If you had to choose only one: Shaw Brothers or everything else?

[panku]

Would you be able to choose? I don't know if I could.

[Drunken Monk]

This is super tough. At first I immediately thought, "Everything else, of course!" But then I realized that meant no Venoms films and the majority of Lau Kar Leung films and that would be tragic.

I've had a think about it though and I'm still going with everything else. Sammo, Jackie, Yuen Woo Ping etc. would keep me satisfied enough.

[ShawAngela]

I chose Shaw Brothers, though it would be very hard for me to stop watching all these old school kung fu movies I'm " in love with " because they actually are the first martial arts movies I saw when I was a teenager (except 12 gold medallions  and Virgins of the seven seas, but the Shaws' logo and the typical music announcing that it was a Shaws' film weren't even shown or heard...)

[Omni Dragon]

I voted for 'All non-Shaws', which means a plethora of Swordplay, Bashers, Shapes and early New Waves/Neo-Bashers (I don't know many of new wave style Shaw's) etc from the likes of Golden Harvest, Seasonal and countless indie companies like Hong Hwa, Goldig Films, First Films etc as well as the non-Chinese productions from other parts of Asia as well as North America and Europe etc.

[bigrogie]

Although I love the Shaws, I'd definitely choose all non-Shaws. More variety.

[HyperDrive]

Non-Shaws. As much as I enjoy Chang Cheh and company, it'd be more of a bummer not to watch people like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sonny Chiba, Angela Mao, and Hwang Jang Lee to name a few. 

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

As much as I am biased towards Shaw Brothers, coming up I was pretty intense into martial arts. I don't think I would have been able to subsist on the stilted, acrobatic venom's style. I would have to miss out on Tan Tao Liang, Jackie Chan, Wong Jang Li, and so many other serious martial artists and at the time, Tae Kwon Do experts. I like Lau Kar Liang's stuff, but it's slow at times.

[ShaOW!linDude]

I'm no ardent Shaws fan though there are some films in their catalog that are classic and I absolutely love. Still, I would become bored very quickly only having their other films to watch in between the ones I like. So I'm in the Non-Shaws bunch myself. Parting is bittersweet, Heroes of the East. Sob!

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

Sticking to only Shaws would mean to me that 9 out of 10 movies is quality, dependable, high production value, familiar faces etc. while going non Shaws would be at a 6 out of 10 or so. But, there's way more variety, a wider scope of talents and styles and it's just a broader fan of components than the Shaw factory style.

This is a tough one, but since we're exclusively talking the '65-'85 old school kung fu genre, I think I would go with only Shaws. While the look and feel might be somewhat similar, they excelled in most sub genres under the martial arts umbrella, in story telling, in all technical aspects of filmmaking and in cultivating on-screen talent. And it is very, very few Shaw flicks I don't like to some degree. So yeah... I would go with only Shaws and be pretty happy with that decision.

[Koravec]

The "Neither" option bums me out a but, glad noones selected it yet. Im only so big of a Shaw fan tbh. 

Actually might I add that I wasnt really a fan of this site back in the day (opted for kcf) because I couldnt understand why youd encompass every martial flick under the umbrella of one film. A film which I actually didnt care for when I watched it, and found overrated by its popularity. I kind of figured this site leaned more towards Shaw fandom and kungfucinema for everything else (however true that was...). However Ive come to appriciate that movie more overtime (always loved Gordon btw). And as for the site, I  'get it' now and think its a Great name.

Hell I think a lot of us would drop Shaws (sadly of course) just for the sake of Bruce Lee movies alone. Id rather be able to revisit Lees filmography than the Venom's or Lui's (that was hard to say). But at the same time, I still have a bunch of Shaws waiting to be seen by me (will be a great time).  

[Omni Dragon]

I think a harder question might be if I could only pick 1 motion picture company (be it as production, filming or distributor etc company) to watch martial art movies from, for the rest of my life?

Personally I think I'd choose Golden Harvest. Even though when I 1st got into Shaw Brothers I probably considered them the creme de la creme of martial arts cinema and probably would have picked SB in the past. But I'd choose GH at the moment as I feel they had a good variety of styles in the "golden era" of martial arts cinema like swordplay, bashers, shapes, new wave/neo-bashers and even the wire fu/undercranked stuff (not sure personally I consider the last 1 "golden era" though). To be honest though when I think of classic GH I think of bashers and new wave. I'm not sure I've seen enough swordplay movies to make a fair judgement. As for shapes I think there's more classics from SB and indies, "but still" I'm not sure if 1 specific indie company put out more classic shapes than GH. Had SB made more new wave/neo-bashers I might be thinking differently. BTW I was thinking of Paragon Films as more or less the same as Golden Harvest as I never understood the difference or division?