Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book
Page 26
This style of “empty movement” kungfoo fighting was not just embraced by Hollywood, but bear-hugged with ferocity. It eliminates substance, drama, variability, and inner energy (chi) from the battles, leaving only pretty, nonsensical, repetitive, monotonal, and ultimately, boring combat behind. The Matrix sequels quickly added insult to injury by having Wo-ping do soulless variations on Jackie Chan classics (like the Project A fight on the nightclub staircases). But tinseltown wasn’t done with the Yuen family yet. Drew Barrymore’s film version of the Charlie’s Angels (2000) TV series brought in Yuen Cheung-yan to design, supervise, and train the actors for the film’s lighter-than-air “wire-fu” fights.
Not surprisingly, American filmmakers are far more comfortable with this special effect-assisted fantasy superheroic type of flying, floating, and spinning than gravity-based, chi-powered kung fu. They also far prefer their heroes to be emotionless or angry rather than communicate the kind of serenity great kung fu requires. American movie producers seem intent on almost always showcasing the “biggest s.o.b. in the valley,” leading to endless, increasingly implausible scenes of blank-faced sorts walking away from elaborate explosions without flinching, blinking, tensing, pausing, or reacting with any sort of logical realism. To U.S. producers, this denotes “cool” … rather than ridiculous, pitiful, stupidity.
At least Jason Statham earned his “cool.” Although an Englishman toiling in Luc Besson’s French-financed thrillers, his history of kickboxing, Olympic diving, and street wisdom gave his screen work credibility. Already appreciated for his performances in director Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000), it was his going mano a mano against Jet Li in The One (2001) that led to his being cast as the title character in The Transporter (2002) — co-directed and choreographed by Corey Yuen Kwai. Its success led to several sequels, as well as a rematch with Jet in War (2007) and a memorable team-up with Jet in The Expendables (2010).
“I’m impressed with the likes of Jackie Chan, and Bruce Lee was a big hero of mine for many years,” Staham said. “[But] martial arts isn’t just about physicality. As Jet told me, it’s the spirit and the mind that breeds an inner confidence and knowledge of life, people, and the world around you … if you keep practicing this kind of thing all your life.”
With Statham’s words of wisdom fading away, American audiences were left with occasional sparks supplied by Jackie, Jet, Corey, Yuen, Zhang Yimou, and Stephen Chow (see next chapter), but mostly fizzles supplied by the same people, as well as many blissfully ignorant American screenwriters, producers, and directors. But the man who was ready, willing, and able to change it all was Quentin Tarantino. Having already wrestled film noir (1992’s Reservoir Dogs, 1994’s Pulp Fiction) and blaxploitation (1997’s Jackie Brown) to the ground, he set his sights on kung fu with Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003) and Volume 2 (2004). U.S. kung fu film fans already had ample reason to be grateful to him. Without his support, it is possible that such classics as Iron Monkey (1993), Shaolin Soccer (2001), Hero (2002), and other kung fu greats in Miramax’s DVD home video library would never have seen the light of American day.
As is his film-loving wont, he hired the best people: Yuen Wo-ping as choreographer, with David Carradine, Gordon Liu Chia-hui, Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba, and Michael Jai White as action actors. He also borrowed from the most memorable sources: the general plot from Lady Snowblood (a 1973 chanbara/samurai film), characters from Kage No Gunden (a Japanese ninja TV series), They Call Her One Eye (a 1973 Swedish exploitation thriller), and Executioners from Shaolin, costumes from Game of Death, and fight scenes from Sex and Fury (a 1973 Japanese erotic action film), the Japanese Baby Cart/Shogun Assassin series, and many others.
