Who or what killed the genre?

[Fang Shih-yu]

Cloned butlers, all of whom like Dr. Who, killed the genre--right? Can you guess what they used to do the dirty deed?... Shapes! Next question: who or what killed the enjoyment of the genre? Answer: falkor!Good night, and God bless!

[The Dragon]

...

And secondly some of those are far more interesting than BL movies:bigsmile:

Triad Oath #... If I do harm to any of my Brothers, may I be stabbed with 10,000 KNIVES, have my eyeballs gouged out, fingernails, pulled from their tips...

[Fang Shih-yu]

Revive Chinese/Taiwan Opera to it's former glory,forget about political correctness and the damn political games themselves,get those touring Shaolin Monks in dramatised traditional martial art flicks " no cgi no wires " then old school mid 70s - late 80s kung fu will make a come back big time.The talent is still there and new breed can be found but the foundation for the physical and mental discipline has to be based on what has been mentioned above.

As to reviving "old school" martial arts movies: somehow, it could be done, but it would all depend on that first release which would be testing the waters, making way for other the films that would capitalize on the sucess of the initial effort. By this, of course, I don't mean its sampling to preview audiences in some "rough cut" form; we're talking the "final cut" that all potential moviegoers have the option to see...or reject. That first "comeback" NEEDS to turn a PROFIT; that's how it is with the movie biz, these days.... That first one better be a DOOZY, whether it has "shapes" or not! Good luck to whoever can pull it off!

[slinky]

Hmm, good question. Maybe Hollywood. I will ponder.

[Guest ekisha]

I would say time killed kung fu genre.

[Athena]

I would say time killed kung fu genre.

ekisha !

I know all to well what you mean...

BUT I like to ask everybody , now that the diagnoses is set ( more or less) ...

What, if any is the prescribed RX remedy ?

Can this condition be treated in any way ( to at least prolong life of the genre..) ?

Can the condition be CURED ??

Or is it ALREADY to late & time to call the MORGUE ? If so I know the genre will

not rest in PEACE ...

As in the mysterious death of Bruce Lee ...It will be " 未了事宜" ( "UNSETTLED MATTERS ") (Seen all the HK newspaper in the weeks following his death ?..)

Athena

[remo]

Beyond the obvious fact that tastes change, I think it's pretty simple -- the overall new wave of Hong Kong films in the late 70s/80s resonated with mainstream audiences in a way that classic martial arts films didn't. The write-up on Wikipedia is below (bolded for emphasis).

Jackie and Sammo may not technically have been part of that wave, but if they weren't they certainly rode it. If you were a mainstream moviegoer and the choices were actors going through stilted motions on a cheesy set with seams in the sky rehashing the same old plot, or loveable Jackie delivering a near-Hollywood experience with death-defying stunts in exotic locales, which would you choose? Are they going to identify more with a period actor sporting a topknot or Chow Yun-Fat from A Better Tomorrow, looking cool with his twin pistols, trench coat and RayBans? (especially when you consider the anxieties over the impending handover of Hong Kong to communist China)

As for how to fix it... if you mean going back to the way things were, that's about as likely as Westerns making a comeback in the States.

The Hong Kong New Wave was a blanket term applied to a number of young, groundbreaking Hong Kong filmmakers of the late 1970s and 1980s, many trained in overseas film programs and with experience in the territory's thriving television drama scene. Among the most notable members are Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, Yim Ho and Allen Fong.

The New Wave was a major factor in the creation of a cinema with a contemporary Hong Kong identity and in the Cantonese dialect of most residents - between World War II and the '70s, the industry had been led by transplanted mainland Chinese filmmakers who continued the traditions they brought with them, largely in Mandarin dialect films.

New Wavers were technically audacious compared with the mainstream Hong Kong cinema of the time. They furthered the use of location shooting and sync sound recording and explored a grittier, rougher look and feel. The vivid use, in Hong Kong film since then, of authentic locations in the bustling, cramped urban space is one of their legacies.

The New Wave filmmakers were particularly given to revisionist explorations of popular genres, like the thriller (Hui's 1979 The Secret, Tam's 1981 Love Massacre), martial arts (Tsui's 1979 The Butterfly Murders, Tam's 1980 The Sword) and crime (Alex Cheung's 1979 Cops and Robbers, Yim's 1980 The Happenings). The latter category was particularly friendly to their experiments with realism, and their tactic of wrapping social commentary in genre trappings.

But the New Wave also produced personal dramas about relationships, domesticity and family (Fong's 1981 Father and Son, Yim's 1984 Homecoming) and hard-hitting political comment - Hui's 1982 Boat People presented a brutal portrait of communist Vietnam, but was widely viewed as an allegory of Hong Kong's anxieties regarding communist China (Teo, 1997).

The New Wave helped carve out a small niche for art films in Hong Kong's populist cinema, although most were absorbed into the mainstream to one extent or another (Bordwell, 2000).

[Cognoscente]

On 4/18/2010 at 6:03 PM, The Dragon said:

No, falkor, I was saying Triad stories and Police dramas became the new focus, in the film industry... You know, the films with Michael Chan Wai Man, and Chow Yun Fat.

In that light, Jackie's Police Story cashed in on a trend while starting a new sub-genre.