50 years after his physical disappearance, Independent Now “Bruce Lee’s Long Journey to Immortality” Has Been Remastered With His Iconic Tapes.
Bruce Lee wanted to be the biggest box office star in the world. He told his friend Sterling Silliphant, declaring that one day he would be a star like Steve McQueen, who happened to be his martial arts student. Oscar-winning screenwriter for shows like Silliphant, route 66replied in the negative: “You are Chinese in a world of white men. There is no way”.
Those words confronted him in Hollywood, where he didn’t think an Asian actor would be in the lead. But upon his return to Hong Kong, Lee revolutionized martial arts cinema with a series of films with Golden Harvest Studios. Involved Big Boss, fist of Fury, return of the dragon And corpse Partywhich are now showing in English cinemas and have been released with the tapes released in a box set blu ray 4k,
a star in the west
As described in Matthew Polley’s biography, For lifeLee was so famous that 15,000 people gathered for his funeral when he died, but he was still “an obscure TV actor” in the United States. This necessitated the posthumous release of his latest film, dragon operationThe first co-production between Hollywood and Hong Kong, which was released six days after his death, was to make him a star in the West.
However, his fame was predetermined. His father was an opera singer and actor, the younger Bruce was born in San Francisco in 1940, while his father was on tour, already a child actor: he participated in about 20 films. Polly says that Bruce was Macaulay Culkin of Hong Kong, But the teenage Bruce was a street fighter who was deported back to the United States, where he went to college to study philosophy. “He went from being rich to upper class in third world Hong Kong to a first world poor migrant,” Poli says.
To support himself, he taught kung fu. A student of the legendary Ip Man, Lee was “one of the first Chinese martial artists to speak English,” says Polly. “He came in with a fresh, modern and open attitude.” Instead of sticking to a tradition that had been passed down by kung fu masters for a thousand years, he sought to create the martial art Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist).
proud of my heritage
Martial arts were the trend in Hollywood, so Lee attracted a mix of students, from big names to black belt fighters. In 1966, Bruce played the role of Cato in the television series the green Hornet, He had other characters in film and television, but they were few. Already married with two children (Brandon and Shannon), he needed money and returned to Hong Kong to Big Boss, which opened in October 1971 and broke records. The second part, fist of FuryReleased in 1972, it again bombed at the box office. Lee’s success came from a trend of nationalism among Hong Kongers. In Big Boss He plays a sugar factory worker who travels to Thailand and deals with gangsters. In fist of Fury fight against invaders dojo rival Japanese.
Deng says, “There’s an element to him that presents a strong, dominant, masculine Chinese hero who takes pride in his heritage.”
His films caught the eye for revolutionary kung fu. Prior to this, films in the tradition of choreographed action routines – produced by the Shaw Brothers – had dominated Hong Kong cinema. In contrast, Lee’s fights were real, though with believable motion and effects in “heightened realism”, states Polley. He also points to Lee’s psychoactive strategy: Her cat screams.
for the next movie return of the dragon, Lee served as writer, director, producer and lead roles. He plays Tang Lung, who travels to Rome to help protect a Chinese restaurant from a local crime boss. He is seen fighting with his real life friend and double karate champion Chuck Norris. Polley said of the fight between Lee and Norris, “I don’t think it’s ever over.”
return of the lost dragon Big Boss And fist of Fury box office. Jeet Kune Do Darshan will continue in Lee’s unfinished masterpiece, corpse Party, in which Lee would climb a five-story pagoda and defeat a different enemy on each level, each with a different fighting style. The final opponent was basketball player and NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of Lee’s (very) high-profile students.
Production was halted when Warner Bros. offered Lee the chance to star in Hollywood’s first kung fu film: dragon operation, Therefore, corpse Party It was never finished. Over 100 minutes of footage was shot with approximately 40 usable footage. Much of it was lost to the Golden Harvest archives, and some was rediscovered years later.
Lee’s great success in Hong Kong was rapid. He had a complicated relationship with the tabloids. But what made Lee a megastar? Wealth? fame? Proud? Documentary film a warrior’s journey suggest that the cinema was a platform to share his martial arts philosophy.
Around the same time, Lee lost the role in the American television series Kung Fu, The officials thought his accent was too strong. The role went to white actor David Carradine.
Bruce Lee died on 20 July 1973 at the age of 32. She died in her lover’s bed. The coroner’s verdict was cerebral edema, but the cause was never determined. Polly gives concrete theories about heat stroke. “But to this day, there is no consensus on how he died,” he acknowledged.
The more scandalous elements of Lee’s death – the mistress, the deception, the traces of cannabis found in his system – fueled a sensationalist frenzy. And there were wilder theories such as that she was poisoned, killed by the Triad, became impoverished, or was cursed.
This was followed by a series of posthumous films bruceploit, starring Lee’s lookalikes, including Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee and Dragon Lee, who imitated his fighting. (Jeng co-produced an upcoming documentary on the incident, enter the clones of bruce, In 1978, Raymond Chow’s last film was released bruceploit, corpse Party was reworked, using 11 minutes of Lee’s original footage and filling in the rest. game of death ii 1981 using fragments of images dragon operation,
One fascinating thing about Bruce Lee is that several famous anecdotes: The One Inch Punch; two-finger push-ups; fighting with other martial artists; Being challenged by experts, or having sweat glands removed from your armpits. but the incompleteness of corpse Party Best summary of Lee’s icon status. “His life was incomplete,” says Polly. “We had to imagine what it would be like.”
inside your tape box blue light 4K will be available from July 17th.
(Translated by Juan Jose Olivares)
