'Enter the Dragon' ended up being Lee's biggest hit, but tragically he wasn't alive to see it - he died shortly after the film's completion but before its massive success turned him into a household name. Gives 'Enter the Dragon' a verisimilitude that even today's most technologically-adept filmmakers have trouble matching. Back then, Lee and his fellow actors and filmmakers had to figure out how to do this stuff live in front of the camera and without a safety net (this was before the days of blu-screen and CGI). Lee didn't just jump, kick, slice and grunt - he was a showman, a physical technician of balletic movement with an amazing prowess in front of the camera. But as a cinema child of the late '70s, let me tell you that Lee's over-the-top, physically amazing stunts in 'Enter the Dragon' were truly ground-breaking at the time. Watching 'Enter the Dragon' today, over 30 years since it first debuted in 1973, I'm guessing that some younger moviegoers unfamiliar with cinema history may simply shrug their shoulders at the bad dubbing, cheap effects and CGI-less action sequences. Okay, perhaps I'm overstating my case just a little bit, but it is hard to imagine these films and filmmakers working in the quite same way had it not been for the visual style and action aesthetic Lee pioneered in the early '70s. Matrix' trilogy, ' Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' and just about every comic book movie of the past two decades, not to mention the complete cinematic oeuvre of genre auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and John Carpenter. Still not impressed? Then consider as Exhibit A, Lee's perhaps finest effort and certainly his most well-known film, 'Enter the Dragon.' Without this cult classic we probably would never had such modern films as 'The Without him, we wouldn't have had Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Yun-Fat Chow or Jet Li. And no actor is more closely associated with the movement as to be virtually synonymous with the words "martial arts" as Bruce Lee. Say what you want about the appeal of the martial arts or "chop socky" movie, but its impact on modern American genre filmmaking is immeasurable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |