The Hong Kong Action Film Crisis2

Hong Kong action films have made inroads into house­holds world­wide with its ‘incred­i­ble energy and blaz­ing pas­sions’. Synonymous with ‘grace­ful bul­let bal­lets’, ‘grav­ity defy­ing wire-fu fight scenes’ and ancient mag­i­cal beings engaged in mar­tial arts beat­downs (Macias, 2007), Hong Kong action films have man­aged to amass such a large cult that it is now con­sid­ered a cul­tural main­stream, widely avail­able and imitated. The Hong Kong action film dis­play of acro­bat­ics by the main hero is in con­trast to tra­di­tional Western action films, which are instead marked by explo­sions, car chases and gad­gets. James Bond and Die Hard are such exam­ples. However, in recent years, Hong Kong action film’s influ­ence on Hollywood pop­u­lar cin­ema has been par­tic­u­larly heavy, with films like The Matrix and Kill Bill where the nar­ra­tive and mech­a­nis­tic form fol­lows the Hong Kong model. Such suc­cess has iron­i­cally led to its own down­fall and the Hong Kong action film is cur­rently in cri­sis, los­ing much of its hold on the action film genre. This paper attempts to exam­ine this. <p>Hong Kong action films are rooted in the ancient lit­er­ary genre of wuxia, which goes as far back to Shuo Jian Pian (On the Sword), writ­ten dur­ing the Warring States Era, 403–221 B.C (Rist, 2002).For as long as film existed, many silent mar­tial arts/adventure films were made in China (Rist, 2002). These cul­mi­nated in the post war, 1950s, Hong Kong Wong Fei-Hung movies. A real-life kung fu expert, healer, philoso­pher, and cham­pion of jus­tice (Pollard, 2001), Wong is the typ­i­cal wuxia hero and appears in no less than 100 films (Logan, 1995). In The True Story of Wong Fei-Hung, Part 1: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (1949), one can see the roots of Hong Kong Action Film, …with acro­batic jump­ing from one level of an inte­rior set to another, with the sin­gle pro­tag­o­nist in the cen­tre of a cir­cle of adver­saries, and with sword, pole and unarmed com­bat (Rist, 2002, para. 3). The next step in this evo­lu­tion would be the rise of King Hu—arguably the ‘most sig­nif­i­cant inno­va­tor of wuxia pian (espe­cially the cape and sword genre) and its great­est prac­ti­tioner’. He inno­vated to meet an audi­ence crav­ing for new lev­els of energy in their films. Hu’s first wuxia pian, Come Drink With Me (Da Zui Xia, 1965) was a box office suc­cess and it ‘ush­ered in the first real wave of Hong Kong action films’, chang­ing the land­scape of Chinese-language cin­ema for­ever (Rist, 2002, para. 3). In com­par­i­son to Hu’s movies, Wong Fei-Hong movies had ‘lit­tle or no imag­i­na­tion in the film­ing of these (fight) scenes, and Kwan’s (the lead actor) moves are un-athletic to say the least.’ (Rist, 2002, para. 3). Hu was a prac­ti­tioner of Peking Opera and brought ele­ments over to his films where “Hu brought visual sophis­ti­ca­tion and energy to the new-style mar­tial arts pic­ture, for exam­ple his fight­ing scenes are syn­chro­nized with a per­cus­sive beat (drums and gongs) rem­i­nis­cent of Peking Opera aes­thet­ics. But to make the fights seem even more spec­tac­u­lar, King Hu fused these Eastern con­cepts of dance with Western forms of filmmaking.”(Green, 2005, para. 7) A detailed com­par­i­son, by Rist (2002, para. 3) between Come Drink With Me and a con­tem­po­rary film released in the same year, The Jade Bow (directed by Zhang Xinyan and Fu Qi for Great Wall/Sil Metropole), sheds fur­ther light: The Jade Bow is a highly enter­tain­ing and col­or­ful film, with female char­ac­ters in the prin­ci­pal action roles. It con­tains some imag­i­na­tive spe­cial effects, but lacks the con­vinc­ing action, deft edit­ing and grace­ful move­ment of Come Drink With Me. Only a few moments of speeded-up action and some super­nat­ural “spe­cial effects,” unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of Hu’s devel­oped style,—e.g., ani­mated rays of chi ema­nat­ing from the palms of human hands—hinder full appre­ci­a­tion today of this land­mark film. It (Come Drink With Me) fea­tures the finest screen per­for­mance of Cheng (or Zheng) Pei Pei in, per­haps, the defin­i­tive pro­to­typ­i­cal role for war­rior women in action. She is the cen­tral fig­ure in a num­ber of bril­liantly chore­o­graphed fight scenes which include long track­ing shots and cutting-on-movement, both of which enhance the film’s dynamism and beauty. The set­ting of an inn for one of the key sequences, where Golden Swallow (Cheng) catches coins on a hair­pin (through the magic of mon­tage), the intro­duc­tion of a mis­taken iden­tity plot device—she is taken to be a man—and the deci­sion to cast the events dur­ing the Ming Dynasty, in the 14^th cen­tury, are all trade marks of Hu’s mature work. (empha­sis own) These tech­niques resulted in the start of audi­ences and direc­tors