"Ip Man 4: The End" not only means the end of the big IP of this Kung Fu movie, but also means that another era of Chinese Kung Fu movies is coming to an end. Following Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li, Yen Zidan, as the fourth-generation leader of Chinese Kung Fu movies, really brought him to the pinnacle of the image of the master of Wing Chun boxing by Ip Man. From the good food and clothing in his youth, to the humiliation of survival in his middle age, to the loneliness in his old age, Ye Wen's soul is as if it has been integrated into the blood of Donnie Yen. It makes us feel that Ye Wen is Donnie Yen, and Donnie Yen is. Ip man!
Ye Wen’s previous Kung Fu heroes would either "face the waves with arrogance and blood like the red sunlight" to defend their homes and defend the country, resist foreign aggression, or go back and forth with the eagle dogs of the Qing court under the banner of "anti-Qing and reviving" Zhou Xuan, however, when he arrived in "Ye Wen", he became the image of a Gu Jiahao man who "there is no man who is afraid of his wife in this world, but only a man who respects his wife", which attracted countless female fans at once. By the end of the chapter, his wife Zhang Yongcheng has already passed away, and the film revolves around the relationship between father and son to start the topic of family affection. It also makes Ye Wen contract a sickness, and the whole person looks miserable. So even if the "Ip Man" series kept Ye Wen downing Japanese generals, British boxing champions, and American soldiers to exaggerate national sentiments, in the final analysis, Ye Wen was just a small family rooted in happiness, with too many personal melancholy. There are not many civilian heroes with great national sentiments!
In Ye Wen's previous Kung Fu films, there were always vicious villains contending with the protagonist. Nalan Yuanshu in "A Man Should Be Self-Strengthening", Ordo in "Fang Shiyu", and Maning in "New Shaolin Five Ancestor" Son, the Yankong in "Iron Monkey", some are court eagle dogs, some are scum of the arena, are fierce villains with strong combat effectiveness. The so-called villain in the "Ip Man" series is much more gentle. Miura in "Ip Man 1" is just a Japanese warrior with strong self-esteem, far not as sinister and vicious as Fujita Tsuyoshi in "Jing Wu Hero"; The tornado in "Ip Man 2" is nothing more than an arrogant and domineering fighting maniac who looks down on Chinese martial arts, while Zhang Tianzhi in "Ip Man 3" is not even a villain except for his arrogance. In this way, the villain is not evil, and it weakens the audience's sense of substitution to some extent. Watching the action scene is just to appreciate the martial arts performance!
In Ye Wen's previous Kung Fu movies, the martial arts scenes often set up a very dangerous situation, and the pros and cons started a life and death fight. In the narrow lane decisive battle of "A Man Should Be Self-improvement", both sides had no retreat and had to fight to the death. In the end, Huang Feihong used Foshan’s shadowless feet to break Nalan Yuanshu’s cloth stick, which was a dangerous move for soldiers. At the end of "Iron Monkey", the fire-burning stakes are extremely dangerous. Every time the stake breaks, one party will be worried about their lives. But in the "Ip Man" series, in addition to the contest between Ye Man and Miura, which has a lot of national sentiment, it is indispensable to win. Others such as the duel tornado of Ye Man or the battle between Ye Man and Zhang Tianzhi do not involve life and death hatred, but In martial arts, at most, defeat the opponent. And in "Ip Man 4" there are five arena competitions. Those literary plays are placed between these arena plays, which are more like mixing time, and the series of plots are very blunt. The so-called conflicts are also contradictory for contradictions. , Is not so sharp that you have to fight to death to give up!
Of course, as the most successful kung fu film series in more than a decade, the end of "Ip Man" also means the end of the era of traditional kung fu films. Looking at the Chinese film market in 2019, there is no other than "Ip Man 4". The pure kung fu movie is released. The 56-year-old Donnie Yen may no longer be able to move, but what about the younger generation?
, 45-year-old Wu Jing is already the top box office of domestic movies, but he is fading away from kung fu movies. The "Wolf Warriors" series are military-themed fighting movies at all, but "The Wandering Earth" and "The Climber" are both science fiction and mountaineering. Although there are action scenes, they cannot be put into the category of kung fu movies anyway. The 45-year-old Zhang Jin’s three films on his own, the box office of "Ip Man's Story: Zhang Tianzhi" was barely over 100 million in the 2018 Lunar New Year archives (not the same as the box office of "Ip Man 4"), except for one pass. There is nothing to be desired outside of Nanta, and "The Unbeaten Kowloon" is more like an image trash created by Chen Guo in a state of mental confusion.
So Zhang Jin is more suitable for playing villains, such as Ma San in "The Great Master", the warden in "Slaying the Wolf 2", and Zhang Tianzhi in "Ip Man 3", all of which were portrayed by him as classic roles. The 47-year-old Zhao Wenzhuo can only shoot on the Internet, and the 46-year-old Fan Shaohuang has been in TV dramas and movies all the year round. As for Wu Yue, An Zhijie, Wu Yunlong and the like, they are the life of supporting actors and villains. To be the boss of a kung fu movie, it is really embarrassing if you want to lead the future Chinese kung fu movie. In the glorious period of Shaw Brothers, Wang Yu, Ti Lung, Jiang David, Chen Guantai, Fu Sheng, Qi Guanjun, Guo Zhui, Luo Mang and other kung fu stars shined from generation to generation, turning kung fu images into screen daily routines, but today’s kung fu movies have fallen. Being a big non-mainstream web, there is no chance to be on the big screen, which is really embarrassing. As the most proud genre of Chinese-language movies, where is the future of kung fu movies? Maybe no one can find the answer!