Although starting with the Shaw Brothers Studio logo, the Kill Bill films are best remembered for their samurai sword fights, which is a slight shame, since they are actually Chinese sword fights using Japanese swords (akin to watching a team play football with a baseball, or baseball with a football). Although Tarantino had one of the film world’s great samurai action choreographers on set (Chiba), it’s possible that the globe-hopping production couldn’t afford him and Wo-ping, so the latter did all the action. Therefore, even though samurai sword fighting is as intrinsically different from Chinese sword fighting as fencing is from broadsword battles, the Kill Bill characters always squander the single most important move in Japanese samurai sword fights — the draw.
Ironically, the far more violent Japanese version of Volume 1 is better than the American edit, but both showcase the director’s now established approach. He was no longer really interested in making believable “real world” movies. Now all his films existed in Tarantino-land, where the cinema references are rife, the environment is artificial, the plot is contrived, the heroine’s bare feet are always nearby, and the dialogue is quippy, self-consciously mannered, and purposely-paced. Sadly, a kung fu fight scene between Carradine and Jai White never made it into the finished film (in fact, Jai White’s entire character was left on the cutting room floor), but it didn’t keep the Kill Bills from being superficially entertaining throughout. Unfortunately, despite the presence of Wo-ping and the acknowledgements to Chang Cheh, Lo Lieh, and the Liu Chia family, Tarantino apparently didn’t learn much about kung fu from them.
Although the films did respectably at the box office, they didn’t open a floodgate of kung fu fun, despite several studios buying, and shelving, as many Hong Kong action films as they could. Tarantino, like most of the L.A. action filmmakers, moved on to comic books (where, coincidentally, Western superheroes get their powers from without — the sun, radioactive spiders, etc. — while Eastern superheroes get their powers from within). The kung fu in Tim Burton’s original Batman (1989) — attributed to stunt coordinator Eddie Stacey — is actually quite good. He only moves as much as he has to (which may be attributable to the stiff Batman costume that didn’t allow him to even turn his head), and his basic, open-handed stance is right on. The fighting (credited to stunt coordinator Simon Crane) is also accurate and excellent in GoldenEye (1995) — Pierce Brosnan’s first, and best, 007 film.
But, for the most part, action films were frozen in ice during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. Even subsequent Batman and James Bond films lost their kung fu, content to wallow in round house punches and flawed kicks. Clawing for their section of the spotlight was M.M.A., aka Mixed Martial Arts, exemplified by the UFC, aka the Ultimate Fighting Championship — a “biggest s.o.b. in the octagon” competition that mixes boxing with equal amounts of World Wrestling Entertainment-style promotion and barroom brawl ambiance. For audiences who loved anger and muscles, it was a godsend, and, in marketing parlance, “so popular with the kids” that it infected Jackie, Jet, and Wo-ping’s Forbidden Kingdom.
Miraculously, however, another film was in production parallel to Forbidden Kingdom — one that critics, journalists, audiences, and even its own studio was seemingly overlooking and/or underestimating. It started almost a decade before with an idea from a studio executive, but his idea didn’t start developing until the early 2000s. By then I had been doing my San Diego Comic Con Superhero Kung Fu Extravaganza for nearly a decade. Apparently someone from the studio had seen one or more of these events, because, out of the blue, I was asked to visit the studio to give a private seminar on what kung fu was, and, perhaps more importantly, what kung fu wasn’t.
That was my first experience with DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda (2008). Once there I asked the producer and crew if they had already done any research. They said, “Oh, sure, we watched Seven Samurai.” My reply: “With all due respect, you’re making a football film and you’re watching baseball movies.” What was scheduled to be a ninety-minute chat became a nearly four-hour seminar. I was pleased with the tutorial and impressed by the production drawings I saw, but the next time I got word of it, everything, except the concept, had changed. The people I had talked to (except a single important one) were
no longer with the project.
