Text | Wu Yiyi, author | Er Dong Chen, Editor | Wu Shuyi
"I'm 60 years old, I can still make a living by cooking, can you still play when you're 60?"
This is what Jackie Chan asked him after he left Yu Zhanyuan's drama school at the age of 17 to do martial arts on the set.
It's cruel.
The brutal A side is personal development. Wu Xing can only eat the rice of youth, and once the youth is gone, the rice bowl is not guaranteed.
Jackie Chan was fortunate to have his father's question, and he was inspired not to just do small martial arts.
After Jackie Chan became a wrist child, Zhen Zidan fused MMA into kung fu films, and Wu Jing integrated the action into the main theme.
But the fact is that after so many years, when people think of "playing stars", people still think of the group of people in the last century - Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Zhen Zidan.
At most, when he came to the new century, he gave Wu Jing a thumbs up, lamented that Zhang Jin Zhao Wenzhuo in "Pi Ge" missed the golden age of martial arts films, and remembered the younger Shi Xiaolong, who debuted at the age of 5 and became famous, but his star path was not as open as a star.
This has to mention the cruel B-side - industry bottlenecks.
The 60-year-old Jackie Chan is still playing, but the era when the star was a box office guarantee is no longer there.
Looking around the film and television circle, with the gradual maturity of the star-making industry, stars of various categories are rolling in a fancy way, only the stars are hit, and the volume cannot be rolled.
Because there is no successor.
<h2>01 From drama to film</h2>
"Hitting the Stars" was once a stepping stone for Chinese actors to enter Hollywood. This glory, with the addition of heaven and place, is also the result of many generations of martial arts and Peking Opera inheritance.
In the 1940s, in order to escape the chaos of war, the Shanghai Film Company and many Peking Opera celebrities in Beijing chose to go south to Hong Kong.
Two forms of entertainment, one old and one new, converge on a 1,104 square kilometers of land, allowing Chinese martial arts to brew a unique imagination on the big screen.
During the war and chaos years, many people learned from their teachers, not for the sake of fame and fame, but for mixed food.
In the drama class, only when the master approves, can he have the opportunity to take the stage and become a character.
Eat a mouthful of rice and eat a full meal, with a stage in between.
The intense action scene, when the technology is immature, is the most stimulating screen expression of the human senses.
Where to find people who know martial arts to design movements?
The best value for money is the apprentice in the drama class.
Mr. Yu Zhanyuan, who later contributed half of the country to Chinese action films, had little reputation when he first arrived in Shanghai. He ran a drama academy to teach Peking opera, and the market was not large.
Instead, his daughter Yu Suqiu learned some of her father's fist and foot kung fu, went to the movie world, and became a famous martial arts actress.
Hong Jinbao, the son of Hong Zhonghao, the director of the South China Film Factory, was mischievous, and Boss Hong learned that Yu Suqiu's father ran a drama academy, so he sent his children to Yu Zhanyuan to learn drama.
The life of the drama academy is very hard and boring, once you enter the division, it is equivalent to signing a deed of sale, and during the period of studying art, the master beats the apprentice to death, which is not a crime.
The strict teaching cultivated a group of disciples with good skills and their own strengths, and Yu Zhanyuan took the "Seven Little Blessings" to the stage to act, at that time, each person earned 65 yuan per play, the master took 60 yuan, and left a fraction to the apprentice.
Once, during a performance, Hong Jinbao was injured, and during the period of recuperation in bed, he ate the brine made by his grandfather every day, and after the injury was healed, the originally handsome Hong Jinbao became fat.
Unable to go back, he was forced to quit Qixiaofu, leave drama school, devote himself to film, and do martial arts.
By 1968, Hong Kong's theater market had shrunk dramatically, and Yu went to the United States in search of new markets. The students who graduated from the full division can't mix in the pear garden, and there are two roads in front of them, one is to return to the bottom to do coolies to make money slowly, and the other is to go to the film industry to do martial arts, and there is wine in this day and drunk in this day.
Jackie Chan Yuan Biao, they chose to defect to Hong Jinbao, a master brother who was already a martial arts instructor.
In the 1970s and 1980s, most of the people engaged in martial arts were born in drama classes, and their education level was that they had not graduated from primary school, and the advantage of martial arts was that their salaries were fixed day by day, although they were desperate, but they had more money.
These low-educated people have a shallow sense of financial management, and after getting the money, they go to drink and gamble.
Lucky people in the martial arts, can do martial arts guidance, even when the lead actor as a director, there are more nameless people, to a certain age, can not move, the money earned when young, become the medical expenses of old age.
Whether they are in the drama class, or when they are martial artists, or even become a generation of stars, their original intention is not to choose a career, but to be chosen by the era and social class in which they live.
<h2>02 From goal to hopeless</h2>
There is no doubt that the background of the star is suffering.
People born in the drama class have to suffer during the study of art, even if they are born into a martial arts family, as long as they take this road, it means that they are hard to practice, fight and hurt, and filming will be injured.
As for fame, it is more about luck and chance.
The popularity of Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the 1980s made the audience see two hopes.
Jackie Chan can play the leading role even if he is not handsome.
