Bruce Lee: A Dragon's Legacy

While Superman is my all time favorite western superhero, Bruce Lee hands down is the living Asian Superhero. In light of National Geographic Channel's Bruce Lee month long tribute last January, I'm writing this piece as a tribute to Bruce Lee, and also at the same time to share some photos of my Bruce Lee action figure collections. I was relatively introduced to Bruce Lee's Martial Arts prowess and his movies by my father. He's a huge Bruce Lee fan. According to him, what draws him to Bruce Lee's movies apart from his Martial Arts skills is it's running themes about how the chinese people (a role that he always plays) fights back against oppression and discrimination. It somehow stroke a chord for my father's own experiences as growing up in the Philippines during the 60's and 70's, it was not uncommon for the chinese immigrants to be subjected to ridicule, discrimination, and quite possibly oppression. Through the many documentaries that were made about Bruce Lee's life and legend, it was revealed that he too was subjected to such discrimination which fueled his drive to excel in the chosen field of Martial Arts and Movie Making. His movies became his communicating tool to liberate the chinese people from these situations and showed them how great a race they are.

      

Bruce Lee in "The Big Boss"

His very first hit movie called "The Big Boss" depicted Bruce Lee as a Chinese immigrant who transferred to Thailand and found work in an ice plant factory which was actually a front for a drug cartel. It was because of the suspicions of Lee and the rest of his chinese brothers which would led to the killing of some of the laborers in the factory. Bruce Lee would fight his way against the Big Boss to avenge the loss of his chinese brothers. The plot was actually quite simple but Bruce's brilliant acting and his spectacular martial arts skills became the films drawing power. It also set the tone for Bruce's succeeding films that would highlight a Chinese man fighting oppression which in this case had him going up against the Thais.  

Bruce Lee in "Fist of Fury"

Bruce Lee's second movie which was entitled "Fist of Fury" on the other hand had Bruce Lee going up against the Japanese. Set in the early 20th century in the Shanghai International Settlement, Bruce's character was a returning student who found out that his sensei had just died. Soon after, Japanese students from a rival Bushido School would come and insult Bruce and the remaining students calling the chinese people as the sick men of asia. It was through this encounter as well as a number of Japanese discriminations (especially the sign in a park that read No Dogs and Chinese allowed) that would lead Bruce to fight back against the Japanese. This movie upped the discrimination/oppression against the Chinese people narrative to new heights. And as usual, Bruce in the end had the Japanese mastermind beaten up and defeated. But there was a twist in it's ending. While The Big Boss ended with Bruce being arrested by the police, this movie ended with Bruce dying after being shot by the arresting policemen as he attempted to fight back arrests as his act of defiance. This movie would also show Bruce's mastery of the nunchaku and a dazzling display of martial arts perfection as Bruce is shown fighting against a whole school of Bushido fighters. His reputation as a hard hitting Martial Arts Superstar only grew larger in this movie.

Bruce Lee in "Way of the Dragon"

By the time his third movie came, the debates about who is the best Martial Arts artist in the world grew larger. And Bruce was being mentioned on top of every Martial Arts champion. Bruce also at this point had started studying different Martial Arts disciplines and would pick parts and techniques to create his own new form of Martial Arts discipline in which he would call Jeet Kune Do (The way of the intercepting fist). The third movie would show him going up against an american Tae Kwon Do (A Korean Martial Arts Discipline) champion named Chuck Norris (Who eventually became a Movie Star of his own right after this movie). The usual plot elements that is common to Bruce's movies is also here in which he is  a new comer in Rome who is working at a Chinese restaurant that is being taken over by a local Mafia by way of intimidation. This movie also mirrors Bruce's real life experiment of combining different Martial Arts elements to use in an actual combat wherein Bruce learns karate from his chinese comrades in addition to his Kung Fu skills. The climax of this movie had him using this combination of Martial Arts skills to beat a single Martial Arts Discipline. The ending also for a change, was written on a positive note to move away from Bruce's movie's usual tragic endings.

Bruce Lee in "Enter the Dragon"

By this time, Hollywood had noticed this little Asian's stunning movie making power. Bruce was actually not a stranger to Hollywood. Long before he became a big star in Hong Kong and Asia, he had already played bit roles for a number of Hollywood produced T.V. Series and got a big break in a show called The Green Hornet where he played the role of the main character's sidekick called Kato. When the T.V. Series ended, Bruce was in discussions to play the lead role of a Martial Arts T.V. Series which he helped conceptualized called Kung Fu. But discrimination reared it's ugly head as there was never in the history of Hollywood where a lead star not of American descent having a successful movie/T.V. show. That role eventually went to David Carradine. So it was a huge success for Bruce to hear from Hollywood and had it do a film for him under his own terms. That film would be Enter the Dragon, to date the biggest Martial Arts film ever produced by any Hollywood film outfit. Bruce would also use his influence on this film to show the beautiful culture of the Chinese race as well as a number of Bruce's philosophical beliefs.

