Text/Hoarder
No matter how nostalgic you are for the glory of Chinese kung fu films, you have to admit that it is now an indisputable fact that Chinese kung fu films are broken. On the surface, the broken file is reflected in the sharp decline in the number of new works, the lack of good works, and the lack of talent; in the deeper sense, Hoarder feels that the root cause of the broken file lies in the fact that the new style has not been created after the old style has been abandoned by the market. The main theme of the upcoming hardcore kung fu film "Ultimate Code" released on July 16 not only conveys the patriotic sentiment of "summoning back and fighting Bing", but also allows Hoarder to see some new elements and new styles of the kung fu genre, and if it can be recognized by the general audience, it will be expected to open a new era for Chinese kung fu films. If you can, then the film is to raise the country's prestige from the inside out!
Roughly divided, the global kung fu film can be divided into two eras. The first era was a Hong Kong kung fu film represented by Lau Kar Leung. At that time, the creators and actors of Hong Kong kung fu films all had traditional martial arts skills. In terms of action design, they used a lot of tricks. The tricks of traditional Chinese kung fu have been studied by generations of martial artists over the years and are very subtle. Hong Kong kung fu films based on tricks have natural advantages that other countries cannot imitate, and soon became popular around the world. At that time, Hollywood did not have traditional martial arts talents, and could only make tough guy action movies like Stallone and Schwarzenegger to match.
With the aging of Liu Jialiang's traditional martial arts talents, Hong Kong kung fu films have slowly changed their taste - under the "deception" of some martial arts fingers, many stars without martial arts skills can also perform gorgeous fights. As a result, modern kung fu films represented by the "Boxer" series and the "Raid" series in Southeast Asia have replaced the set of kung fu films. This kind of kung fu film incorporates a lot of Muay Thai, kick boxing, MMA and other actions that pay more attention to the effect of fighting, giving people a rapid and fierce texture. Although this kind of play has a certain visual impact, we Chinese audiences generally feel that the protagonists in this kind of film are more "reckless", often killing the enemy and killing themselves, without Huang Feihong, Fang Shiyu, Hong Xiguan and other people being dashing. Chinese kung fu films launched "Kill the Wolf" and "Fuse" to meet the battle, proving that we are not unable to play but unwilling to play.
As the "boxer" Tony Ja also began to give soy sauce to others, this fighting wind kung fu film quickly cooled down. At present, there is no new style that can lead kung fu films into a new era. Wu Jing's Wolf Warrior series, while a huge box office success, is closer to a Hollywood-style gunfire action movie than a kung fu movie. However, Hoarder felt that "Wolf Warrior" provided a way of thinking for kung fu films, that is, whether the design of the play could find new inspiration from the army. The First Age was inspired by traditional martial arts, and the Second Era was inspired by modern combat, so it is not impossible that the Third Age was inspired by the soldiers' enemy control techniques - this is the great inspiration that Hoarder got from watching "The Ultimate Code".
"The Ultimate Code" is a film work by Wu Zhiting, whose protagonist Wu Zhiting has many years of military service experience, and has won three third-class merits during his service, and has also won the titles of "Excellent Soldier" and "Excellent Non-Commissioned Officer". First of all, his military temperament is more pure, more natural, and more penetrating than Wu Jing's, and he is more imposing when he shouts "This is China, they should not appear"; secondly, his fighting skills are the "internal data" of the army, rather than putting the external information of traditional martial arts on the military character like Wu Jing. This made him more mature and distinct in the signs explored by "Wolf Warrior", and truly formed an independent style.
The narrative structure of this film is very large, not inferior to the kind of global running "Mission Impossible" or "007". Specific to the fight scenes, this film is very different from the past action movies and kung fu movies. For example, in this film, Wu Zhiting will also use firearms, and pistols, semi-automatic rifles, and rotating machine guns have all been used. If you look closely, you will find that he will not shoot at the waist with a gun like Stallone, but will aim and shoot with a gun in one go, quickly and accurately. At first glance, this set of movements has been practiced by him to muscle memory. And the shooting in the film is never standing, but in various environments, first quickly choose to hide and then shoot, very agile. Hoarder thinks this is the right way to shoot a shootout. The Kind of Blind Sweeping in the United States while holding a gun is giving away people's heads no matter how they look at it.
As a kung fu film, hand-to-hand combat is naturally indispensable. If you don't look closely at the hand-to-hand combat of this film, some people may think that it is oscillating between the fighting style and the Hollywood tough guy style. Actually, not also! Hollywood tough guy style is fist to flesh, but the concept is to force the weak (like the stinky virtues of the United States). How could everyone in the military be Rambo or terminators? The trick of brute force suppression is naturally undesirable. Therefore, we can see that the heavy punches and legs in "Ultimate Code" are aimed at the vulnerable parts of human beings, not from fist to flesh, but to the fragile place.
The concept of fighting action is to win with one move, while melee combat in the army is more focused on one move to defeat the enemy. Once a soldier engages in hand-to-hand combat, it means fighting for life, and after the move, the other side cannot be left with the opportunity to fight back, either to die or to be disabled. There is a small story circulating in Hoarder's hometown, a person in the village who has been to Vietnam said that the other party basically gave each other a fight for nothing, casually abused, and could not understand why the United States was so messed up there. The Ultimate Code gives us the secrets. Although some of the actions in the film are taken from modern martial arts, they are the most brutal moves, and all the flashy and difficult skills are removed. That's right! Our army has taken the most brutal moves from martial arts and martial arts. What hand is left for the enemy who has come to attack!
A particularly impressive move in the film is that when the protagonist crouches on the ground, Shunshi uses his big arm to stroke the crotch of the standing foreign enemy, which is equivalent to completing the "monkey stealing peach" with biceps. If you look at the dimension and hardness of Wu Zhiting's biceps, you can imagine how much damage this time will cause to the enemy. The self-righteous foreigner was lucky to feel the ultimate pain.
Although "Ultimate Code" still has some small shortcomings in experience, and Wu Zhiting has many ambitions that have not been realized, this patriotic film will definitely make the audience watch the blood boil, and Wu Zhiting has found a new style for Chinese kung fu films that have been silent for many years. Hoarder hopes that in addition to the box office hits, this military killing style kung fu film can also be recognized and encouraged by kung fu fans, so that the younger generation of kung fu filmmakers have the opportunity to play a new era.