Jackie Chan was a Bruce Lee imitator in his early career?

[Guest The Running Man]

I was thinking for some time of making a topic on this. In some of the books floating, that unfortunately has repeated through in more mainstream mediums, it's typically been described that Jackie Chan started his career imitating Bruce Lee, as if he was some sort of Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Dragon Lee, etc...

Now, I personally don't see it at all. Most of the films he was doing with Lo Wei were period films that seem to be made more in the line of the independent martial arts films that were being produced outside of the Shaw Brothers system. The only film that even comes anywhere near close to Bruce Lee is New Fist of Fury, but the character Jackie plays there is totally different to what Bruce Lee was playing. In that one, he is a bit of a loser who doesn't seem to have much passion and always runs into trouble and it's only later on that he grows and becomes a leader.

What do you guys think? I'm sure most of you have heard Jackie's early career being described as such and it never made sense to me.

[Guest luckystars]

Lo Wei was hoping to do with Jackie, what happened to Bruce under him. Jackie's first starring fil for LW was New FoF after all.

Also look at the International trailers for Young Master, Golden Harvest was doing it then. 'First Bruce, now Jackie!!!' etc.

And commentators love to pigeon-hole people.

[Guest Markgway]

Jackie was never a Bruce Lee imitator. Ever. Lo Wei wanted him to be the new Bruce Lee only in terms of box office success. Even Lo never tried to pass Jackie off as a Lee-alike. The Bruce clones are a different kettle of fish.

[Guest Dion Brother]

Agreed. Its a throwaway description used by hack writers who don't want to actually watch the films they write about. There is alot of misinformation about that era repeated so often that it is now accepted as fact.

[Guest Chinatown Kid]

New Fist of Fury was about the closest Jackie ever got to imitating or copying Bruce. Not in mimicking his mannerisms but that it was a burning up the screen for revenge stern type role that Lee made famous in the original Fist of Fury. There were a few bits in the film Lo made Jackie do in a direct intention to reference Bruce like the special effect wavy arms thing and I believe he had Jackie using the chucks as well.(It's been quite a while since I watched it). There's no way Jackie could be called a Lee imitator though. Lo Wei seemed to want to force Jackie to play these serious, no nonsense type roles hoping for another goldmine like Lee but it wasn't Jackie's thing. When Seasonal Films borrowed him for a 2 picture deal Ng See Yuen let Jackie's natural talent for comedy out by giving him freedom and creativity do his own thing and history was made.

[Guest Yakuza954]

Jackie himself says in the Celestial Kung fu documentary that he was advertised as Bruce Lee early on in his career. He jokes about how the posters of his movies would say "STARRING BRUCE LEE" in giant letters, and then in small letters say "starring jackie chan" somewhere else on the poster. But whether he actually acted like Bruce Lee is a different thing. Imo, early on in his career, he was more of a Fu Sheng imitator than anything else. The comedy in Jackie's early films is very similar to what Fu Sheng was doing at Shaw Brothers at the time. Even his first big hit, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, was a movie originally planned for Fu Sheng.

[Guest DragonMa55]

It makes you wonder if Fu Sheng hadn't died whether Jackie would've gotten his big break in 'Drunken Master' or if they would've gone with Alexander instead.

[Guest Yakuza954]

Actually I think this was all before Fu Sheng's death. The reason he couldn't star in those movies was because of his contract with Shaw Brothers.

[Guest Dion Brother]

I've always felt JC was a Fu Sheng clone.

[Guest limubai2000]

In many interviews, articles and books about/with Jackie says that everyone wanted him to replace Bruce, including Lo but he resisted. That's good enough for me. I do agree with the original post, good one RM.

[Guest killer meteor]

I've agree entierly: there is nothing in Jackie's Lo Wei films that make him a Bruce clone. Although New Fist is a poor film, we can see in it the passing of the torch because Jackie's character is the comical underdog. Not the "screaming demon of vengeance" that Jackie - or to be more accurate, Jeff Yang - claims he was told to play. What puzzles me is if Lo wanted to make Jackie a star, why did he have not "the next Bruce Lee" do any fighting until the last 15m of a 2hr film and then most of that involves him beating up the villian's brattish daughter

Similarly, in Killer Meteors, Jackie spends much of his limited screen time lying down in a role that appears to have been intended for a much older man, and in To Kill With Intrigue, Jackie spends much of the film getting beaten up by various individuals, and being the recipient of some very strange romantic behaviour from Hsu Feng, who beats him frequently.

It is in the Chen Chi-hwa directed films that Jackie gets to be the true star of the film. Snake & Crane is a real delight watching Jackie paste what seems like all of China.

[Guest Markgway]

Jackie himself says in the Celestial Kung fu documentary that he was advertised as Bruce Lee early on in his career. He jokes about how the posters of his movies would say "STARRING BRUCE LEE" in giant letters, and then in small letters say "starring jackie chan" somewhere else on the poster.

I can't imagine what film he was referring to? But I've never seen or heard anything like that. AFAIK Lo Wei never tried to pretend New Fist of Fury had anything to do with a new Bruce Lee. In fact the only person that seems to keep connecting Jackie with Bruce is Jackie.

[Guest Chinatown Kid]

I don't understand that either unless Jackie's refering to his American posters for his films that he's saying falsely promoted Lee as the star to lure people into the theaters because of his popularity. Jackie never tried to copy Lee that I'm aware of, his oldschool films were him preforming traditional Kung Fu styles with acrobatics while Lee did the flashy kicks combined with boxing and Jeet Kune Do. They were two totally different styles of fighting. Now later on Jackie started to do more of a kickboxing type style in his more modern films like Wheels On Meals and Dragon's Forever that was closer to Lee's style but Jackie developed the group fights to a greater degree combining thrilling stunts to go along with the fights in films like Police Story.

[Guest luckystars]

Fist of Unicorn?

[Guest Markgway]

Which would be weird because Jackie was never in Fist of Unicorn.

[Guest luckystars]

You sure bout that Mark?

[Guest killer meteor]

Jackie is in Fist Of Unicorn. For like a millisecond.

I have a HK poster for New Fist and there's no sign of Bruce. The trailer does include those still shots from Enter The Dragon that turned up in the film but otherwise that's it

[Guest Chan Wah Shun]

Jackie said that a poster (he never specified a film) would say: new BRUCE LEE jackie chan, so that far away all one would see is Bruce's name. I personally assumed it was just a marketing ploy.

[Guest dager in the cotton]

maybe Jackie saw a Poster on a Taiwan,HK, or Korean cinema marquee, in the 70's all the cinema fronts were hand painted with massive posters,i am sure a cinema boss would cash-in on Lee ,I mean why not, "From the Team That brought you Bruce Lee's fist of fury, now bring you ect" you dont have to excell at Chaos math to work that one out, i can't see Jackie making it up, why would he lnvent that?

[Cognoscente]

On 4/5/2007 at 8:21 PM, Guest dager in the cotton said:

maybe Jackie saw a Poster on a Taiwan, HK, or Korean cinema marquee

It's worth noting that there were attempts to have English titles reminiscent of The Big Boss.

Exhibit A: https://kungfutube.info/5091 ---> To Kill with Intrigue was known in Korea as The New Big Boss.

Exhibit B: https://kungfutube.info/5189 ---> Dragon Fist was known in Korea as The Wild Big Boss.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Cognoscente