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Jackie Chan focused on ‘real kung fu’ in Drunken Master II in reaction to shoddy ‘wire fu’ martial arts films of the early 90s
- Partly directed by lauded fight choreographer Lau Kar-leung, Drunken Master II swapped the humour of its prequel for complex kung fu by ‘real martial artists’
- The movie, which won an award for its fight sequences, was Chan’s protest against fantastical films of the 1990s that used stunt doubles and wirework
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Anticipation was running high at the Hong Kong premiere of Jackie Chan’s 1994 martial arts film Drunken Master II.
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The audience was excited to see Chan in a period film after years of making more contemporary action movies, and viewers were eager to see how he reinterpreted the drunken incarnation of Cantonese hero Wong Fei-hung that had made him famous in 1978, when the original Drunken Master was released.
The film went down a treat at the premiere, and Drunken Master II went on to become one of Chan’s most popular films. The success of the movie was well deserved, as Chan, who felt the production boom of the early 1990s had led to a slew of shoddy films, had worked hard to make it a high-quality offering.
The sets, some of which were built in Changchun, northeast China, were impressive, and the martial arts scenes – including an extended finale in which Chan catches fire – were superb.
Chan had hired Lau Kar-leung, the legendary martial arts choreographer-turned-director behind many of filmmaker Chang Cheh’s classics, to work on the film. Although this ultimately did not turn out well – Chan fired him halfway through the shoot – the long, energetic fight scenes rank among Chan’s best. Drunken Master II won a Hong Kong Film Award for best action choreography in 1995.
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