How fight culture became fighting game history, part 17

The fighting game genre that audiences know today would not have existed without Jimmy Wang Yu. He was not a programmer, director, designer, producer or animator for any game studio, yet his fingerprints were all over the genre. Jimmy was Hong Kong cinema's biggest star through the 1960's and the single most influential star to fighting games. He was a good fighter but not exceptional, he actually studied karate instead of kung-fu. His directors and choreographers would frame his battles in ways which made him look great. His greatest strength was his understanding as to what audiences wanted in the movies. He took a radical approach to the martial arts genre.

Jimmy gained prominence as a leading man in 1967 when he appeared in the One Armed Swordsman. His portrayal of a melancholy martial artist named Fang Gang won over critics. In the film he lost his arm in a cruel accident. He disregarded the advances of his master's daughter and when she struck at him out of jealousy she ended up cutting off his arm. He threw himself into a river thinking he was done for but was rescued by the daughter of a farmer living downstream. To help him cope with his loss his rescuer gave Fang a manual of fighting techniques which emphasized one armed stances. He used this book to become a master of the short sword style. Fang eventually fell in love with the girl that saved his life. He soon learned of a roving gang that was using some sort of secret weapon that could trap swords. They used this to defeat the best swordsmen and rob villages. He used his newfound skills to defeat the gang and save his former master.

The film and character proved so popular that it would be revisited shortly after. The 1969 film Return of the One Armed Swordsman was an even bigger hit. The budget seemed much greater as there were more location shots than in the first film. There were also more villains to be defeated, better costumes and special effects.

The popularity of the series caused Jimmy to do something unheard of. He broke his contract with the Shaw Bros. studio, then the biggest if not best known martial arts production company in Hong Kong. Wang Yu decided to produce his own films thinking that he could do better. He found that the one armed hero was his niche and created a new character by the name of Tien Lung. This gamble earned him a blacklisting from Hong Kong cinema, not to mention a lawsuit from the Shaw Bros. Jimmy had to set up shop in Taiwan where he would film the majority of his projects. He wrote, directed and starred in the 1971 film the One Armed Boxer.

This new film rewrote the book on martial arts cinema. Up until that point most of the martial arts and martial artists were Chinese. Every film seemed to be a variation of the previous Chinese legend. Wang Yu introduced a group of foreign fighting masters that were supposedly from all over Asia. The authenticity of their fighting styles and cultural representations were questionable if not outright racist. The diversity of looks, costumes and styles were unforgettable. In the film the group of fighters was hired by a drug lord to beat up the members of a local martial arts school. The drug lord wanted revenge because his own men, the hook gang, were beaten up by the martial artists.

Wang Yu made sure to give each of the foreign characters fantastic abilities to go along with their techniques. Most of the assassins fighting Tien Lung and his allies were superhumanly strong and agile. They were able to leap great distances and move with blurring speed. The leader of these men was a karate fighter named Chi Park Dao Long, played by Lung Fei. The character was even more sure of his abilities than the legendary Pai Mei. His variation of karate was used to kill opponents. It was far removed from the "empty hand" defensive techniques taught in the Japanese schools. To make the character appear more powerful than the rest he had all the trappings of a cartoon villain. He wore black with a red belt, had long unruly hair, sported fangs, had claw-like nails and black palms. He appeared more like a demon than a martial artist. This character and the other villains in the Wang Yu films undoubtedly helped inspire the characters in Street Fighter and Street Fighter II.

Early on in the movie Lung Fei chopped off Tien's arm with his bare hands, showing the power that he had at his disposal. This made the one armed origin story much better, especially when compared to how Jimmy lost his arm in the swordsman movie. Tien spent some time in despair thinking that his life as a fighter was over. Xiao Yu the daughter of a nearby farmer told Tien that her father had a powerful medicine that could make anybody stronger. Even a one-armed man could be more powerful than a regular fighter. He agreed and went through the brutal treatment which involved him burning his arm in a fire pit to kill off the nerve endings. Then the arm was put in a medicinal broth where it became super strong. He began to work on his arm as if he were forging a sword. He used brutal training regiments which included dropping large stones on his hands to toughen it up. His goal was to develop an arm strong enough to kill with a single punch. He figured he might not get a chance for a second strike.

