blind girl Yue Ci.
The indisputable rural life has made Yuan Jia gradually forget the pain and hatred, and his life is slowly recovering.
In the day and night together, he developed feelings with Yue Ci.
The idyllic and peaceful pastoral life also made him sink his heart to think about the true meaning of martial arts for a person and a nation, and gradually realized the true meaning of martial arts.
Coinciding with the invasion of China by the Eight-Power Alliance, Huo Yuanjia borrowed the strength of Nong Jinsun to challenge Hercules successfully, and then opened the Jingwu Gymnastics Gymnasium, but soon after he was poisoned by the Japanese and died young.
From the perspective of the film, the plot of this film is very much in line with the requirements of the biography, starting with arrogance, and then misunderstandings leading to the loss of close relatives.
A few years of quiet life made him understand the true meaning of martial arts, and he stepped forward at a time of national crisis.
"Mantis arm as a car" only to awaken some of the consciousness of the Chinese people, for the honor of death sublimated the entire theme of the movie.
In order to ensure that the plot of the movie is twisted enough, the transformation of the protagonist is more reasonable, in the movie, Huo Yuanjia's descendants are all killed, and the young Huo Yuanjia is no different from the bully.
These big changes also aroused the disgust of Huo Yuanjia's descendants, after all, the influence of the film is very large.
Especially if jet Li starred as a superstar and was distributed worldwide, if everyone takes the movie as a fact, the impact on Huo Yuanjia and his descendants is immeasurable.
Shortly after the film was released, Huo Zizheng, a descendant of Huo Yuanjia, was very angry after watching the film, saying that the film violated the right to reputation and demanded that the release and distribution be stopped.
He also said that the film did not communicate with Huo Yuanjia's descendants from beginning to end, nor did it seek the opinions of other descendants of the Huo family.
Immediately after organizing a press conference, a statement was issued at the press conference: "The film does not make a positive depiction of Huo Yuanjia's maintenance of national dignity and anti-violence and peace.
Instead, Huo Yuanjia was written as a domineering, flappy, arrogant and arrogant person.
In order to fight for the first indiscriminate killing of innocents, it brought the disaster of killing mothers and children, causing the Huo family to perish and become the huo family's sinners for eternity. ”
It is also said that the film fiction can be, but it is unacceptable to let the Huo family "extinguish the door", after all, Huo Yuanjia has many descendants.
You can write Zhang Yuanjia and Li Yuanjia, but writing about Huo Yuanjia in this way is to use the reputation of celebrities to make money and infringe on the reputation rights of others, and the producer must clarify the above facts." ”
However, the producer did not respond positively to the demands of the Huo family's descendants.
Instead, he replied to Huo Yuanjia's descendants with the words "this film is pure fiction".
This made Huo Yuanjia's descendants even more angry, saying that "pure fiction" cannot be used as a "death-free gold medal", which has no meaning from the legal level, so the reconciliation may be gone.
The descendants of the Huo family later stated again that they had formally entrusted lawyers to deal with relevant issues by legal means.
This is not to hype up fame, because the huo family's reputation does not need to be hyped, nor can it be hyped;
Nor is it for material reparations, as there can be no bargaining over the reputation of ancestors and families.
It is only hoped that the negative impact caused by the film's inaccuracies will be recovered through legal means, and the misleading of the film to young people will be corrected, and it is hoped that this move can play a positive role in improving the unserious atmosphere in the film culture market.
In addition to suing the producer of the film, he also sued the lead actor Jet Li, because he was also an investor in the film.
In response to the lawsuit of the Huo family's descendants, the screenwriter of the film, Wang Bin, said that "the script creation of "Huo Yuanjia" is not completely based on historical facts, but based on "historical clues" for artistic processing.
He believes that historical facts are very important, but how to express Huo Yuanjia's spirit is also very important.
In order to express this theme, we added some fictional plots, such as his youth and madness, accidentally injuring people's lives, etc., but this is all to show his transition from an ordinary martial artist to a patriotic martial artist. This is not a character documentary after all. ”
It sounds reasonable, but the whole process did not communicate with the Huo family, so such a big adaptation was carried out, and no one could bear it.
In the end, the court ruled that although some of the details in the film "Huo Yuanjia" were inconsistent with history, the tone was still to praise Huo Yuanjia's patriotic spirit and express Chinese martial arts, so the film did not infringe on Huo Yuanjia's reputation.
This statement is quite reasonable, but as a quasi-documentary of real historical figures, the whole process of filming does not communicate with the descendants of the protagonist, and in order to make the plot more in line with the form of the film, it has been greatly changed, and it has not hesitated to first degrade and then lean back.
Later generations questioned and ignored it, using only the names of historical figures borrowed, the plot is purely fictional, etc. to respond to the reasonable demands of the Huo family's descendants for "public clarification", which is a bit too "businessman".