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Text | Mia
The ultra-difficult 8-lap half-overturned, breaking the Guinness World Record; There are also 69-meter speeding cars crossing, 24-meter boat leaping, and 46-meter falling from a height......
This week's Hollywood blockbuster "Stunt Maniac" is a stunt feast, with record-breaking action scenes that are dizzying. Action movie fans are "blessed"!
And behind these thrilling action designs, in addition to director David Leitch, there is also a Chinese figure, that is, the film's action director Sun Nuo.
He has also participated in stunt work on international blockbusters such as "Fast and Furious", "Wolverine 3" and "Deadpool 2", and is committed to integrating Chinese martial arts culture into Hollywood films, this time also paying tribute to kung fu superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li in details.
"Chinese Kung Fu" has always been a business card of Chinese films shining in the world, from Yuan Heping and Yuan Kui to Luo Lixian and Donnie Yen, Chinese action directors are also an indispensable force behind countless international blockbusters. Starting from "Stunt Maniac", let's take a look at those internationally renowned Chinese martial arts.
A love letter to stuntmen
"It's a love letter to stuntmen." Talking about the original intention of the creation of "Stunt Maniacs", David Leitch said that he hopes more audiences can recognize this group of unsung heroes behind the screen.
Stuntman-turned-David Leitch is himself an avid fan of Jackie Chan and Shaw Brothers movies. Jackie Chan had the biggest impact on him, "It was very inspiring for me to watch him go from stuntman to director to prolific producer. ”
David Leitch on the adoration of Jackie Chan
And this time "Stunt Maniac" also has a very strong Jackie Chan action movie gene, the male protagonist Colt played by Ryan Gosling is placed in many dangers, overcoming difficulties all the way to pass the level, just like many classic characters of Jackie Chan, he is an ordinary person who fights against evil forces.
In terms of action design, David Leitch also specially recruited Sun Nuo, a Chinese movement director who has cooperated many times. Sun Nuo was born in Beijing, and before the age of 20, he broke into Hollywood alone, from a stuntman to an action director, and participated in the stunt performances of many superhero blockbusters such as "Wolverine 3" and "Aquaman".
When it comes to the action design of "Stunt Maniac", Sun Nuo said that when he saw this theme, he thought of starting from Hong Kong classic action movies, and Jackie Chan is an unavoidable name.
The film reproduces and adapts many famous scenes from Jackie Chan's movies, and the design of the highlight scene of the falling villain and Commander Gao jumping off the plane in the title LOGO is also inspired by the famous scene of Jackie Chan jumping over the bell tower in the movie "Plan A".
Not only that, but there is also a scene in the film where Gosling needs to fight in a long trench coat, and the hem is too long and the movement is not smooth.
Sun Nuo had an idea, thinking that Jet Li wore a robe when he played Huang Feihong, and he would lift the hem when he did kicking movements. So he also made a gesture, and David Leitch immediately said, "Jet Li!" This action was adopted as a result, and it became another detail of the film.
A Chinese martial artist who is proud of Hollywood
Not only Sun Nuo, but also many Hollywood blockbusters have Chinese martial arts behind them, and the footprints of Chinese action people "going to sea" can also be traced back to the nineties of the last century.
In 1990, Liu Jialiang, who had directed many films such as "Drunken Fist 2" and "Shaolin Thirty-Six Rooms", was invited by director Steve Barron to serve as the action director for the movie "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", creating a precedent for Chinese martial arts to enter Hollywood.
After Liu Jialiang, batch after batch of excellent action directors have gone behind the scenes in Hollywood. Among them, the most influential is undoubtedly Yuan Heping, the "No. 1 martial artist in the world".
In the early 90s, Yuan Heping successively created many textbook-level kung fu films such as "Tai Chi Zhang Sanfeng" (1993) and "Jingwu Hero" (1994), which also became a business card he handed to the world.
Both the Wachowski brothers and Quentin Tarantino learned about their work during this period and invited Yuan Heping to join their films.
In the "Matrix" trilogy, Yuan Heping perfectly combines traditional Chinese kung fu with sci-fi settings and computer special effects, and the martial arts style is both realistic and imaginative, and "bullet time" has become a film history classic that is difficult to surpass.