The film was a hit and it financed Wang Yu's next projects. A few years later he revisited the character or Tien Lung. He wrote and directed a sequel in 1976 called the Master of the Flying Guillotine. The story picked up shortly after the events of the first movie. In it an evil monk named Fung Sheng Wu Chi learned that two of his disciples Chow Lung and Chow Fu, the students of Tibet Zen Boxing, were killed by Tien. The blind monk went on a hunt for the boxer. He went to the last known location of the character, a school he had founded a few months after the events of the first film. As if this set up was not enough for a martial arts film Wang Yu had the story take place during a fighting tournament. Dozens of fighters from around Asia were invited to take part in the tournament. The diverse styles, characterizations and costumes would end up coloring the world of fighting games for years to come.

The movie was by no means cheap to produce. The cost for all the actors, sets and special effects had gone up as the scope of the project was much greater than the previous film. There was a reason that Jimmy had to ramp up the spectacle. After the One Armed Boxer was released the movie industry had another revolution. Bruce Lee had returned to Hong Kong to begin acting in martial arts pictures. Within a short while Lee would move from actor to choreographer and finally writer / producer. Lee had stolen Wang Yu's thunder and was releasing films that were more successful with audiences. In order to win viewers back Jimmy had to pull out all the stops and return to his popular one-armed hero. He included elements of the supernatural, violence and gore on top of some memorable character designs.

The film did very well at the box office in China and even abroad. Like other martial arts films it began to get screen time in western theaters, making an impression on young designers, directors and developers outside of Asia. If the One Armed Boxer planted the seeds to Street Fighter then the Master of the Flying Guillotine was the forest that shaped the entire fighting game industry. Capcom, SNK and Midway (RIP) owed a tremendous debt to the films and Wang Yu's progressive ideas.
Wang Yu managed to produce a lot of films through the '70s and '80s but his time at the top was short-lived thanks to the success of the Lee films. This did not stop Jimmy from influencing the genre in other ways. In the late 70's he helped out a young martial artist that was having a dispute with a producer in Hong Kong. The rumors were that the producer had triad (mafia) ties and the artist was in some trouble. Wang Yu helped the artist out and in return he appeared in a few of his films. The artist was Jackie Chan and his films would be ranked among the most popular ever produced. In the 1983 film Fantasy Mission Force Wang Yu played a villain against the new Hong Kong darling.

The true life of Wang Yu had more plot turns than any of his films. The person had a long history getting into trouble. He had numerous drunken brawls, public affairs and was even charged and acquitted of murder. Those that hired him to work on projects did so at the risk of their own reputation. His former steady stream of work turned into a light trickle from the 80's onward.
The actor had a sort of comeback in the 2011 martial arts film Wu Xia. The film was a subtle deconstruction of the martial arts fable. Directed and produced by Peter Chan and starring Donnie Yen, it played very much like an homage to the classic 60's and 70's films. Not in the sense that anything is campy or melodramatic, but instead that audiences were allowed to become familiar with the characters before the action happened. The story and characters were revealed at a slower, more natural pace. It was not for fans used to seeing fight after fight in action movies however the action scenes were worth the wait.

Tang Long (Donnie Yen) was an assassin that had been hiding out in a remote village for over a decade. He assumed the name Liu Jinxi, got married and was raising two sons. He killed two wandering bandits that had tried to rob the paper mill in which he worked. News of the act caught the attention of the local authorities. His true identity as a master assassin was uncovered by a detective named Xu Baiju (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro) in some decidedly Hong Kong cinema-meets-CSI reconstructions of the crime scenes. Xu was not only a detective but also a master of acupuncture which he used to cure himself of an earlier poisoning attempt.