Bruce Lee as immortalized in this Action Figure

Enter the Dragon's plot has Bruce being invited in a Martial Arts tournament in a secluded island organized by a suspected Drug Trafficker and a Prostitution Ring leader. Bruce is joined in this movie by Hollywood stars John Saxon and Jim Kelly as well as Hong Kong's rising stars Samo Hung and Jackie Chan (both playing bit roles). Bruce works as an undercover agent for the British Intelligence with a mission to uncover the truth of the island's illegal activities. In the island, Bruce would meet the person responsible for his sister's death. From then on the movie displays numerous dazzling fight scenes as Bruce fights numerous island guards and martial arts fighters in his quest to reach the mastermind of the island's illegal operations. The final fight scenes of the movie still remains to this day the most spectacular fight scene sequences ever filmed. But alas Bruce would never have the chance to view the finish product of the film. Six days before the film's actual release, Bruce died.

Bruce Lee in "The Game of Death"

Enter the Dragon though wasn't his last film. Because it was midway during the shooting of Bruce Lee's fourth film when Hollywood came knocking on his door. The said film called The Game of Death gave way for the Hollywood produced Enter the Dragon. And even in death, Bruce managed to defy his mortality as he made his one last movie offering to the world. With over 100 minutes of footage (mostly the climax part) done before his death, Golden Harvest (the Hong Kong film outfit responsible for the release of all of Bruce's HK films) decided to finish the movie with the help of Enter the Dragon's director Robert Clouse. The Game of Death was Bruce Lee's vehicle movie with the intention to showcase his own Martial Arts System creation called Jeet Kune Do. This fighting art form is a hybrid of different Martial Arts system that Bruce Lee combined to create the perfect and perhaps the most powerful Martial Arts system ever known to man.The plot of the movie would feature Bruce Lee fighting different Martial Arts practitioners who were considered the best in their respective fields in a pagoda like temple. In his original concept of the film, Bruce invited Hwang In-Shik (world reknowed Hapkido sensei), Taky Kimura (Bruce's own Jeet Kune Do student), Dan Inosanto (Filipino Martial arts practitioner), Han Jae Ji (founder of Korean Martial Arts called Hapkido), and Kareem Abdul-Jabar (National Basketball Association Hall of Famer and Bruce's student) to play the roles of the different Martial Arts champions that he would face in the movie. Though the actual theatrical release (where majority of the earlier parts of the film use a stand in for Bruce and recycled footage from Bruce's prior films) differed from Bruce's original concepts, the climax of the movie was heavily Bruce Lee. Years later, A Bruce Lee documentary called "A Warrior's Journey" would release the original version of the film's climax as intended by Bruce Lee. The movie was a Martial Arts spectacle of Bruce's Jeet Kune Do's philosophy of combat that is based on the fluidity of movements and unpredictability to intercept forthcoming attacks.    

Bruce Lee's one final kick against oppression and discrimination

In the end, Bruce Lee's legacy to the world was one feat that no other mortal physical specimen has ever accomplished before and after his death in recorded history. To name a few, culturally, he forever changed the western world's perception of the Chinese people and the Asians in general. He brought an irrevocable respect to the Chinese arts and culture. His films (most notably Enter the Dragon) would help spark the entry of eastern martial arts movies in Hollywood and even had Hollywood produce a number on them. In the Martial Arts realm, Bruce Lee would spark a surge of demand for Martial Arts schools of different disciplines and left an imprint in possibly each of those disciplines, the teachers, and the students. He also would later on be recognized as the Father of Mixed Martial Arts on which one of the fast growing sports entertainment event called United Fighting Championships (UFC) would base their ideas and concept on. To get your complete facts and details about Bruce's legacy in our world today, try searching for History Channel's Bruce Lee documentary entitled "How Bruce Lee Changed the World." It's one of the most informative documentaries about Bruce's life that I have ever viewed. And also if you guys have National Geographic Channel Asia, please watch National Geographic Channel Asia's continuing documentary series about Bruce Lee every Tuesday evening at 9pm. 

The action figures and figurines that I used in this piece is my entire Bruce Lee action figure collection. The Enter the Dragon action figure was produced by Play Along toys which stands at approximately 7 inches and has multiple points of articulation in the neck, arms, wrist, waists,and the legs. It also comes with an Enter the Dragon base stand and interchangeable hands and a nunchaku. The other remaining figs on the other hand is from Bandai which stands approximately 3-4 inches with no points of articulation. The ultimate Bruce Lee collection I guess though would have to be the Hot Toys released Bruce Lee. But for the meantime, I'll settle with what I have since Hot Toys' price range is way out of my range.