Quentin is a big fan of Chinese kung fu films. He claimed that he could memorize the fighting scenes of "Jingwu Heroes", and one of the original intentions of filming the "Kill Bill" series was also to pay tribute to Shaw Brothers movies.
The "Kill Bill" series he teamed up with Yuan Heping is unique, full of kung fu movie elements and tributes, such as Uma Thurman wearing a Bruce Lee-esque tracksuit, beating the Japanese gang to pieces.
For another example, the apprenticeship of Bai Mei is a significant tribute to the learning passages in kung fu films such as "Drunken Fist", and Hong Kong kung fu star Liu Jiahui was specially invited to play Bai Mei Taoist.
In this way, from the "Matrix" trilogy, which has a global box office of over 1.7 billion, to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which won many awards at the Oscars, to the "Kill Bill" series with a unique style, Yuan Heping has truly secured the throne of "the world's No. 1 martial artist".
Yuan Heping on the set of "The Matrix".
The Chinese action director who entered Hollywood at about the same time as Yuan Heping, as well as Jet Li's "Royal Martial Finger" Yuan Kui, "Ranger", "Dragon's Kiss" and other works are all acted by Yuan Kui, and he also collaborated with Brian Singer and Luc Besson on "X-Men" and "Extraordinary Human Traffickers" respectively.
Lin Di'an, who studied under Xu Xiaoming and Cheng Xiaodong, also entered Hollywood in the late 90s, serving as an action director for films such as "Fighting Poison with Poison" and "Spider-Man 2", among them, the special effects fight scenes he designed for "Spider-Man 2" were especially well received by fans.
and Luo Lixian, who has worked closely with John Woo, has designed actions for blockbusters such as "Mission Impossible 3", "Transformers 4", "Raid 2: Thugs"; Yuan Heping's apprentice Chen Hu also won the title of "Hollywood China Leader" for guiding Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves, and Lucy Liu to practice martial arts.
Luo Lixian on the set of "Raid 2".
How to take the next step?
Donnie Yen's career in Hollywood also started as an action director, but he bluntly said that the experience was not pleasant, and when filming "Blade 2", the producer did not give enough respect to the action actors, and was often urged to call it a day after just a few hours of filming.
This also reflects the different traditions of Hollywood and Hong Kong in action movie shooting, Hong Kong's action director has a higher status and has a lot of voice and autonomy, while Hollywood relies more on editing, often shooting at the same time in multiple cameras, and filming is done quickly, which is also the reason why many American action movies are incoherent and not good-looking.
Yuan Heping also bluntly said that at the beginning, Hollywood directors had no concept of action movie shooting, and they had to start from scratch. And in his opinion, Hollywood can only learn the surface of Chinese kung fu, but cannot understand the essence, and attaches more importance to technology and special effects than action design.
After the "boom" at the turn of the century, the number of Chinese martial artists working hard in Hollywood has also decreased.
Chen Hu analyzed the reasons in an interview, on the one hand, with the help of China's martial arts, the local action team has grown rapidly and has more advantages in terms of cost; On the other hand, foreign audiences' sense of novelty and mystery about kung fu films has weakened, and kung fu is no longer a golden sign for commercial films.
At the same time, Donnie Yen and other action actors also pay more attention to the other party's understanding of Chinese culture and Chinese kung fu when choosing a Hollywood team. Donnie Yen said that he would first ask the other party: My role, your content, do you respect our Chinese and Chinese culture?
His recent collaboration with Chad Starhelsky, the director of "Fast and Furious 4", and David Leitch, the director of the upcoming film "Kung Fu", are both stuntmen and have a deep connection with China, which also ensures the authenticity of "Kung Fu".
Donnie Yen will star in "Kung Fu" to fulfill Bruce Lee's last wish
As a film genre that has conquered global audiences, kung fu movies undoubtedly have irreplaceable charm, and Chinese martial arts have also made a non-negligible contribution to the development of world action films, but how to keep pace with the times and continue to shine is a problem that needs to be considered.
Just like Sun Nuo, the action director of "Stunt Maniac", said, foreign filmmakers are very interested in Chinese culture, and the new generation of Chinese action filmmakers should inherit the innovative spirit of their predecessors and integrate Chinese martial arts culture into Hollywood blockbusters. ”
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