How to Make Kung Fu Films: 8 Training Secrets for Mastering the Art” by Sherri Sheridan
Kung Fu films need more than good fight scenes to succeed. The biggest challenge most kung fu films face in capturing Western audiences is character identification, unique genre elements, plot twists and strong themes.
Enter the Dragon was the first big kung fu film to crossover because it was made by a Hollywood studio that knew how to mix the ancient mystical Asian fighting elements with mainstream America tastes. The TV show Kung Fu in the 80’s was another brilliant combination of East meets West, with a Shaolin monk wandering through the wild west trying not to beat too many people up. Drunken Master II with Jackie Chan did a great job of combining comedy with drama and “drunken boxing” fighting style action scenes. Each great kung fu film has things it does best.
(1.) Character Identification.
Your characters have to be hot. It does matter as much how well they fight, but if they are not super hot visually they do not get to be on the screen. We need to love watching the characters and relate to them emotionally. Bruce Lee was the first martial arts movie star to really cross over big in America. Why? Because he has an amazing screen presence with an intense visual magnetism just dripping off his body along with good looks and a heavy dose of sex appeal.
Many kung fu films fail because they feature actors that do not have the Bruce Lee factor of electrifying visual appeal. Just because the actor can do great fight scenes does not mean people will want to watch them in a film for over 90 minutes.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are big movie stars because they look great on film and have strong sex appeal. When these actors are on the screen you cannot take your eyes off of them and will look at them even when other characters are talking with less screen presence. Visual appeal cannot always be seen with the naked eye, which is why studios do screen tests to see how the actor’s energy and presence comes across on a flat screen. Even if you cannot afford a top star for your film you can take the time to find up and coming hotties that can fight for the leads.
Red Cliff has a huge character identification problem in Act One of the script. The fighting starts almost right away – which is fine in a kung fu movie, but you still need to stop the action now and then to let us get to know and love the new characters fast. The first 20 minutes of any script needs to have as much character identification moments as possible, so that when the characters go into Act 2, where there is lots of conflict, you care about whether or not they die or get hurt. If you do not get a chance to know the characters, and like them at the start, you lose interest in the movie right away and never catch up really. Part of strong visual appeal is also having good character design and costumes that look different so people can pick out their heroes in crowded battle scenes.
Braveheart has a long slow start with a love story and showing the characters being directly affected by these local nobles getting to sleep with their wives. This was the whole plot goal motive of the movie so it made sense. Mel’s character in the movie even kisses a bloody beat up handkerchief from his dead wife before he goes into battle each time. You see him lose his loving wife at the start, and then you see him fight for freedom and understand why these horrific battles are taking place. Mel’s character in Braveheart is not fighting for more land or money; he is fighting for the right not to have his wife passed around by noblemen as law. We need to understand the main conflict in a movie emotionally too for all the violence to make sense.
In the movie Ninja Assassin, there are lots of flashbacks at the start showing the lead character Rain (hot!) as a child kung fu student and all the horrible things they did to him, which creates sympathy and emotional identification. We also really get a sense of who this character is right away by seeing so much of his past. By the time the fight scenes get heavy in Act 2, the audience is already in love with the main character and has something at stake emotionally wanting him to win each time.
(2.) Unique Genre Elements.
Show us something we have not seen before in a new spectacular, visually stunning way each scene. The hall of mirrors fight scene in Enter the Dragon was an instant visual classic. The parcour plus kung fu style of the movie District B13, combines two familiar subjects to create a new unique genre. The way Grasshopper in Kung Fu would lift the big burning pot up with his forearms, getting burned into a symbolic brand, in the opening credits each week was a unique way to show the suffering this particular kung fu student went through to get over feeling pain and create character identification. In Ninja Assassin the lead character as a little boy has his feet whipped bloody for making sounds while walking across a creaky floor.
Fight scenes especially need unique genre settings and techniques. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon showed us fight scenes in the tree tops. Red Cliff created a lush, epic medieval battlefield Braveheart style movie with lots of spear fighting but in China. Ninja Assassin had lots of blood sword trails and spouting gore. 300 showed us Spartan warriors who relished battle with a unique enthusiasm for battle, even though it was not technically a kung fu film.