Jimmy Wang Yu was introduced halfway into the film as the leader of the 72 Demons, a group of assassins and the father of Tang Long. The actor brought the character to life, crafting a villain that was evil to the core and feared by his own men as much as the law. Upon learning that his son was hiding out and had even fathered a grandchild the evil master rode out in search of him.
What happened next was a series of dramatic battles between Tang Long and the 13th Madam (his stepmother) played by veteran martial arts actress Kara Hui and his father. The fight scenes were very well done, directed by Donnie himself. Tang Long tried to fake his own death to the clan by slowing his heartbeat and breath to a crawl with the aid of Xu Baiju's acupuncture needles. If he did not try to convince the 72 Demons that he was dead they would have hunted him to the ends of the Earth. They would have killed his family and villagers to get to him. When he finally was discovered by the clan he did something even more dramatic than play dead, SPOILER ALERT: he cut off his own arm and turned it over to the clan in an attempt to get out. If the Japanese Yakuza thought that cutting off a finger was an act of loyalty then clearly they had not heard of Tang Long! This did not appease the clan or his father.

The last part of the film was very well done. The master was waiting patiently for his son to return to his family, sitting at a table holding his grandchildren hostage. The scene between Donnie and Jimmy was very powerful. Wang Yu was at his best when he was playing up the intimidating father figure. The last fight in the film pitted the one-armed swordsman against Wang Yu. This bit of fanservice was a sort of passing of the torch. It could not have happened better between any other actors.

Jimmy Wang Yu was a successful actor but never seemed to hit the stratosphere like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. Donnie Yen could be argued as having the same luck. Yen had an incredible volume of work but was not a globally recognized name like his contemporary Jet Li. Neither of the actors were destined to become big stars in the west or be featured in Hollywood-backed films. Wu Xia was conceived by the director and Yen as an homage to the One Armed swordsman and other films of that era, not as a remake. The film could not have told a better story. Donnie Yen created another memorable hero that was every bit as good as his other characters but the highlight of the film was actually seeing Jimmy in action once more. Wang Yu spent decades fighting controversy, all while falling in and out of the spotlight. Little consideration was given to him as a martial artist, let alone as a writer or director. His contributions to the industry were rarely acknowledged because of his personal history. He was all but forgotten by modern action cinema. It took 43 years after creating the archetypical hero for him to be remembered once more. Jimmy Wang Yu was redeemed when he played an irredeemable villain. Fans of the genre owe it to themselves to pick up this film and see the greatness of the forgotten legend. The next blog will highlight the further evolution of HK cinema and how the hero changed to fit with the times. Instead of the reluctant master as with Wang and his contemporaries this new archetype was somebody that already had amazing fighting abilities but wanted to remain anonymous. Due to circumstances beyond their control they found themselves defending the weak and often fighting for their lives. The next blog will look at the life and influence of "the Dragon". As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

How fight culture became fighting game history, part 15

Amazingly powerful attacks and defenses had been written about for eons and visualized in manhua stories for most of the 20th century. These were not the standard punches and kicks of a fighter but instead the strikes that could knock down trees and split boulders in half. There were people that could chop through stones and bricks and even people that could kick down small trees. These people inspired the stories of people that could do much more. However there was a "missing link" of sorts. Between the legend and the comic book there was another media format that had influenced the visual style of the fighting masters and their powers. Martial arts cinema was every bit as important to the development of Street Fighter as any manga or animé title. In fact it was more important to the franchise because designers could see exotic martial arts and characters in a moving medium. Great fighting plots, character designs and action sequences were the staple of action films. Nowhere else was this better presented than in Hong Kong (HK) cinema.

Whether a martial arts character was supposed to be serious or funny, whether in film, comic, game or television, the pull of Hong Kong cinema was inescapable. Martial artists and the various forms of fighting as presented in any media were almost all universally based on a character that had appeared in a classic martial arts film.

Pai Mei was one such archetype. He was created in the 1977 film Executioners from Shaolin. This character sported a head of long white hair and long white eyebrows. His uniform was pristine and he was very arrogant in his abilities. The character seemed impervious to harm and was impossible to defeat in hand-to-hand combat. Pai Mei was a caricature of kung-fu masters from ancient China. His appearance was rooted in Chinese Opera and an imaginative film wardrobe department. He looked fantastic because it was more appealing on the screen. The earliest photos of kung-fu masters looked nothing at all like Pai Mei. The men appeared very ordinary. They may have been able to shatter bones with a single punch but were so unassuming that we would have never guessed. Nobody in HK cinema ever looked this bland. The bright, ornate costumes featured in the films from the late '60s and early '70s were directly responsible for the designs used in videogames. Pai Mei was copied time and time again not only in China but in Japan and the US as well. Everything from the look to the mannerisms of the character was so familiar to moviegoers that he could be used in a homage or parody depending on the project. Very few non-corporate or non-cartoon characters could claim to have the same global recognition as a kung-fu archetype. Pai Mei was just one of many film characters that influenced the Street Fighter cast.