Jet Li is an inland person who jumps into capitalist society and can also make a lot of money.
When the stars export works and leave the audience with imaginations about kung fu and shaolin temples, it subtly makes Chinese kung fu a yearning in the hearts of many people.
Behind the successful action movies, there are extremely inward-scrolling martial arts.
At that time, the film technology was not mature, and the action scenes had to really fight and really fall, as the martial arts clips with the highest eye-catching index in the action scenes, the martial arts instructors who designed the fighting moves were all magical.
Internally, the industry ethos is that you have designed a good play, and I want to design a better one. You play 40 seconds, and I'm going to play longer than you.
Externally, after the star has the appeal of the local box office, it receives an olive branch from Hollywood, and the film remuneration can be several times higher than that of the local market.
In the period of poverty and weakness, while Chinese kung fu boosts the morale of the audience, the hard-working actors also let the martial artists see the higher and higher ceiling of the industry.
Martial practitioners are willing to suffer hardships, because there are positive examples in front of them to prove with practical actions that as long as they are willing to work hard, there will be a way out.
Jackie Chan was disgusted by Jiahe for not having teeth, nose, too big eyes and too small eyes, director Luo Wei mobilized him several times to let him go for plastic surgery.
That look, Ken can become an international superstar, so Wuxing has hope.
Even if you can't become a superstar, the action scenes that frequently start work will also ensure that when the martial arts line is a fat difference.
However, with the Financial Crisis in Hong Kong and the shrinking of the film market, urban construction has squeezed the shooting space, leaving less and less room for martial artists to really fight and fall.
The development of film technology is getting faster and faster, more and more problems can be solved by computer stunts, real fighting and real wrestling are no longer a sufficient and necessary condition in action scenes, the use of martial arts is getting weaker and weaker, and the way out is getting narrower and narrower.
The seniors have a difficult road, and the younger generations are more cautious when they enter the industry.
The martial arts that nurture the stars, the fresh blood is getting less and less, and the vitality is getting weaker and weaker.
When the audiences who watched Jackie Chan's Jet Li movies grew up and the film and television audiences became younger children who grew up in hollywood special effects aesthetics, the charm of traditional kung fu movies was curtailed by technology.
When the identity of "hitting the stars" is no longer dazzling, the so-called inheritance is also difficult.
<h2>03 The martial finger is still there, and no one has answered the call</h2>
The fist-to-flesh action scene in "Fury Case" has evoked many people's memories of Hong Kong hardcore action movies.
Even with the development of film technology so far, many special effects have been able to match Hollywood, and the real real fight scenes can still bring incomparable sensory stimulation to the audience.
This kind of primitive and real violence is demanding on the actors.
After the release of "Anger and Serious Case", many fans shouted that Nicholas Tse went out of the kitchen to make more movies, and some people lamented that such Hong Kong films were one less to watch.
An interesting phenomenon is that audiences don't seem to have pinned their hopes on the next generation of actors.
Action movies today, equipped with more mature technology, must be expected in the future, but the so-called action actors, it is estimated that a generation is weaker than a generation, pure kung fu, will only be less and less.
Yuan Heping, known as the "first Martial Arts Instructor of the Chinese", is still active in the film circle, but to watch kung fu dramas, it is still in the immature period of special effects in the early years, which is even more exciting.
It's not that the master has regressed, it's that the actors are different.
Zhen Zidan and Yuan Heping have cooperated many times, and he said that Yuan Heping is a martial artist, and he has high requirements for actors, and people without kung fu skills can perform the actions he designed.
In the early years, he cooperated with real martial arts with real kung fu, and later the offspring who cooperated without foundation allowed him to perform all kinds of martial arts in his heart, and it was difficult to perform.
The era of gritting your teeth has passed, and the wind direction of the film and television market has changed.
Training in martial arts is not a strong country, and science and technology are strong.
The actors disenchanted from the "no hanging Weah" style of dedication.
They have more options and no longer have to choose to suffer "unnecessarily."
Even if you are not an actor, people who can spend a few times can show their "kung fu" on the short video platform, without hard work, there are also opportunities to be photogenic.
There are more and more platforms with the banner of "everyone is a life director", the shooting threshold is lowering, the editing threshold is decreasing, and the entertainment channels are becoming more and more.
All kinds of fresh sensory stimuli are flooding the public life, and the fist-to-flesh kung fu film is very good, but it hurts too much.
It is a product of an era.
People in this era can not continue that kind of suffering, and they can still get the same reward by finding another way. Both the audience and the practitioners.
Therefore, whether it is the stars or martial arts related to it, they are all part of the dream path of that era.
The martial finger is still there, and no one has answered the call, which is a foregone conclusion.
When Hong Jinbao left Yu Zhanyuan, he said to his disciples, "The times have changed, drama is no longer popular, the future is the world of movies, and when I mix well in the movies in the future, cover you."
At that time, Yu Zhanyuan did not want to use the drama academy to send talents to the film industry.
Later, Hong Jinbao's words came true, and Yu Zhanyuan inadvertently inserted willows to build half of the Hong Kong action film.
Another era has come, this time the traditional kung fu film is in decline.
The tide of that year also became a cloud of smoke.