How disrespectful to Bruce Lee was the original 1978 release of Game of Death.

[BillyLo]

I know it’s terrible but it’s honestly one of my favourite films of all time. I never get bored of watching it. 

[Owen_Johnston]

With the studio and the people involved, along with the fact they had 5 years to complete the movie and the quality of martial arts movies coming out in 1978, it falls way short of Lee's completed movies. They didn't even use the full 40 mins of footage. They could've got Kareem, Dan Inosanto, James Tien etc back to do reshoots, get Yuen Woo-Ping and Sammo to direct.

They could've used Lee's original notes but basically switch Lee and Tien's characters around so that Tien could be the main character and Lee only comes in towards the end to help him fight his way up the pagoda. It would've felt more like a martial arts movie with Lee as a secondary character, than having him as a main character in the 70s Hollywood movie.

Or they could've done something like:

Opening credits (Bruce Lee montage / tribute)
Underground fight club / cage fight between Chuck Norris & Bob Wall (Chuck wins - undefeated champion)
James Tien in a poker match with Jimmy Wang-Yu (Tien loses, owes Wang Yu's syndicate $100,000 in debts.
Angela Mao (Tien's wife) beaten and killed at home by assassins, daughter kidnapped.
James Tien arrives home, sees her body, and a note saying he has to throw a fight in the underground fight club to get his daughter back and cancel his debts.
Tien phones his brother (Chieh Yuan) to tell what happened and ask for help. 
They go to the fight club, Tien watching on as Sammo vs Bolo. Chuck approaches and conversation along the lines of "haven't seen you here before", Tien explains what's happened, asks Chuck for help, Chuck refuses but says he'll call in a favour from an old friend (Bruce Lee's character). 
Bolo defeats Sammo, Tien defeats Bolo, Chuck spots a henchman walking towards a payphone, attacks him and gets info on the location of Tien's daughter, kills him and give Tien and Yuan the location (pagoda / tower)
Jimmy Wang-Yu sitting in the pagoda waiting on a phone call from the fight club. Lee, Tien and Yuan make their way to the tower.
Floor 1: Wang-Yu - (use footage of Tien telling Lee to hang back), Tien and Yuan defeat Wang-Yu
Floor 2: Dan Inosanto (40 minute footage begins)
Floor 3: JiHan-Jae
Floor 4: Kareem
Floor 5: Tien's daughter
Lee's character doubled, filmed from the back as he walks upstairs to the top floor to find Tien's daughter safe (could be played by Shannon Lee for extra feels).
The End - tribute/montage


The amount of mental gymnastics the makers went through just to add in archive Lee footage (almost the entire Chuck fight from Way) was pretty pointless.

[CliveReston]

15 hours ago, Owen_Johnston said:

The amount of mental gymnastics the makers went through just to add in archive Lee footage (almost the entire Chuck fight from Way) was pretty pointless.

But really nothing compared to gymnastics you propose.

There's no place in your idea for the 40mt footage to work successfully. For one, why would Tien  sacrifice his brother Chieh by prompting him to get beat down and then killed for going up to Kareem's floor. No matter what way you  slice it there's no way  for Tien to come out looking like a hero.

 

[Josh Baker]

Something I'm considering in my head is that Golden Harvest didnt have access to Bruce's original notes back in the 70s for whatever reason (they were later found by John Little I think?). As a result, they only had a vague idea of what Bruce had in mind, proved by the vague description of GOD's plot in Bruce Lee: The Legend.

As a result GH wouldnt have had a detailed plot synopsis to base the new version off of, so even if they'd got a filmmaker to make a more respectful version of GOD, they would've had to have made changes to Lee's original concept anyway as the existing footage doesnt give any clues as to the plot before the Pagoda sequence or how the film ends.

All they had to work with were four fight sequences (3 with Bruce, 1 with James Tien) and a few shots of Bruce walking down the stairs. Who was Bruce shouting down towards? Why did he shout down to them twice? What was happening outside of the pagoda whilst Bruce was walking down the stairs?

Without questions to those answers it would've been hard/almost impossible to create a compelling narrative around four fight scenes which seemingly have no relation to anything, with no information at hand exisitng at the time demonstrating what Bruce intended for the plot.

[PandaPawPaw]

They should of had Takeshi's Castle style obstacles around the Pagoda. Start off with some more fighters along with Bruce and Co and they get whittled down to the final 3*.

*These types of ideas is why I don't make movies.*

[BillyLo]

On 3/24/2023 at 10:33 AM, Owen_Johnston said:

They could've got Kareem, Dan Inosanto, James Tien etc back to do reshoots

Dan Inosanto was the only one interested in creating new scenes. Both Kareem and James Tien refused the offer, so that meant they had more limitations.