What If?

[Duel to the Death]

What If Bruce Lee had lived? What would of been different? 

Would we of still seen a flood of martial arts movies? Would we of still seen Bruceploitation movies? Maybe on a smaller scale? Because there is Jackieploitation and he is still alive. Imagine The Clones of Bruce Lee and the actual Bruce is beating the crap out of all his clones. 

Would the movies have had a better quality overall? Or still a flood of good and bad movies? If i look at my list of favorite movies there is almost nothing on it between 1973 and 1977 besides 1 or 2 movies. Almost all of the best non Bruce movies happened 1977 and up. There is a big gap there with not as many classics. There are some of course. The most popular Shaw Brothers and Sammo Hung/Jackie Chan movies didn't happen until the later 70's. 

Would Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan still become stars? Or maybe they would of teamed up with Bruce in some movies and not just as background characters?

I'm sure Shaw Brothers would of carried on like normal. But i'm sure it would of affected them in some way. 

Would Bruce actually of made any of those period films he did pictures for like Zatoichi  or Siu Fung?

Or maybe he would just injured himself again and had to retire or do movies with no martial arts.

I know, too many what ifs and i bet all these questions have been asked before, Just humor me. 

[Iron_Leopard]

Great questions.  This is so hard to answer though. 

My first reaction would be that guys like Jet Li and Donnie Yen would have never had a chance to become break out stars because their styles are very similar to Bruce. Jackie Chan on the other hand still would have become Jackie Chan because his style is so different. It's a great yin to his yang.

But then I wonder if Bruce would have become as big as he is now if he hadn't died. Perhaps as Bruce began to age Jet and Donnie would still be able to break out as the new young stars.

Shaw Brothers probably would have closed by 1980 cause Lee's films were more realistic and engaging to audiences. 

I honestly have no idea how it would have played out.

[anderson]

Just imagine a 90's  Kung Fu remake film with Brandon Lee as Caine, Bruce Lee as Master Po, David Carradine as the Caine's father,Sean  Connery and Donnie Yen as villains  and John Woo as director...

[Cognoscente]

Back in 1972, Bruce made the decision to poach twenty HK stuntmen for his Hollywood sojourn. Perhaps he may have wanted to do a Vietnam version of The Dirty Dozen - basically foreshadowing Sammo's Eastern Condors. Coincidentally, some of the men who Bruce wanted to poach were members of Sammo's stunt team.

In 1973, Bruceploitation was already a thing with Fist of Unicorn containing a lookalike who was meant to trick HKers into thinking it was Bruce. Then there's Bloody Ring where the filmmakers tried too hard to make Larry Lee the next Bruce Lee.

Back to Bruce's poach plan, he made his decision during a time when he had fallen out with Sammo over The Game of Death. Unless Bruce was willing to drop one of the twenty men in favour of Sammo, there's a good chance that Sammo would have no choice but to stay in HK and start from scratch by joining Ng See-Yuen (i.e. to work for both Eternal and Seasonal). Maybe the shapes trend would have eclipsed the basher style much earlier as a way to counteract Bruce's spectacle and flair for the dramatic.