The life of Mas Oyama may have influenced the narrative of Street Fighter however the supporting characters and universe were inspired more by action films. The 1975 film the Master of the Flying Guillotine was undoubtedly one of the most important films referenced by the designers at Capcom in the 1980's. Both the Guillotine and its predecessor the One Armed Boxer had great action sequences and a wonderfully diverse cast of characters, including masters of kung-fu, muay thai, karate, judo and other forms.

The Master of the Flying Guillotine was notable because it pulled together the martial artists in a tournament setting. When the burly Mongolian wrestler fought the petite Chinese fighter it predated the Zangief versus Chun-Li matchup by more than 15 years. The arrogant muay thai fighter and stretchy limbed yoga master were paralleled by Adon and Dhalsim many years later as well. The use of an international tournament to determine the best fighter was basis for Street Fighter II and the original Mortal Kombat. In SF II this tournament was actually a front for a bigger plot in which the main character, Ryu was being trapped by a more powerful character. In the Master of the Flying Guillotine the tournament happened to take place at the same time an assassin was after the One Armed Boxer. Vega (M. Bison in the US) was pulling the strings and using his three bosses to ensure victory in SF II. In the film the blind monk was aided by a couple of tournament participants in tracking down the One Armed Boxer. The tournament format was not a new idea, but it was a good plot device bringing the various characters and styles together in one place. What cinema did was put a human face on these archetypes and infused them with personality.

Martial arts cinema in China differed from action films in other countries. The wuxia stories applied to men and women equally. Females in Hong Kong cinema often held their own against the men. This distinction should be noted since women were usually the prize for the action stars in the west. There were female fighters celebrated in myth and legend in China almost as much as men. The daughter of the tournament sponsor in the Guillotine movie had entered the contest herself. The historical figure Hua Mulan was said to have exceptional skill in battle and served in the army for 12 years on behalf of her father in ancient times. In fact Wing Chun, the style of boxing taught by Yip Man, was created by a woman. The godmother of martial arts cinema was Angela Mao. She was the first international movie female fighting star. There had been other women with great fighting scenes in earlier movies however Angela was the star of Lady Whirlwind. The 1973 film actually predated the Master of the Flying Guillotine! It pitted the petite master of kung-fu against masters of different styles including judo and karate. She demonstrated that a perfect fighting form could conquer the strength and size of any man. Angela was the mold from which tremendous characters like Chun-Li were cast.

The HK movie industry could be kind to stars like Angela Mao but turn its back on others like Jimmy Wang Yu. The characters they created would live on however and be embraced the world over. Hong Kong cinema was also known for influencing fight choreography in Eastern and Western films. Martial arts cinema could actually be traced back to The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, an incredibly long series from 1928. The actors were trained martial artists, mostly from the Chinese Opera. They choreographed basic fight scenes and even sword battles. The film made use of early special effects techniques including some wire work. It was interesting to see wuxia type epics during this era because the films were challenged by the government at the time for promoting the ideas of superstition and anarchy.

Where the format really took off was post-WWII. The Chinese were eager to rebuild and find a distraction from the horrors of the war. They, like many other countries, turned to film. The True Story of Wong Fei Hung was a series of movies beginning in 1949. It chronicled the life and adventures of Wong Fei Hung, the doctor and martial arts master made famous in more contemporary films including Once Upon a Time in China and the Iron Monkey. The doctor was celebrated as a folk hero with amazing martial prowess. Reaching a mythical level of fame allowed various comics, movies, television shows and even videogames to be made about him.

Not all of the early films were grounded in Chinese Opera or real-life heroes. Many of the most memorable films introduced fantastic characters with special powers to audiences. One film that exploited special effects and martial arts archetypes was the Furious Buddha's Palm. This film predated the Master of the Flying Guillotine by a decade. The 1965 film presented the types of stories and characters that audiences had been reading about in manhua titles. The masters could harness and expel chi as energy. It protected them from attack and allowed them to do amazing things like running on air and stopping weapons with their bare hands.

