How Stephen Chow and Donnie Yen reinvented Bruce Lee’s classic Chen Zhen in their own ways

Chen Zhen, a fictional character first played by Bruce Lee in the 1972 film Fist of Fury, became a cultural phenomenon in Hong Kong because of the way he stood up to the Japanese in Shanghai in the early 1900s.\nA scene in which Chen makes students at a Japanese karate school eat the paper on which they had written “China is the sick man of Asia” was especially popular, as was the scene in which Chen smashes a sign outside a Shanghai public park reading “No dogs or Chinese”.\nHere, we look at two very different retellings of the Chen Zhen story.\nFist of Fury 1991 (film version, 1991)\nThe idea of Stephen Chow Sing-chi, then at the height of his success as a mo lei tau “nonsense” comedian, playing a role inspired by Bruce Lee is not as odd as it sounds. Chow admired Lee, and possessed some basic kung fu skills that could be manipulated to look good on screen.\n\n\nChow had been a fan of Lee since childhood.\n“Like other children of his age, he was fascinated by Bruce Lee,” wrote film historian Ryan Law in an essay. “In 1971, when Lee’s The Big Boss opened in Hong Kong, Chow was nine years old. He began to study kung fu, and made his friends call him Little Dragon [Bruce Lee’s nickname].”\nFist of Fury 1991 falls somewhere between a tribute to Lee, a loose modern retelling of the original film, and an out-and-out oddity.\nScripted by Jeff Lau Chun-wai and directed by actor Rico Chu Tak-on, it retains the story’s core thread but distorts it through Chow’s unique comedic style. The film is recognisable as a remake only through key set pieces and its rebellious sensibility.\n\nThis time, the setting is in 1991 rather than the past. Chow – whose role is called Ching and not Chen Zhen – turns up in Hong Kong and is robbed by Kenny Bee’s character, whom he quickly befriends.\nIn the film’s biggest Bruce Lee reference, Chow has an extremely fast punch – Lee was rumoured to punch at 100mph (161km/h) – but is unschooled in kung fu.\nHe studies martial arts under an old master played by the film’s choreographer, Corey Yuen Kwai, but is forced to form a rival school, which has the same name as the school featured in the original.\nA series of underhanded schemes leads Chow to avenge his murdered master in an eccentric, MMA-style match.\nChow is such a unique performer that he can only ever be himself on screen, and he wisely does not impersonate Lee. The fun comes from watching him put his comedic spin on some classic set pieces from the original movie, including the “China is the sick man of Asia” sequence.\n\nFans of Lee noted many quick references to the master, such as Chow biting an opponent and a lightning-fast nod to the freeze-frame at the end of the original.\nAs Lee did, Chow takes a pasting in the final fight until he bounces back. This is the only time Chow seems to be trying, in his hyper-exaggerated way, to copy his idol’s fighting style.\nA sequel, Fist of Fury 1991 II, arrived in 1992, but it was forgettable.\nFist of Fury (TV version, 1995)\nThis 30-episode series from Hong Kong broadcaster ATV, which stars Donnie Yen Ji-dan as Chen Zhen, was a big hit when it was released in 1995.\nThe show took the character from Lee’s version, expanded the backstory to reveal his roots and early life in Shanghai and added a romance, before following the general arc of the film. With a directing team headed by Benny Chan Muk-sing, and action choreographed by Yen himself, it is a rip-roaring action series.\n\n\nATV decided to make the series thanks to a renewed interest in the character after the success of Jet Li Lianjie’s exemplary retelling of Chen Zhen’s story in the 1994 film Fist of Legend. Yen and ATV’s production team approached the series as a tribute to Bruce Lee and the original film, and riffed on some of the more well-known scenes.\nYen, however, avoids emulating Lee’s jeet kune do fighting style. Instead, he employs a lot of close-in wing chun moves – a discipline in which both he and the master himself were trained.\nYen brings a lot of himself to this portrayal of Chen Zhen. The character is more likeable than Lee’s version, and Yen plays him as a good-hearted, socially conscious youth who veers off course during his life, and then corrects himself and does the right thing.\n\nOne of the most popular aspects of the 1972 film was that it espoused a brand of Chinese nationalism that was not directly supportive of the state. Fist of Fury, the film, featured a kind of pan-Chinese nationalism that praised the resilience of the Chinese people, rather than the nation itself.\nThe series expands on the film’s rejection of the “sick man of Asia” label. It shifts focus to the oppression by foreign powers and their Chinese collaborators before pivoting – like the original – to the occupying Imperial Japanese Army.\nThe story starts with Chen living happily as a peasant in Guangdong until his family is killed by bandits. He moves to Shanghai and starts work in a timber mill, taking on the unscrupulous bosses who refuse to pay the workers their wages.\nChen’s martial arts skills see him employed by the criminal Green Gang, and he becomes a gangster, while falling in love with a Japanese girl who, unfortunately, turns out to be the daughter of a Japanese general.\n\nWhen Chen’s martial arts teacher, the honourable old-style Confucian Huo Yuanjia (Eddy Ko Hung) – a real-life figure – is murdered, Chen leaves his life of crime to carry out his master’s wish: to unite Shanghai’s martial arts schools against the Japanese occupiers and prove that China is not the “sick man of Asia”.\nThe martial arts scenes are excellent – although they are sometimes sped up too much – and look as good as those in a big-screen kung fu film. A fight at a lion dance festival would have even made the legendary Wong Fei-hung, a master lion dancer, proud.\nYen returned to the role in 2010 for Andrew Lau Wai-keung’s Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, an enjoyable action film that completely ignored his dramatic death in the original film.\nIn this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.\nWant more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook.\n