Jackie Chan continued...

How does Chan feel about the fight scenes in American movies? Jackie grimaces as he shakes his head. "A fight should flow like a choreographed dance routine. More importantly, a fight must look good without sound effects. No one [in the U.S.] takes time to do a good fight. They still try to make their fights look real. They have no ling-gan."

Ling-gan is a conceptual phrase that is a reflection of the creative process: coming up with an idea, expending upon it, then, if the idea is unsatisfactory, begin the process anew. When devising the fight scenes, Chan will first propose a series of movements. Each assistant elaborates on these movements as new techniques are added or removed. After filming a sequence, if it doesn't look right, Jackie will throw it out and start over again. "Mood, tempo of the movements, and creativity are all important aspects needed for a successful fight director," he says. "If you use no time in creating, you will produce no good fights."

To fully comprehend Chan's approach, one must be familiar with a bit of Asian movie history. Chinese fight films originated in Shanghai during the 1920s. The first efforts were action-packed screen dramas called wu xia pian (martial art hero films) and they drew liberally on legends of superhuman swordsmen and magical feats. By the late 1960s, they evolved into gung fu pian (kung fu films), where the characters fought with more believable skill levels. In the 1970s, the Shaw Brothers financed the creation of guo shu pian (neo-hero films) which eloquently blended the fights of the wu xia and gung fu pians. When Jackie Chan joined the Golden Harvest film company, gung fu pians had died off and were replaced by Chan's newly invented style wu da pian (fight film using martial arts), combining athleticism with dangerous stunts.

"When I invented my style of gung fu pian, everyone copied me," Jackie notes. "I liked that because it forced me to be more creative. For ten years I wanted to make a sequel to Drunken Master, but I never felt confident enough. Then everyone made the same kind of film, so I developed a new genre, the wu da pian, through my Police Story movies."

As Chan developed a modern urban character, his cinematic fights were no longer a one-on-one battle-to-the-death, but a series of group confrontations in such settings as a shopping mall (Police Story I) and a car-testing facility (Twin Dragons). With the exception of Crime Story (1993), a serious effort that earned him a Golden Horse nomination (Chinese equivalent to the Academy Awards) for best dramatic actor, Chan's recent starring films showcase his trademark mixture of high-spirited comedy and breathtaking action.

Jackie's failure to make it big in the U.S. market is a subject he finds unimportant to discuss. The reason for America's rejection of Chan's high-octane, action-packed productions is partially buried in racism. Generally speaking, American audiences patronize Third World films; they're branded as low-budget productions lacking technical polish. Yet in just 24 days, Drunken Master II broke all Asian box office records. The film had no limit on its budget and shooting schedule, and Jackie's action sequences would put any American action star's performance to shame.

But Jackie doesn't want to be compared to Hollywood's biggest stars, because only he can do what he does. "Even if I do a film with geniuses like George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, [there's] no way I will be famous in America. Look at Jurassic Park. Few people know the names of the actorsthey just remember the dinosaurs and the fact that it was a Spielberg film. "And take Terminator 2. The director was good, the special effects were good, but anyone could have done Schwarzenegger's part. In Asia, everyone comes to see Jackie Chan in a Jackie Chan film. It doesn't matter what the title is or what the story is about. Only Jackie Chan can do it.

He smiles, shrugs his shoulders, then adds, "Like I said before, filmmaking is now my hobby and I don't need the money. It is important that I am happy with what I do. I will never compromise my artistic values as a fight choreographer and I won't play the bad guy. My fans expect me to be funny and be the good guy; I won't disappoint them. That's why I turned down a most lucrative offer from Michael Douglas to star as the head antagonist in Black Rain [1989]."

During production of Drunken Master II, he explained why he takes so much painstaking care with his craft: "We have been filming this movie for nine months already. But if it takes me months just to get a few minutes of great fights, that's okay. People say I'm slow...but it is important not to hurry the fight scenes. There must be the right mood or it won't look good on camera. Everything must have a reason to be in the fight and each shot must make the audience go 'Waaaa!'"

Indeed, Jackie Chan has been making his legion of fans go "Waaaa!" for nearly two decades.

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