- Current
Nikkei View
- About
- Roots
- Nikkei
Links
- IMDiversity Job Bank
- More
about Gil:
Gil's Home Page
Resume
Fave Web Sites
1957 TimeLine
"Toy Book" Excerpt
Writing Samples
SUPPORT THE NIKKEI VIEW!
Amazon.com now offers a way for you to sponsor the Nikkei View column! Just click below for more information!
Search Amazon.com using keywords such as "Japan," "Japanese
American," "Tokyo," and others for books or videos.
I'm now an Amazon.com
Affiliate. I urge everyone to support their local independent businesses
first, but if you search Amazon.com from here, I earn a percentage of
your purchases. It's one way you can help underwrite the Nikkei View.
Thanks!
JOIN THE DISCUSSION!
"Ties Talk" is an e-mail discussion group through which people of all ages and backgrounds from all over the U.S. and the world can comment on the Japanese American and Asian Pacific American experience. You can get a sample of the types of discussion that go on in the Ties-Talk Archives.
To
subscribe to "Ties Talk" and join our community, send an e-mail
to majordomo@lists.apanet.org
with the following line in your message:
subscribe ties-talk
Once
you send in your subscription request, an automated e-mail message should
be returned from "majordomo" to your e-mail address asking you
to confirm your membership to the list. Once you send in the confirmation,
you'll be added to the list. The "Ties Talk" e-mail discussion
list is operated by the Japanese American
Network, or JA*Net.
Hope to see you in e-mails!
Connect to the Denver area's Asian community with AsiaXpress!
Radio the way it should be: DavidsWebcast
ARCHIVES
LATEST
COLUMN
2001 COLUMNS *
2000 COLUMNS
1999 COLUMNS * 1998 COLUMNS
April 16, 2000
UNMASKING
THE MATRIX:
TAKING OFF WITH JET LI
Stars such as Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung have raised Chinese martial arts to a renewed level of mainstream popularity with American audiences. Chan's big-budget U.S. movies are big hits, thanks to his incredible athleticism and self-deprecating humor, and Hung's meaty television portrayal of a Chinese cop on loan to the LAPD, "Martial Law," has survived several seasons (again, thanks to his sense of humor -- Hung is an old pal of Jackie Chan's).
| "The Matrix" is obviously strongly influenced by the Chinese film -- its filmmakers must have watched "Black Mask" over and over for inspiration and ideas. |
Now, a relative newcomer to the field has gotten me really excited about the genre. Jet Li brings an intensity to the screen that hasn't been seen since Bruce Lee's early '70s Hong Kong films, and the intensity simply heats up his every scene, both as an actor and a martial arts performer. Plus, he's smart enough to sprinkle some of Chan's style of aw-shucks humor to his films.
But the movie that really got me started on this new martial arts craze is "The Matrix," the 1999 science fiction hit which oddly enough doesn't include any martial arts stars.
It stars Keanu Reeves as a computer hacker who's drawn into a plot that turns reality inside-out, when he discovers that life as he knows it is just an elaborate computer program. The film features some spectacular martial arts fighting scenes which are enhanced by cutting-edge special effects. In several scenes, Reeves and the other characters are able to perform super-human moves such as leaping off walls, or flipping at unbelievable heights.
Although the actors spent time learning martial arts, these acrobatic stunts were created primarily with the help of wires and computer animation, which were used to superimpose the figures over the backgrounds. The effect is entertaining and for me, thrilling.
Some of the same techniques were used in Jet Li's new movie, "Romeo Must Die." The film is an obvious variation of Shakespeare's durable "Romeo and Juliet" story, with the two families portrayed by Chinese and African American gangs. Like "The Matrix," the fight scenes are enhanced with wires helping the stars make amazing moves such as changing directions in mid-air, or bouncing off walls.
Li has been acting in martial arts films since 1979, but he was only introduced to U.S. audiences in 1998 as the villain in the big-budget "Lethal Weapon 4."
Fans of the genre have known him for years, though, through the dubbed English releases of his Chinese films. He's a world champion of the type of fighting called Wushu, which combines many disciplines into a wicked and stylish presentation. He won the title when he was 11 years old, and traveled to the U.S. to meet president Richard Nixon during the era when relations between communist China and U.S. were first being opened. Wushu is China's national sport, and Li's a superstar in China on a par with Jackie Chan.
Although I enjoyed Li's performance in "Romeo Must Die," overall, the movie hasn't stuck with me. Some of the fight scenes were too obvious in their use of wires keeping the actors aloft, and the plot is a bit thin. Some great Wushu displays saved it for me, but I decided that it was a weaker use of the technique pioneered in "The Matrix."
Only the effects weren't pioneered in "The Matrix" (as the Hollywood hype would have had us believe). I recently saw a 1996 Li film made in Hong Kong, "Black Mask" (Chinese title: "Hap Kap") and was surprised to learn that the enhanced martial arts techniques that made "The Matrix" so cool were in full use by Jet Li and Chinese filmmakers four years ago.
In "Black Mask," Li plays a member of a supercop corps who battles his former fellow cops when they go bad. Sure enough, the fantastic acrobatics and other special effects (one weapon shoots an energy field that looks similar to how bullets are portrayed in "The Matrix") are key to the movie's success. Li and the other characters even dress in all-black outfits with long trenchcoats like the characters in "The Matrix." "The Matrix" is obviously strongly influenced by the Chinese film -- its filmmakers must have watched "Black Mask" over and over for inspiration and ideas.
If Li's outfit predates Keanu Reeves by several years, it also evokes a look from the past: The original martial arts star, Bruce Lee's American debut in the mid-1960s as the television character Kato for "The Green Hornet." Like Kato, Jet Li wears a black hat and the mask of the movie's title is a direct homage to Lee. "Black Mask" even pokes fun at the costume, with one character teasing Li for the "retro" Kato look.
It's a tribute to Bruce Lee's undying legacy (even though he died in 1973 of a brain edema just as his U.S. career was about to take off) that four decades after he helped introduce Chinese martial arts to U.S. audiences, the entire genre still acknowledges his supremacy.
This sense of history adds to my appreciation of martial arts as more than just an American fad, but one of the most consistent and still-growing cultural exports from Asia to the West.
You can find the films I've mentioned at your local video retail or rental store, or online at Amazon.com.