appre­ci­at­ing the value of the fight scene and over time, audi­ences wanted more real­is­tic action aes­thet­ics. Chang Cheh is remem­bered as the key con­trib­u­tor in this area. Cheh was per­haps the most suc­cess­ful wuxia direc­tor with his film The One Armed Swordsman (1967) being the first sword­splay film to make HK$1 mil­lion at the box office (Green, 2005, para. 4), con­tin­u­ing Action Film suc­cess. To add to the energy, Cheh char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally used ‘chaotic and full of quick cuts, hand­icams and fast zooms’ (Green, 2005, para. 9). Cheh also exploited tech­nol­ogy and var­i­ous other tech­niques to add to the ‘real­ism’. Firstly Cheh’s films used fake blood to make the fights appear more vis­ceral instead of Hu’s blood­less com­bat. Also weapon props were repli­cas made from metal, height­en­ing the real­ism but most impor­tantly, the 1950s kung-fu films had sim­ply allowed actors to impro­vise their fights, but now the martial-arts instruc­tor became an impor­tant crew mem­ber (Bordwell, 2000, p. 206). Cheh used trained mar­tial artists to chore­o­graph the fights where Shaw’s pro­mo­tion stated that “the fake, fan­tas­ti­cal and the­atri­cal fight­ing and so-called spe­cial effects of the past will be replaced by real­is­tic action and fight­ing that imme­di­ately decides life or death” (Ho, 2003) Because of this, audi­ences desired more than what they were then given. The action film style began to move away from dance-like chore­og­ra­phy that fol­lowed the tra­di­tion of Peking Opera, to live­lier and bloody aes­thet­ics, reflec­tive of the mood of the audi­ence. It was at this time that Bruce Lee appeared. Lee was born in San Francisco and was a Kung Fu instruc­tor and cha-cha cham­pion. (Green, 2005) It was an impres­sive feat that The One Armed Swordman broke box office records gross­ing over HK$1 mil­lion; how­ever Lee’s debut film The Big Boss made a whop­ping HK$3.2 mil­lion. For Lee, the win­ning for­mula was ground­break­ing in the his­tory of Hong Kong action films. Choosing to work with a start-up stu­dio, Lee enjoyed cre­ative con­trol and was able to form his own style, with his mar­tial art train­ing employed as his edge. Wuxia films had gone out of fash­ion with a fur­ther desire for real­ism and greater energy — and Kung Fu was the answer. Lee was an instant hit, single-handedly pio­neer­ing a new Kung Fu trend fea­tur­ing “real” fight­ers who use their own strength and tech­niques to fight, dis­miss­ing the gad­gets and wire fly­ing that was pop­u­lar with the wuxia genre (Green, 2005). As Green (2005) puts it, it was at this time that a sud­den hunger for Hong Kong action films awoke in the West. Lee’s first three movies broke local box office records and proved to be highly suc­cess­ful glob­ally. Enter the Dragon, the first-ever US-Hong Kong co-production, grossed about US$90 mil­lion world­wide, mak­ing it the most inter­na­tion­ally suc­cess­ful film from that region up to then. Lee was suc­ceeded in the 1980s by Jackie Chan—who pop­u­larised the use of com­edy, dan­ger­ous stunts, and mod­ern urban set­tings in action films—and Jet Li, whose authen­tic wushu skills appealed to both east­ern and west­ern audi­ences. The inno­v­a­tive work of direc­tors and pro­duc­ers like Tsui Hark and John Woo intro­duced fur­ther vari­ety (for exam­ple, gun­play, tri­ads and the super­nat­ural). This was to be the peak of Hong Kong Action Film. Moving for­ward, to inject ever greater adren­a­line rush in the films and to lure audi­ences from increas­ing Hollywood com­pe­ti­tion, the late 1990s saw exten­sive use of visual effects (or com­puter gen­er­ated dig­i­tal effects, as dis­tinct from spe­cial effects). This trend was also brought about by the dimin­ish­ing num­ber of real Kung Fu experts. They were, any­way, not received well by the audi­ence who now wanted good-looking, hand­some young men to front the films. To address this, new Kung Fu movies fea­tured baby­faced Cantopop music idols such as Ekin Cheng and Nicholas Tse. Results var­ied: Andrew Lau’s wuxia comic-book adap­ta­tion The Storm Riders (1998) earned a record-breaking gross and ush­ered in an era of computer-generated imagery, pre­vi­ously lit­tle used in Hong Kong film. Tsui Hark’s lav­ish CGI-enhanced efforts Time and Tide (2000) and The Legend of Zu (2001), how­ever, were sur­pris­ingly unsuc­cess­ful. Comedy megas­tar and direc­tor Stephen Chow used dig­i­tal effects to push his typ­i­cal affec­tion­ate par­ody of mar­tial arts con­ven­tions to car­toon­ish lev­els in Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004), each of which also set a new box office record (Hong Kong action cin­ema, 2007) There was also a move towards more ‘high-tech, more American-styled action pic­tures’ such as Downtown Torpedoes (1997), Gen-X Cops and Purple Storm (both 1999) (Hong Kong action