I'm a great fan of martial art films. Ip Man, Ong Bak, Fearless (Hua Yuan Jia) or anything that shows beautiful, impressive, real moves stirs up something inside me. Makes me feel how cool it is that the human body can do all these amazing stuff. Guess that's why I became a traceur, but that's not the point of this post.
This post is about some of the cliches and stereotypes in recent MA films that I hate. I feel there is a trend recently in MA films that shows a lack of creativity, a horrible overuse of certain themes and many stereotypes. I want to note that I fully understand that the main focus of a MA flick is the action, and I'm fine with that, it's when they mess it up the other parts so bad that it distracts you from the action that pisses me off. In no particular order, the following are things I hate about recent MA films.
1. Overly nationalistic themes. I know that traditionally MA films have always have nationalistic themes in them. Since Bruce Lee beat up a bunch of Japanese guys and Wong Fei Hung beating the shit out of horribly generic white people, MA films have been showing Chinese people beating up everyone else since they exist. The problem is, every recent MA flick seems to be about how much better kung fu is compared to karate, jiujutsu, boxing, fencing, krav manga, ninjutsu, tae kwon do, muay thai, and everything in between. Every time, the chinese are being exploited by some foreign fuckheads and are generally helpless until our hero comes along and beats up everyone. It's getting old, seriously, I'm sure you guys can think up of some other storyline where one guy beats up another.
2. Unrealistic portrayal of training, I understand this can't be help in a way, but I still feel like mentioning it. People don't get good at beating other people up by doing the horse stance 12 hours a day, they get good at it by training how to beat people up. Nevertheless, I guess it is necessary to maintain the mysticalness of kung fu to non-practitioners of the physical arts.
3. "Flower vase" female characters. You know, girls are people too, and they generally contribute a lot to society, it'd be nice if the females are marginally useful instead of whining a lot then getting rescued. You don't have to know kung fu to have a strong personality or admirable qualities, and no, not wanting your husband to continue fighting does not fucking count. You cunt. I think what annoys me more is those females that know kung fu, but always end up needing to be rescued, and not in the way a strong guy character needs to get rescued, but in a oh no I'm useless but I try too hard kinda way, with half a boob hanging out. Seriously, when have you seen a female character dishing out some punishment against non-drone enemies?
4. Overuse of wires. I hate wire-fu. I understand it's an art and it enhances a lot of action scenes to make them more dramatic or over the top, but recently it seems like wire-fu is being used to replace actual good martial art choreography. Every scene you look some guy is floating somewhere. I guess liberal usage of wires are okay in wu xia films, where everyone sort of has superpowers anyways, but in more realistic MA films where people rely on punches and kicks rather then flying needles or giant hammers really needs to maintain a certain level of realism. Also (although maybe this is the traceur in me speaking), I'd prefer to see stuntman/MA artist taking realistic drops and rolls, or really jumping on balance beams and such rather then "floating" there. It looks much more authentic and real, just watch any good Parkour video and you'll know what I mean.
5. Overdone dramatic effects. A good emotional scene is a thing of beauty. It draws the viewers in without making them feel like the whole thing is fake. It makes you relate to the character and feel the pain he/she is feeling. Recently, however, it feels like MA film directors are using cheap emotional reels like little girls dying (and coming back to life to speak a few dramatic words) before REALLY dying or family getting slaughtered.. etc etc. I suppose these are all fine if done correctly, but often the poor execution makes the scene feel silly and overdone, and in the worst case, laughable. Just watch the new movie shaolin (2011) and you'll know what I mean.
6. Special effects. Original brilliant camera work and choreography was what made Hong Kong cinema famous in the first place, and now, more and more movies are going the Hollywood approach and putting in many special effects instead of relying on good stunts and camera work. Even worse, the special effects aren't even well done! In most cases you can easily tell what is CGI, they obviously aren't as good as the people in Hollywood at doing these stuff. Please, just film real martial artist in well choreographed scenes, and everyone will love it, I promise!
Well, that's all I can think of for now. There are probably more things that I hate about them, I suppose I may write them down in the future (or not). I just pray that in the future more brilliant films are produced rather then horrible generic cash-cow films with too much special effects and a famous cast that don't even know martial arts.