But that’s where the character designer, storyboard artist, head of story department, layout artist, layout supervisor, puppeteer, visual effects designer, sfx supervisor, art director, writer, producer, and director John Stevenson comes in. He had started his career on The Muppet Show (1976-1981), and considered Jim Henson his mentor and, in kung fu terms, his sifu. “It was early 2004 when I was asked to take a look,” he told me. “I had been at DreamWorks for a while and had asked (boss) Jeffrey Katzenberg for my chance to direct a feature film. I had been aware of the project, as it had been in development at the studio for some time, but it had only been officially in pre-production for a few months. At that point, it was a very different movie. Po (the Panda) was actually the least interesting character in that version of the story, which was much more about the efforts of The Furious Five to create the illusion that he actually had martial arts skills.”
But the Panda’s karma was strong. Of all the hopeful directors in all the world, Katzenberg had somehow anointed a knowledgeable, insightful kung fu movie fan. A real kung fu movie fan. “I’ve loved kung fu movies since childhood,” he explained. “Growing up in a little rural village in Sussex, England, nothing could have been more alien. I was attracted to the philosophy and spiritual side of the stories as much as the fighting. I remember Tsui Hark’s The Butterfly Murders as being the martial arts film that blew my mind. I was utterly confused and completely captivated at the same time. I had to know more. The next wuxia film I saw was a life-changing experience. It was a revival of King Hu’s 1971 masterpiece A Touch of Zen — still my very favorite kung fu movie ever. It convinced me even back then that kung fu films could be art.”
But exactly how would this first-time movie director bring art to a lowly “chop-socky” film at a studio whose previous computer-animated features were seemingly designed only to satirize Disney? “I did not want to make a parody, but a real kung fu movie that was funny,” Stevenson said. “I did not want any pop culture references or popular music cues to break the spell of that world. And no fart jokes! I wanted to try and make the most beautifully designed movie DreamWorks had ever made, and to honor the art and culture of China. And I wanted to have real kung fu sequences, as well thought out and executed as any live action movie.”
A seemingly impossible task in an industry that appeared to be Bruce and MMA-obsessed, but Stevenson had three things going for him. First, Bill Damaschke, president of creative for DreamWorks Animation, supported his vision, then, second, and third, Mark Osborne and Melissa Cobb joined him as, respectively, co-director and producer. “Bill was a great friend and supporter of the film all the way through production,” Stevenson said. “The burden of proof was on us early to prove that all the things we wanted to try that were a bit different from the (then-circa 2004) current crop of films in production were actually going to work. But once we had shown them enough material, they totally got what we were going for and helped us get there. Honestly, it was a very happy and supportive atmosphere all the way through production.”
The Panda’s karma continued to hold throughout the hundreds of crew members. “I picked a brilliant designer called Nicolas Marlett who had worked at DreamWorks for many years, but had never been given the chance to design a whole movie. I was also blessed in that I had a superb visual development team headed by production designer Raymond Zibach and art director Tang Kheng Heng. Once we had our cast of characters from Nico, Ramone and Tang designed a mythic Chinese world to compliment them. We were insistent that we were culturally specific; this is China (albeit a fanciful version of a China that never existed), not a generic ‘Asia world’ that would blend elements from Japan and Korea. Although the mythic world of Kung Fu Panda is set in no particular time, we went to great pains to make sure that all the details in terms of architecture, landscape, clothing, and artifacts are authentically Chinese, even if sometimes we blended elements from different dynasties together.
“We spent the first eighteen months concentrating on the story with Jen Yuh Nelson, our head of story, and our story team. Mark and I were in every meeting and made all the final decisions together about the creative direction of the movie while Melissa ran the production in a marvelously efficient way. Mark’s background is in stop motion animation (he directed the wonderful Academy Award-nominated short film More), so it was natural for him to work closely with the animators. Since my background is art-based and I had guided the visual development of the film, I was in charge of ensuring that the world and visual style we had created in the art department was translated accurately to the screen.”
That was all well and good, but there was still one big elephant in the room (along with all the bears, monkeys, tigers, snakes, and cranes) … and it comprised two words out of their three-word film title. If there’s one thing this chapter shows, it’s that America, when left to its own devices, doesn’t know its kung fu from its karate. “Our goal with our kung fu scenes was to create something that had not been seen before,” Stevenson said, “legitimate martial arts action done in animation, covering the whole spectrum of styles from humorous to very dark — with every fight scene having its own distinct visual design and color theory.
