How did a small city like Hong Kong come to dominate global martial arts filmmaking? No one can make such films as well as Hongkongers, for one, and its filmmakers have consistently shown hard work and imagination. We look at the key industry players – some of whom were also performers – who made Hong Kong films such a success at home and abroad. 1. Jackie Chan, the ambitious star Jackie Chan ’s reputation as a hard-nosed businessman and producer often surprises his international fans. Following Jimmy Wang Yu and Bruce Lee , the always ambitious Chan was one of the first martial arts performers to realise that directing his own films would bring him the creative freedom that he desired, and directing was a condition of signing his contract with Golden Harvest in 1980. How Sammo Hung mixed crude comedy and authentic martial arts Chan used his star power to bolster his role as a producer, even though he always worked within the confines of the Golden Harvest studio. He was allowed around a year to make his films, which was unprecedented in the city’s quick-fire moviemaking industry. Chan also understood that it was in his interests to focus on box-office success in Hong Kong first, then Asia second, before trying to sell his films further abroad. This approach paid off in the late 1990s, when he divided his time between making local hits and US films like Shanghai Noon , and became the international face of Hong Kong film. 2. Chang Cheh, the thinker A prolific director of wuxia and kung fu films, Chang Cheh was also highly influential behind the scenes at Shaw Brothers. Studio boss Run Run Shaw kept a tight hold on the company, but he understood the value of listening to his employees, and Chang became a trusted adviser. Although Chang didn’t make the decision that Shaw should focus on martial arts films in the 1960s, it was his idea to bring realistic fighting – and bloody violence – into the genre, and he also drove the focus on macho swordfighting stars rather than the women who dominated earlier wuxia films. Chang was also behind the idea to shoot the films without synchronised sound, and then dub the performer’s lines on later, a technique which allowed films featuring Cantonese-speaking stars to be hits in Mandarin-speaking countries abroad. Chang developed a constant stream of martial arts stars for Shaw, including Jimmy Wang Yu, David Chiang Da-wei , Ti Lung , and Alexander Fu Sheng . 3. Run Run Shaw, the businessman The martial arts films we know and love would not exist without legendary Shaw Brothers studio boss Run Run Shaw. Noting the success of the action-packed James Bond films on the international stage, Run Run decided to focus on martial arts action in the mid-1960s. The initiative was dubbed “Shaw’s Colour Wuxia Century” and its big selling point was colour films, something which allowed star Shaw director Chang Cheh to emphasise red blood on the screen. Run Run developed a studio system par excellence , building the vast studio complex Movietown, which featured standing sets of old China that were rotated through hundreds of martial arts films. Shaw regarded filmmaking as a form of manufacturing, but he still felt quality should be maintained in what was essentially a mass production process. 4. Wu Pang, the traditionalist A lesser-known figure today, Wu Pang directed over 80 films about the legendary fighter Wong Fei-hung from 1949 onwards. The Cantonese-language films promoted southern Chinese culture and southern-style kung fu, and set the template for the martial arts films that followed by emphasising Confucian values. Wu got the idea for the Wong Fei-hung films while reading a newspaper story about the hero on one of the Star Ferry boats that ply Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, and thought of an approach to rejuvenate Cantonese-language cinema, which was ailing at that time. “I thought … why not make a real kung fu movie with Cantonese-style fist fighting? No one had tried that before,” he said. The Wong Fei-hung movies went on to become the longest-running film series in the world. 5. Tsui Hark, the visionary Director/producer Tsui Hark was everywhere in the late 1980s and 1990s, almost single-handedly rejuvenating both the wuxia genre and the kung fu genre – not to mention ghost films – with the Once Upon a Time in China series, the Swordsman series, and A Chinese Ghost Story series. Tsui formed his own production company, Film Workshop, to give him a strong base to develop his unique auteur filmmaking style and modernise local films. He brought wushu , a flamboyant martial arts performance style in China, into Hong Kong martial arts with Jet Li Lianjie , and experimented with special effects with varying results. Tsui ruled the early 1990s, although his influence declined when that decade’s martial arts boom petered out. 6. Raymond Chow, the internationalist “I am not leaving Shaw Brothers,” powerful movie executive Raymond Chow told the press in 1970 – only to go ahead and leave the company to form rival studio Golden Harvest later that year. Chow discovered Angela Mao Ying and enticed Jimmy Wang Yu away from Shaw before working with Bruce Lee, whose success turned the Hong Kong company into an international player for two decades. 7. Jimmy Wang Yu, the wild card Jimmy Wang Yu is best known for his leading roles in classics like One-Armed Swordsman , but the rambunctious star – he genuinely liked to get into brawls – shook up the Hong Kong film industry in the early 1970s. It was almost unthinkable that a star would direct a film at Shaw Brothers back then, but Wang demanded that Run Run Shaw give him that chance. The resulting smash hit, Chinese Boxer , focused on kung fu rather than swordfighting and launched a decades-long wave of kung fu films. The fearless Wang also added colour to the local industry scene. In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here . Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook