One of the most memorable scenes in Ip Man, the 2008 biopic about the master of Wing Chun kung fu, is when he takes on more than a dozen Japanese soldiers in a bout and wins. So it's hardly surprising that the incident is mentioned at the start of the sequel, when a petulant disciple of Ip asks him if he really beat up 10 people by himself.
'It's better not to fight,' says Ip, clearly uncomfortable. But what would he do, his pupil continues, if those 10 people are armed with weapons? 'Flee,' Ip replies, to the surprise of his fiery apprentice who, minutes later, is seen beating up an adversary in an alley.
This exchange is one of many in Ip Man 2 where the master pleads the case for amity over aggression.
It's a theme from the first Ip Man film two years ago, which was a hit. The film, shot mostly on the mainland but with a cast and crew largely from Hong Kong, took in HK$25.6 million in Hong Kong and 100 million yuan (HK$114 million) on the mainland, placing director Wilson Yip Wai-shun in a small clique of filmmakers who have clocked up nine-digit box-office returns there.
Yip says he wanted Ip - who counted a teenage Bruce Lee as a student - to serve as an example of 'mutual respect, patience and humility'. He wanted martial arts to be seen as a quest for self-control rather than conquest.
Crucially, Ip (played by Donnie Yen Ji-dan) had to be human. 'He's not a higher being separated from the masses who has no relationship with society - he's someone living in a world like ours, who's struggling with his own challenges and striving to survive,' he says. It sounds like a reference to Ip Man 2's opening scene, in which Ip hides from his rent-chasing landlord and sheepishly asks for tuition fees from his students.
Audiences have flocked to films with false or flawed heroes in recent years. Iron Man 2 also centres on a morally blemished protagonist in the shape of industrialist-cum-superhero Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jnr.