cin­ema, 2007). Meanwhile, dur­ing this time, in the West, the ‘alter­na­tive’ cul­ture of the Hong Kong action film became very pop­u­lar, and grad­u­ally the films moved from Chinatown video shops and the­atres to become more avail­able in the main­stream video mar­ket and even occa­sion­ally in main­stream the­atres. On the schol­arly front, Hong Kong action films began to be accepted as part of the aca­d­e­mic canon of world cin­ema, taken and stud­ied more seri­ously. While the west­ern accep­tance of Hong Kong action film as a prod­uct has grown con­sid­er­ably, there was also an intro­duc­tion of Hong Kong action film as a style that paved the way for many of its artis­tic ele­ments that crept its way into main­stream Hollywood films. Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) drew inspi­ra­tion from City on Fire and his two-part Kill Bill (2003–04) was in large part a mar­tial arts homage, bor­row­ing Yuen Woo-Ping as fight chore­o­g­ra­pher and actor. Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado (1995) and its 2003 sequel Once Upon a Time in Mexico aped Woo’s visual man­ner­isms. The Wachowski broth­ers’ The Matrix tril­ogy (1999–2003) of science-fiction-action block­busters bor­rowed from Woo and wire fu movies and also employed Yuen behind the scenes (Hong Kong action cin­ema, 2007). The twin devel­op­ments in Hong Kong and Hollywood meant that Hong Kong action films, once enjoyed as a unique alter­na­tive to pop­u­lar Hollywood action movies, has now lost its dis­tinc­tive­ness – instead, it now directly com­petes with them. This is, how­ever, no level play­ing field for the Hong Kong indus­try. The exper­tises (in film mak­ing and indus­try), scales, deep pock­ets and mus­cle of the Hollywood stu­dios meant that Hong Kong film­mak­ers have their odds stacked against them. This is com­pounded by the trend of heavy Visual Effect use. Visual effects are new in the the mar­ket and are very costly. Visual Effects bud­gets of US$50m per film are com­mon­place in Hollywood (exam­ple: Spiderman 2, Star Wars), while an entire film’s bud­get, includ­ing mar­ket­ing costs, in Hong Kong will not even reach half that. Asiaweek (2002) on The Touch: ‘Producer Thomas Chung explains, basi­cally, that … the CGI sucks, and they want it to look at least halfway decent before get­ting laughed out of the­atres in a US release. He didn’t need Miramax to tell him the CGI was pathetic, it is bla­tantly obvi­ous to every­one.’ As a result, this visual effect inten­sive cli­mate badly hurt the Hong Kong film indus­try and it has fallen into a severe slump since the late-1990s. What replaced it were the ever pop­u­lar Hollywood imports that flooded the mar­ket, giv­ing audi­ences mil­lion dol­lar treats that only served to cul­ti­vate their taste buds. To solve the prob­lem, some have turned to inter­na­tional fund­ing. ‘There are new invest­ments in local films from US com­pa­nies,’ added the Chairman of the MPIA, Mr Chucindo Hung. ‘Their coöper­a­tion with Hong Kong film direc­tors and famous movie-stars is a grow­ing trend… Audiences in the US and Europe are becom­ing more inter­ested in Hong Kong’s bid-budget movies. Big-budget action movies or cos­tume movies with state-of-the-art spe­cial effects will be very pop­u­lar in inter­na­tional mar­kets.’ (Hong Kong International Film and TV Market 2000, 2000) With the estab­lish­ment of the Asian cen­ter for Columbia Tristar in Hong Kong early this year, some peo­ple obvi­ously think that multi­na­tional fund­ing for Chinese-language movies is the way of the future (Yu, 2000, para. 7). But with the cur­rent trend of action films and Hollywood’s resources, Hollywood does not need to tap on the tra­di­tional skills of the Hong Kong action film­mak­ers, which have now become irrel­e­vant with the over­tak­ing by spe­cial effects. International co-production is not a solu­tion to this cri­sis. However, there has been a glim­mer of hope. Even with­out inter­na­tional co-production, a hand­ful of films have suc­ceeded in recent years, going against the trend of the slump. The com­mon fac­tor amongst these suc­cesses can be attrib­uted to excel­lent story devel­op­ment, aware­ness and appeal of audi­ence — not just the typ­i­cal blind imi­ta­tions of suc­cesses Hong Kong cin­ema is asso­ci­ated with. Infernal Affairs is a fine exam­ple: fol­low­ing its debut suc­cess it had 2 sequels that were equally acclaimed. However, its suc­cess for­mula was quickly noticed and the film ush­ered in a whole wave of copied crime-heist type films. However, none was as ground­break­ing. Market forces will ensure more Infernal Affairs, as the indus­try evolves in response to com­pe­ti­tion. As the stan­dards are raised and pro­duc­tiv­ity increased, Hong Kong film­mak­ers will find their place in the world again.

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Written by Shaun Yong