Comedy And Karate Movies Can Be The Perfect Mix
May 26th, 2011 | Author: admin
Comedy is not the first thing you think of when someone mentions karate movies, but the two have actually worked hand-in-hand for many years. Most people thinking of the intense fight scenes, fancy moves, characters flying through the air and high kicks, though for the past thirty years comedy has been as much a feature as anything.
It may seem a strange blend, but in truth, action and comedy have always worked well together, and its been a tried and tested formula for almost a century. Many of the old silent comedies were in fact borderline action films, as the comedy was extremely physical. And you can see their influence in many of the karate movies today, especially those starring Jackie Chan.
Jackie Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1954 and started training at the China Opera School when he was just 6. He began to break into movies in the 1970′s playing small parts, and even had moments with Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury and Enter The Dragon. After Lee died, many people tried to fill his shoes, but rather than copy him, Jackie Chan began to develop his own style. By 1978 he had appeared in a number of movies but it was that year’s Drunken Master that started his rise to stardom.
Jackie loved the comedy of those silent greats like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and he started to combine martial arts with this comedic-style. When he directed The Young Master in 1980, it started a trend in Hong Kong as the two genres blended seamlessly.
Over the next few years he would appear in many hit Asian films, as well as having two less than successful attempts at breaking into the American market with The Big Brawl and a small part in Cannonball Run. But his comedic karate movies remained extremely popular in Asia, and in many other parts of the world.
Jackie was not alone in his crusade to combine comedy and karate movies, and his main partner-in-crime was actor and director Sammo Hung, who he had known since they had studied together at the China Opera School. Sammo was very often the director or fight choreographer on Jackie’s movies, and is a recognizable face in many of the films too. He had a brief stint in Hollywood too, starring in the TV show, Martial Law.
Rumble in the Bronx in 1995 finally fared well with American audiences and soon Jackie Chan was starring in a number of big Hollywood comedy action movies like the Rush Hour series, Shanghai Noon and its sequel Shanghai Knights, The Tuxedo and Around the World in 80 Days.
Another Hong Kong actor and director who uses comedy brilliant in karate movies is Stephen Chow, who counts Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung as two of his biggest influences. After breaking into TV and films as an actor in the Eighties, he started to direct more and soon his films began to get popular. When he made Shaolin Soccer, the rest of the world started to take notice, leading to his next film getting a huge budget. That film was Kung Fu Hustle, which would go on to become Hong Kong’s most successful movie at the box office ever. Chow even got his hero Sammo Hung to help direct a few scenes in it. Kung Fu Hustle was also released in more cinemas in America than other foreign-language film in history.
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