Media A2 Critical Research - World Cinema

Media A2 Critical Research - World Cinema

My essay will focus on how east-Asian martial art films have influenced Hollywood cinema and the conclusion that east-Asian martial art films, especially from Hong Kong and Cantonese cinema since the 70s have had a great impact on Hollywood cinema today. I believe that martial arts in Chinese films are so much different than in Hollywood films. In Chinese martial art films, culture and traditions is also a main ingredient as well as the Kung Fu which makes them unique and more interesting and exciting to watch whereas Hollywood films are using martial arts in everyday action films like The Matrix. According to a legend, Kung Fu was bought to China by an Indian Buddhist who settled in the Tang dynasty over 1000 years ago and set up a temple and then taught martial arts to his disciples. Although the origins of Kung Fu came from a soldier around 100 years ago who had learned it from Shaolin monks when he was formed to hide in Cantonese opera troupe. One theorist that I researched, Law Kar (Hong Kong film archive programmer) said that “They can’t use actual fighting on stage, so they transform it into some kind of dance-like action” and “In early Cantonese cinema, in the 1960s and even in the 1970s, the scenes of fighting in films are in fact opera-stage fighting. They’re not real Kung Fu”. World War II was when far Eastern cinema first became popular in the US when many American GIs were stationed in the Pacific, although when the films really made hits was because of the legendary Bruce Lee. Now, the influence of the region is so mainstream that actors like Jackie Chan are a genuine Hollywood star, starring in comedies like Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon. John Woo (Hong Kong film director) was lured by Hollywood into shooting films like Mission Impossible 2 and Paycheck because he was well known for the brilliant films in China like The Killer and Hard Boiled. While conducting my focus group, I found that from the audiences perspective that they thought that Jet Li...

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