The Matrix martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping on a lifetime in film, Jet Li’s power and drunken kung fu
- Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy, Drunken Master and The Tai Chi Master are just some of the films the famed martial arts choreographer directed
- Honoured this week at the New York Asian Film Festival 2019, Yuen reflects on Jet Li’s rise, his kick that put two stuntmen in hospital, and Bruce Lee’s legacy
It was fitting that legendary martial arts choreographer and film director Yuen Woo-ping received the lifetime achievement award at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival, because as the kung fu master put it, “I’ve spent my entire life in film”.
Yuen is known for his innovative approach to martial arts scenes, noting that even before he started directing films, “I was celebrated to the point that my peers called me the No 1 action choreographer under heaven”.
Yuen’s father Simon Yuen Siu-tien, a Peking opera performer who worked in films after moving to Hong Kong from China in the 1940s, started his career, Yuen told the Post.
“My father brought me into the film industry, and I started off as a stuntman, running, fighting and acting,” Yuen says. “Then I became an action choreographer. In fact, I became quite famous as an action choreographer. I noticed that other action choreographers of my generation, my peers, started directing, so I said, ‘Well, I can do directing, too.’ So I did it.”
He wanted to do something special for his first film as director, he remembers. “Hung Ga, a very traditional martial arts form, was popular, so I made a decision to avoid that in Snake in Eagle’s Shadow. [I made sure that] when the master [in the film] was teaching, it was all different shapes, it was like a whole new different style of kung fu.
“Drunken Master is even more innovative, as no one had thought of doing kung fu while drunk. So many new moves had to be created – the moves I made for the Eight Immortals, for instance, took me a month and a half to develop.
“Other people’s kung fu films were just violence and power, so I wanted to be different. I thought, ‘What can I do?’ First of all, I thought of making [Drunken Master into] a kung fu comedy. Then I worked out all those new movements. That was a way of establishing my brand.”
Yuen says he “didn’t expect at all” for the two films to be so popular. “I thought that people would like them, but I didn’t predict the extreme enthusiasm that the audience [would] have for them,” he says.
Working with Jet Li in films like Tai Chi Master (1994) was all about capturing the star’s power, Yuen says.
“I always knew what Li could do well, and I captured that,” he says, jokingly, adding that Li’s Cantonese has improved a lot since they first met. “He was a five-time champion of the National Wushu Awards [in China], so you can imagine how capable he is.
“For example, I was filming a shot that was just one kick to the stuntman,” Yuen continues. “Li is so strong that the first time he kicked, the number one stuntman had to go straight to hospital. Second try – and the number two stuntman had to go straight to the hospital, too. We decided that we had to change the protective gear after that, and that worked.”
Yuen says he still admires Lee’s legendary competition style. “Lee was a really good fighter. He was not afraid to put himself out there, and he was strong enough to challenge other fighters. He was an amazing figure, and there is a philosophy behind what he does,” Yuen says.
“He lost a lot of fights early on in his career, but he learned from his mistakes and his failures. Even today I am impressed by him.”
Editor’s note: this story has been corrected as follows: An earlier version misidentified Yuen Woo-ping’s father as Yuen Su-ting. His father was Simon Yuen Siu-tien. The story also said, incorrectly, that Yuen Woo-ping worked with Jet Li Lianjie on Lethal Weapon 4.