“The key people responsible for designing our kung fu sequences were Jen Yuh Nelson, Simon Wells and Rodolphe Guenoden. Jen was our head of story, but also a brilliant storyboard artist in her own right with a particular flair for action sequences. Simon Wells is a gifted writer/director and a superb draughtsman. For years Simon and Jen, independently, were the ‘go-to’ people for action scenes (I think Simon has storyboarded and designed almost all the climactic scenes in every DreamWorks movie). We made them into a unit charged with the task of designing and storyboarding each of our main kung fu sequences.
“Rodolphe Guenoden is a master storyboard artist and animator who has also trained in martial arts for many years. Rodolphe was a key part of our story team and developed many of the ideas that found their way into our kung fu scenes. Rodolphe would take Jen and Simon’s sequences, and design specific kung fu moves that adapted the real animal fighting style to the animal’s anatomy. One of the conceits of the film was that our kung fu masters were the living embodiment of the many animal-inspired styles of fighting. But working out how a snake or mantis does kung fu in those styles was no easy thing. Because Rodolphe had an intimate first-hand knowledge of martial arts, and was a superb draughtsman, he was able to break down the complex actions into easy to understand drawings, which could be shared with our brilliant animation team led by master animator Dan Wagner.”
Rodolphe was also the one remaining crew member who had attended my seminar years before. Thankfully for the film, I was preaching to the choir. But the rest also wanted to walk the walk. “We also had the whole crew (including Mark, Melissa and I) take an intensive (and painful) kung fu class with martial arts consultant Eric Chen, just so that all of us would experience first-hand some of what Po undergoes in the film,” Stevenson clarified. “Most of us were horribly out of shape, but we told Eric not to take it easy on us — and he took our directive to heart. We were all black and blue for weeks. We also had regular lunchtime kung fu classes for the animators led by Rodolphe. We found that only by physically doing kung fu and understanding the stresses and strains first hand could our animators animate kung fu convincingly. They had to feel it in their bodies first before translating it in their imaginations. We had an amazing unit in Jen, Simon and Rudolphe, who collectively were our action director.”
That took care of the external, martial applications of kung fu, but there was still the pesky question of the internal, healing reality of real kung fu. Any other American production would (and many did) ignore that, or make excuses for omitting it. This was, after all, a “kid’s film.” Even DreamWorks’ own marketing department and the Mattel Toy Company, who produced the film’s tie-in merchandise, seemed committed to that juvenile, unbalanced, approach. But not John, Mark, Melissa, and company.
That power is your own chi energy, waiting for each individual to use it properly. “There is no magic, just you. In our minds, Po was the only one who could understand this message; it is clear that neither Shifu nor Tai Lung (or probably any other conventional warrior) can grasp the idea. Po is the only one who gets it, which is why he is The Dragon Warrior; something Oogway realized when Po crashed in front of him at the tournament ‘by accident.’”
That only left the ultimate kung fu film conundrum: if kung fu is self-improvement where the highest form is not to fight, how do you create a kick-ass climax that satisfies both the blood-thirsty and the benevolent? For Kung Fu Panda, that came in one defining battle. “The origins of the showdown came from our experiments with how we could have Po legitimately defeat Tai Lung without turning him into Bruce Lee. Po had to beat Tai Lung by being the best version of himself. I had taken taichi and aikido in my youth, so was familiar with the ideas of ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ forms of martial arts. Obviously Po had to epitomize ‘soft’ while Tai Lung would be the living embodiment of ‘hard.’ Soft style martial arts seek to re-direct the force of an attacker back against them, and upset their balance. In aikido, there are no offensive moves, you cannot instigate an attack, only defend yourself from one.