Kung fu movies that suddenly go from BAD to GOOD (or vice versa)?

[SmokingFistOfDoom]

What's the biggest change you've seen in movie quality/ enjoyment?  Where suddenly the difference is like night and day?  It can either go from bad to good or from good to bad.

 

(Obviously in several movies the fights get progressively better, but there are some that have a sudden drastic change in fight quality or pacing or whatever)

 

Personally the movie I've seen with the most significant change in this respect is probably The Killer Wears White aka Shadow Ninja.  The first half is mostly slapstick comedy with mostly mediocre fights, and then all of the sudden the hero starts fighting and he's super good, the fights have great choreography, and you're like "where have you been for the first half??"

 

To a lesser extent, I remember the movie Blind Fist of Bruce, where for the first half Bruce Li is taught by two scam teachers and is horrible (and the movie is pretty slow and boring), but he finally gets a real teacher and then the fight scenes become a lot better after that, all the way until the end.

 

In the good to bad category, the first example that comes to mind is Fatal Contact, which had incredible fight scenes, with a stage acrobat being recruited for underground fighting.  And then you have the final 20 minutes or so, where (spoilers) he is in the hospital recovering from his fight, and his girlfriend feels guilty for having emotionally manipulated him into fighting for the big boss, takes a walk through the hospital, lays down on a ledge... and rolls off.  Turns out it was a window ledge and she committed suicide.  Yep.  The main character thinks his boss is responsible and goes on a rampage killing all his superiors (not as good as it sounds) including his boss, and before he can kill one last guy, he's shot to death by the police.  Cut to him and his girlfriend sitting on a hill under an impossibly starry night sky.  Oh great, I guess they're in heaven now.  It was such a random and drastic change that I was positive it was all in his head at first.  Then the end credits roll.  I remember bursting out laughing at how ridiculous it was.  Worst ending ever.

 

For another huge letdown...I remember Ong Bak 3 started pretty well and then Tony Jaa disappears for large stretches of the movie, and when he's present, he doesn't really fight, except like once in his imagination towards the end, but he goes through some spiritual purification or something, and you're hoping that at least the final fight is good...and then I'm thinking in the end he uses some pacifist spiritual technique to defeat the villain (who is pretty much the only good thing about the movie, with a couple of good fights).  It was especially a let down due to the first two in the series (although 1 was completely different from 2 and 3, which were directly related).

Edit: just watched the scene again, and technically he's ''fighting'', but he's just making the bad guy's blows roll off him, and it's done in slow motion, and it's just....no.

 

The Protector, also with Jaa, had very good fights throughout, and then for the final fight (spoilers) he uses elephant bones to quickly break all the tendons of these huge wrestling dudes and they just collapse on the floor.  Womp womp.

[ShawAngela]

Crazy shaolin disciples begins like a comedy and it turns as a very good fighting movie and the final fight between Liu Chia Hui and Wang Lung Wei's men and Wang Lung Wei himself is a must watch !

[One Armed Boxer]

First off, a hearty welcome to the forum @SmokingFistOfDoom!

15 hours ago, SmokingFistOfDoom said:

In the good to bad category, the first example that comes to mind is Fatal Contact

15 hours ago, SmokingFistOfDoom said:

Cut to him and his girlfriend sitting on a hill under an impossibly starry night sky.  Oh great, I guess they're in heaven now.  It was such a random and drastic change that I was positive it was all in his head at first.  Then the end credits roll.  I remember bursting out laughing at how ridiculous it was.  Worst ending ever.

I'll give this some thought later on in regards to movies that fit into the context of your post, but just wanted to give thanks for reminding me of this ridiculous scene!  Like you, I had a similar reaction to Wu Jing & Miki Yeung sitting under the 'stars'...mainly because the star filled sky appeared to be just a black bed sheet with LED lights stuck through it.  Funny that they decided to close the movie with the most low budget shot of the whole production.

With that being said, Dennis Law is a terrible director, so the way his movies veer all over the place should come as no surprise once you've watched a few of them.  He re-teamed with Wu Jing 2 years after 'Fatal Contact' to make 'Fatal Move'.

[KenHashibe]

I feel some of Sammo Hung's movies have some shocking abrupt tonal shifts in his movies. Now, I'm not at all saying that these movies go from GOOD to BAD necessarily, but the tonal shifts are quite jarring to say the least. Magnificent Butcher and Prodigal Son are great movies (particularly Prodigal Son is one of my all time favorites). They both start off very upbeat, but feature some out of place dark scenes (an attempted rape scene in Magnificent Butcher and the massacre of the opera troupe in Prodigal Son).

But then there's Carry On Pickpocket; Starts off as a typical pickpocket action comedy, but the ending is horrifically violent and was off-putting for me. Pedicab Driver can basically be divided into two halves, the funny and upbeat half and the dark and intense half.

Again, none of these movies are BAD at all, but I'll admit the sudden tonal shifts do irk me a bit.

[One Armed Boxer]

Ok, for a movie that started off so well and ended as complete rubbish, I'll nominate 'Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen'.

Actually I thoroughly enjoyed this flick for the first hour, and found it worked surprisingly well as an espionage filled thriller rather than an action movie.  Like the name of the bar a lot of it is set in, it kind of felt like a modern HK version of 'Casablanca', complete with Donnie Yen sporting a debonair moustache.

