- For other uses see Martial arts (disambiguation)
Martial arts film is a film genre. A sub-genre of the action film, martial arts films are characterized by extensive fighting scenes featuring specific martial arts, often following the training and progress of the protagonist in training a specific style or school of martial arts.
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Kung fu films
A notable sub-genre of martial arts films are kung fu films, i.e. martial arts films featuring Chinese martial arts. This genre has mainly been produced in China, peaking in the 1970s, and has been dominated by Hong Kong action cinema and its kung fu and wuxia films. Famous actors include Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Collin Chou.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the most visible presence of martial arts films was the hundreds of English dubbed kung fu and ninja films produced by the Shaw Brothers, Godfrey Ho, Joseph Lai, and other Hong Kong producers. These films were widely broadcast on North American television on weekend timeslots that were often colloquially known as Kung Fu Theater, Black Belt Theater, or variations thereof.
Boxing films
Films surrounding the martial art of boxing begin as early as the 1930s with The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) and Kid Galahad (1937). The Rocky series of five films (1976 to 2006) enjoyed mainstream success.
While the 1989 Kickboxer starring Jean-Claude Van Damme is nominally about Muay Thai but features a crossover of karate with other styles, movies surrounding the sport of kickboxing appear in the 1990s, with American Kickboxer (1991), Kickboxing Kid (1992), Kickboxing Academy (1997) followed in the 2000s by the films by Tony Jaa. Ferocious Female Kickboxing (1981) and Heavyweight Championship Kickboxing (1990) are not martial arts films in the usual sense but coverage of actual sports competitions.
Ninja films
The mid 1980s saw a proliferation of extremely low budget ninja action films, mostly produced by Joseph Lai and directed by Godfrey Ho. Godfrey Ho was known for his technique of taking footage from little known or unreleased Hong Kong Films (most of them crime or sex thrillers) and splicing them with newly shot ninja footage. This often resulted in films that appeared to have two parallel storylines or sets of characters. Additional footage would be shot so that characters from both movies could appear to interact, usually through phone conversations or editing scenes so that they appear to be in the same room despite not appearing onscreen together. According to Ho, many films were made with the budget of one normal film using this technique. These ninja films regularly employed caucasian actors, most notably Richard Harrison. These actors were overdubbed by different actors despite having spoken english during the filming. The reason for this is that all the ninja footage was filmed without sound. These ninja films were also noted for the colorful, flashy ninja outfits that were regularly worn. Harrison frequently appeared as a character named Gordon whose role and backstory varied from film to film.
Martial arts in films in general
Beginning in the 1980s, there are many action movies starring Western martial artists such as Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Mark Dacascos, Steven Seagal, and Wesley Snipes.
Action films that do include one or several scenes of hand-to-hand combat without focussing on the nature and background of the martial art are not usually included in the genre. Examples of this include Catwoman (2004), where lead actress Halle Berry was trained for the fight scenes by capoeira mestre Beto Simas, or The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), which includes a realistic fight scene for which Matt Damon was trained by Damon Caro, the scene itself being choreographed by Jeff Imada, both with a Filipino martial arts background.
war films by their nature often feature armed hand-to-hand combat, in the case of historical settings also historical martial arts. A notable example is the duel between Achilles and Hector in Troy (2004), presented as a fight scene including hoplite armour, round shield, spear and Bronze Age sword, choreographed by Richard Ryan.
A special category are fantasy or science fiction movies featuring fictional martial arts, such as The Matrix (1999), Equilibrium (2002), Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005), although classical Chinese kung fu films often present fictional extensions of Chinese martial arts in wuxia or gun fu style.
List of notable martial arts films
Notable martial arts films:
See also
References
External links
- Martial Arts subgenre at Rotten Tomatoes
- martial arts at imdb.com
- The 20 Greatest Fights Scenes Ever at Rotten Tomatoes
- The 50 Greatest Fight Scenes of Film (progressiveboink.com)
- The Five Best Fight Scenes Ever Filmed (esquire.com)
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