(3.) Strong Themes.
Make the story mean something like a modern fable. The biggest difference between Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the latest Hong Kong action flick is the strong theme. People want some of that ancient wisdom from kung fu movies. Watching people kick each other and jump around for some silly plot goal for 90 minutes is just not as interesting as having an invisible force, deeper meaning or controlling idea. Not all movies have themes –many people could not even tell you the theme of a certain movie, but know when it is not there, since the story feels thin or meaningless.
One theme in a story usually controls the why events are happening in the plot. This makes theme one of the first things you should think about when writing a kung fu script. If your theme is luck, your lead character will have lots of luck in accomplishing their plot goals, while other characters will have bad luck. The theme of Braveheart is freedom and Mel even yells this several times during the movie. All of the battles are about the freedom to not have your wife sleep with nobles by law.
Books like the Tao Te Ching have great ideas for themes in kung fu type films. You could pick the 56th verse with the unique theme of “silent knowing,” and then quote passages from it at key points in the film or create a tag line characters repeat. “Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know.” The lead character arc would then go from being a motor mouth chatterbox and knowing nothing, to being silent and knowing everything. All of the characters in the film who talk a bunch would be shown to know nothing, while the silent ones who rarely say anything know a lot more. Then you pick a main character and plot goal to show your theme, like a street kid who wants to become a king gangster. He learns to keep his mouth shut since it keeps getting him into loads of trouble during Act 1 and 2, until he gets the value of “silent knowing,” and achieves his plot goal at the end by being silent.
(4.) Plot Twists, Shocks and Scene Reversals.
Plots need to have a surprise, twist or scene reversal every few moments to keep the audience guessing as to what may happen next. The character sets off to accomplish a plot goal, but nothing goes as planned. Many kung fu films have plots that lack enough suspense and twists.
(5.) Dynamic Use of Surroundings and Objects for Fight Scenes.
Jackie Chan does this really well in films like Drunken Master II. You want to come up with new settings and ways to use the objects we have not seen before that look visually stunning. Each storyboard should hold up as a prize winning photograph or comic book illustration composition wise. Try making the objects symbolic and relate to plot, theme and character. A movie about luck may have a character hitting another one with a big rabbit stuffed animal.
(6.) Real Stunts Verses CGI.
Does it matter? It helps a film’s buzz if you hear they did not use CGI for the dangerous stunts and they look impressive. Then again, if you can find a new way to do extreme kung fu stunts using CGI, go for it! Crouching Tiger used lots of wire action for the tree top scenes and no one complained since the fight scenes still looked real for that set. Think also of strong acrobatic stunts throughout the story to get in and out of difficult situations that could get even more extreme with a little CGI.
(7.) Symbolic Stunning Settings for Each Scene.
You really need to make a list of what sets you have available, would love to use or can drive to, that look amazing on film in a never before seen way. If you live near a stalagtite cavern, you would want to do a fight scene in there with nice lighting. Sets are part of unique genre elements, but seem especially important in kung fu films to add flavor. Think of dangerous places to fight that look beautiful or have strong graphical visual and emotional styles.
(8.) No Subtitles Please.
If you want your movie to do well in the west avoid using subtitles. People do not like to read while watching a film and will miss things visually. Shoot in English with no over dubs either, since they sound funny, and wreck the true emotions of the real actors, if the added voices are off even a little.
The biggest trick to doing a great kung fu film these days is doing an original one with a strong lead actor who has an amazing screen presence. You also want to make sure you choose unique and visually stunning settings and genre elements, and have lots of little twists in your story every few minutes. Kung fu films do not have to feel like a formula, they just have to do something new and unexpected while meeting all the other basic fight film requirements.
Sherri Sheridan is a leading world expert in teaching story to digital filmmakers, animators, screenwriters and novelists. New book coming soon “Filmmaking Script to Screen Step-By-Step” with an app. Other books include “Maya 2 Character Animation” (New Riders 1999), “Developing Digital Short Films” (New Riders / Peach pit / Pearson 2004) and “Writing A Great Script Fast” (2007). Sherri is the CEO and Creative Director at MindsEyeMedia.com and MyFlik.com in San Francisco.