Then in the last 40 minutes, everything just goes completely off the rails.  For a start, both Yen and Anthony Wong disappear off screen for a long enough stretch of time, that it becomes painfully apparent how much the movie was resting on their shoulders.  But to make matters even worse, it then goes from being a lavishly produced thriller, into a cringe inducingly bad kung-fu flick. 

I get that Yen wanted to outdo the dojo scene he'd already re-created for the 'Fist of Fury' TV series, but turning it into what looked like a 100-on-1 fight scene wasn't the way to do it.  All of the problems you'd imagine such odds to present in such a confined space are there to see onscreen, with most of the attackers crowded together like a Tokyo train in rush hour, making it a simple case of Yen kicking them over like dominoes.  By the time he breaks out the nunchucks, it feels more like a Donnie Yen vanity show than it does a legitimately dangerous fight of one man taking on a room full of black belt opponents.

Then you have the final fight against Kohata Ryu, however you could be forgiven for not being able to name Yen's opponent, as he spends what feels like half the fight punching and kicking at the camera.  A complete waste.

'LOTF: TROCZ' is a real missed opportunity, especially since the first hour was so good, when it felt like more of a mystery thriller laced with some excellently handled action scenes sprinkled here and there.  Once it decides to go into full on action movie mode, it falls flat on its face before its even taken the first step.  Perhaps it was the pressure of having Yen on-board that made the producers think that they needed such an action filled last third, but it wasn't necessary at all, and the fact that it was handled so poorly only made the experience more sour.

Yen next has 'Chasing the Dragon' slated for the release, which also has the potential to be a great movie without the need for an abundance of action, which is what this should have been, so here's hoping we don't have to suffer through the same mistake twice.

[DrNgor]

1 hour ago, One Armed Boxer said:

I get that Yen wanted to outdo the dojo scene he'd already re-created for the 'Fist of Fury' TV series, but turning it into what looked like a 100-on-1 fight scene wasn't the way to do it.  All of the problems you'd imagine such odds to present in such a confined space are there to see onscreen, with most of the attackers crowded together like a Tokyo train in rush hour, making it a simple case of Yen kicking them over like dominoes.  By the time he breaks out the nunchucks, it feels more like a Donnie Yen vanity show than it does a legitimately dangerous fight of one man taking on a room full of black belt opponents.

I felt the dojo fight was a pale imitation of all the iterations of the fight done before, including the TV series. It brought nothing new to a legendary set piece that has been ripped off and re-done dozens of times over the past several decades. Ip Man showed how he could put an interesting new twist on an old favorite, but this movie did none of that.

[ShaOW!linDude]

I thought Kung Fu Killer (or is it Kung Fu Jungle? Whatever...) went from good to bad. Honestly, I didn't think the fights in the film were all that great, but the initial ones were certainly way better than the finale to me. (I don't understand why this got so much love but Special ID got dissed.)

Champions (2008) was surprising to me in that it went from bad to good. The fights start out very stylized with lots of wire work, but taper down to be a bit more grounded until the finale, where it's used sparingly. Usually that crap gets ramped up.

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

I think this applies to the majority of late 70's-early 80's Kung Fu comedies. A long slog through insipid comedy and Canto slapstick to get to a back half of great action, or just an awesome final showdown. 

I never minded tonal shifts in HK cinema... it's par for the course. And I think it can be down right refreshing when it hits you from out of nowhere. But films that are bad from the get go and only redeems themselves at the end or halfway through rarely save face in my book, cuz you already lost me. I actually can't think of a single example where a film started out crappy but won me back along the way. Unless we're just talking films with a soft or weak first act that picks up again, that happens a lot.

[Drunken Monk]

"The Master Strikes" is an absolute nightmare to sit through until it gets to the final fight where things get pretty serious and the choreography revs up a few notches.

[KUNG FU BOB]

Good thread topis @SmokingFistOfDoom.

The 1980 Taiwanese film MASTER KILLERS (not to be confused with THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN's aka. MASTER KILLER- non-plural) is for the most part, despite the talents of Casanova Wong, Blacky Ko, Phillip Ko Fei, Max Lee and Bolo, pretty dire throughout. Then suddenly at the end it features incredible kung fu fireworks.

This next one is not "bad" to "good", but more "just okay" to "truly amazing"... Way back in the day when I found a VHS copy of THUNDERING MANTIS (when the movie was still quite rare) I was a bit confused as I watched it. I'd heard it was "outrageous" and "unforgettable". Though there were good kung fu and training scenes (and the gymnastic and balancing abilities of Wong Yat-Lung as "The Kid" were mighty impressive), it seemed fairly typical of kung fu comedies from that time period- nothing too special. Then when The Kid does Drunken Mantis I thought "Okay, that was very cool" and began thinking I knew what would follow. Probably some Jackie Chan type finale. Um, no. I'm putting the "ending" in SPOILER brackets. If anyone is reading this and hasn't seen the film, I recommend you buy it promptly.

Spoiler

When The Kid is beaten to death with a freaking telephone pole by the Eagle Claw villain Shiao Tse Tung (Eddie Ko), the hero (Beardy Leung) breaks loose, has a complete mental breakdown, and rages out (even frothing at the mouth) in an insane display of rabid dog, psychopathic freak-out of martial arts mayhem that includes biting off (and later consuming) parts of his opponent!

Nothing in the first hour and ten minutes even vaguely suggests that the film is going in such an extreme and incredible fashion.

[Omni Dragon]

Some years ago I remember watching FIVE FIGHTERS FROM SHAOLIN. From what I remember it was only the end fight that really engaged me.