The film was remade in 1982 and the title shortened to just Buddha's Palm. The special effects were improved considerably. The films were important for the development of manhua, manga and fighting games. They were some of the first wuxia titles that presented the fabled super techniques of the qigong masters in a visual format. This included characters that were able to heal as well as harm people using advanced chi manipulation. Energy waves, beams of light and other forces could be seen emanating from the hands of the martial arts masters. These things were seen in film years before Street Fighter was even conceived. The influences of these characters and their amazing powers not only shaped Japanese designers but western filmmakers as well. Big Trouble in Little China, a John Carpenter film from 1986, put wuxia legends in a modern context. The combination of elements was fantastic and completely over-the-top; martial arts masters were deflecting bullets with their kung-fu, ancient monsters lived under the streets of Chinatown and secretive gangs ran the streets with guns and magic. Audiences accepted that these legendary fighters still existed in some hidden part of the world and mobsters used them to terrorize the public.

It was not hard to imagine that the juxtaposition of the classic and the modern themes would also work in a videogame. After all, what would happen if a Japanese man wearing a white gi and black belt walked into a pub looking to fight the strongest mohawk-haired punk? People would probably laugh and then call the police. A scenario like this was a good set-up for a martial arts film but was actually the backdrop between Ryu and Birdie in the original Street Fighter. By coincidence(?) the original Street Fighter was released in 1987, a year after Big Trouble in Little China. Midway would concede that Mortal Kombat was inspired by this movie and various other martial arts films as well.
Buddha's Palm visualized the fa jin energy attacks and moreover featured elements that predated Hokuto no Ken. The master of the Dark Moon Clan shot blue energy blasts in the shape of two outstretched hands, for all intents and purposes this was the original hadoken. The villain, Heavenly Foot, shot yellow beams of energy in the shape of daggers. Even in the original black and white film there were energy attacks of different shapes. Some were lightning bolts, others were waves and still others were shaped like chains. Each of these energy blasts did a different thing and had to be defeated with different techniques or by combining forces.

Street Fighter was built around different fighting styles and archetypes. It was not expected that every fighter was a master of chi manipulation. Some that could not throw fireballs still had ranged attacks. In Street Fighter Zero the mercenary Rolento threw knives and the convict Cody threw rocks. This was acceptable given the type of fighters that they were. The diversity of moves allowed players to exploit weaknesses in every style. Even special moves had their own limitations. A fireball attack could be jumped over and a rising uppercut could be ducked under. This left the player with all sorts of strategies for offensive as well as defensive playing. No style was absolutely perfect and no form was completely impenetrable. This understanding was the driving force behind the balance that SF would become famous for.

Buddha's Palm was not only an influential film, it was also a defining manhua series. It was created by Tony Wong in 1982, the same year as the movie remake. However Mr. Wong's version had nothing to do with the movie. Instead it was inspired by The Story of the Sword and the Sabre aka Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre. The manhua series featured Lung Kim-fei, an orphan who was rescued by a Shaolin Monk after a violent clash between the Mongolians and Chinese. The young hero became a master of the Buddha's Palm, the most powerful technique in all kung-fu. It was a form of fighting that was not only physically impressive but could be used to fight off demons and destroy evil.

This series was a template for many fantastic manhua and manga spectacles. It featured characters of all types including giants and man-beasts fighting against humans. These characters could perform chi blasts and do the other fantastic things featured in HK cinema. The Buddha's Palm was not a singular technique but a series of techniques that had different properties. Lung could shoot energy from his hands, it was powerful enough to split rocks and cut down trees. He could also use his power to fly, destroy opponents with a yell and even cause earthquakes. This collection of powers was very similar to the things that Western comic book super heroes had. Like those heroes Lung was in a constant battle against evil and always defending the powerless.

Not every fighter had fantastic powers. In order to ground fighters into reality many manga characters had to put a unique spin on the existing fighting arts. See how creators sometimes made things up for the sake of telling a story in the next blog. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!