Once Upon a Time in China

Excellent director.

By this time, that guy had a bunch of movies under his name, Once Upon a Time in China...

And he went on to direct Detective D, which was a huge hit.

So it's interesting that he found a lot of talent for this movie and he found an excellent director.

the blame falls on Van Damme himself in terms of meddling.

But I mean, this seems like a classic example of Hollywood, kind of Hollywood money, bringing in a foreign director with a distinct flair to them.

Once Upon a Time in China is great.

It's a classic.

Wong's weapons of choice were the Southern Tiger Fork, a trident-like polearm, and the wooden long staff.

One of the possibly apocryphal stories about him is that alone and armed with only a wooden staff, he defeated a thirty-man gang on the docks of Canton, a tale that made its way into the fictionalized portrayal of his life in the film Once Upon a Time in China.

Another bit of folklore about him is that Wong was taught drunken boxing by So Chan, another folk hero and another one of the Ten Tigers of Canton, who did in fact teach in Guangzhou, so it's possible.

It's worth noting here that the Qing dynasty, which was nominally in power for most of Wong's life, was Manchurian, northerners, and were, to many of the southern Chinese, foreign invaders.

At the same time, the emergence of youth culture and youth social movements led to the creation of an altogether different Wong Fei-hung, a young hothead and spoiled brat whose dad doesn't think he deserves to learn kung fu, who eventually hones his body and spirit after apprenticing with a tough teacher.

Or the alternatingly tough and ludicrous version in 1978's Drunken Master, who learns to be a badass from decrepit alcoholic [laughs] Beggar So, quote, "macking on women, picking fights, and falling face-first in poop." In the 1980s, the looming return of Hong Kong to China and the 1989 pro-democracy protests and Tiananmen Square Massacre triggered a kind of identity crisis for Hong Kongers.

Were they Chinese? Were they Westerners? How could they navigate a changing world while holding onto their past? Enter Tsui Hark with a new series of films about Wong, the Once Upon a Time in China series, which we've mentioned before on the podcast and in the blog as influences on G Gundam and Imagawa.

Tony Williams, in his analysis of the series, points out that because of censorship, Hong Kong films generally avoided representations of political issues, especially ones as explosive as reunification.

Jet Li, shout out.

Check out Once Upon a Time in China.

Do it.

And Kiss the Dragon.

John Woo's Once a Thief, which had shot in Europe, which was a, you know, kind of a more lighthearted, heroic bloodshed film with Zhao Yunfat.

And Jet Li had made Once Upon a Time in China, which was the birth of, I guess we're going to do a future podcast talking about the new wave of Kung Fu cinema.

But it kind of overlapped.

It kind of overlapped a bit because the same year that God of Gamblers, the fight back to school was topping the box office.

Once Upon a Time in China came in and it was perceived to be a hit, but it was not the biggest film.

The biggest film was a Stephen Chow film.

But again, if you look at the disparity between what these films cost and what they made, Stephen Chow was by a significant margin the big money earner.

But I mean, if he did a legitimate sequel, if he did a new God of Gamblers movie, Saint of Gamblers, starring him, that would be the number one film of the year, definitely.

It's fine.

[laughs] Sorry, I was gonna say, Once Upon a Time in China II.

Yes.

Not the Donnie fight, the f-

I forgot, like, I haven't w- I have not watched that movie.

I have watched that movie probably 100 times.

Lethal Weapon 4 or Once Upon a Time in China II?

Once Upon a Time in China II.

So I'm like, is it going to be done? Is it not going to be done? I'm like rubbing my hands together.

Like, am I going to get once upon a time in China part five? Hopefully there's English subtitles off of it.

Oh, now that's cool.

Once upon a time in China, I could tell you where I saw all those movies.

I've told the story of where I saw it, but okay.

Where'd you see the first

We saw The Musketeer, Peter Himes' Musketeer.

And my friend went, after the movie ended, I saw a movie that has that ladder fight scene that's better than that version.