director of the millennium

Chen Guokun's appearance was unanimously recognized by all the crew members.

Everyone said he didn't need to act, he looked like he had walked out of an old Bruce Lee movie.

The only pity is that Chen Guokun is 44 years old after all, and his actual age is ten years older than Bruce Lee was at that time.

Fortunately, as an actor, Chen Guokun has maintained himself very well. He looks no different when he plays a 40-year-old at the age of 30. The most is that the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes are a little more obvious, which can be covered with concealer in due time.

It's much better than Andy Lau still playing a 30-year-old at the age of 60.

After the male lead was confirmed without any surprise, the "Bruce Lee" crew naturally entered the actual filming stage.

There was no press conference, no media publicity, and not even the Asian cultural opening ceremony. The "Bruce Lee" crew started filming in Los Angeles on a quiet day in September.

The first scene shot was of Bruce Lee during his school days, which was also the opening of the movie.

Because Bruce Lee spoke Cantonese very well and the company he signed with was Golden Harvest in Hong Kong, many people who had only heard of Bruce Lee's name but had never actually known him would mistakenly believe that Bruce Lee was from Hong Kong and went to Hollywood to develop his career.

But in fact, this is not the case. Bruce Lee is a real overseas Chinese. He was born in San Francisco. As for the fact that he is good at Cantonese, it is only because he is the descendant of immigrants from Guangdong Province.

However, less than a year after he was born, his parents took him back to Hong Kong Island to live.

And he is also an actor who debuted as a child star.

In February 1941, three-month-old Bruce Lee appeared on the screen for the first time in the Cantonese film "Golden Gate Girl" directed by Ng Kam-ha.

He continued to film after that, and had made five or six movies before going to the United States to study in college.

At the same time, he has been interested in martial arts and kung fu since he was a child.

When he was in the second grade of junior high school in Hong Kong Island, Bruce Lee was keen on fighting. Seeing this, Edward, the physical education teacher of the college, encouraged Bruce Lee to participate in inter-school boxing competitions, and arranged Bruce Lee in the boxing team to train after school every day.

So he led the school to win the inter-school boxing competition, defeating three-time boxing champion Gary Elms who represented King George V School.

Well, in a sense, when he was in junior high school, Bruce Lee achieved the same feat as Huo Yuanjia in defeating the strongman.

At this point, his "love of fighting" character was out of control, and he eventually injured his opponent in a fight. Afterwards, Bruce Lee's parents discussed the matter and decided to let Bruce Lee study and live in the United States.

The story of Wu Yuan's movie "Bruce Lee" begins when Bruce Lee was studying at the University of Washington.

Here, he did not give up his hobby of martial arts and continued to practice Wing Chun, Tai Chi, Hung Gar, Cai Li Fot and other boxing styles, while also enjoying his campus life.

While facing the racial discrimination that was common in that era, he also met his wife who would be his lifelong companion.

During this process, he also accepted the challenge of a Japanese karate player, and finally defeated the opponent after a duel. He became famous among the Asian martial arts enthusiasts in Seattle, and opened a martial arts school privately, accepted Jesse Glover as his first disciple, and met Takeyuki Kimura, James Demier and others. In short, the first third of the movie "Bruce Lee" mainly focuses on Bruce Lee before he entered the Hollywood film and television industry, which can be regarded as a foreshadowing for his fame and superb martial arts personality.

Why is Bruce Lee so legendary?
This is because his Kung Fu is not some fancy skills learned for performance, but a real combination of various traditional Chinese martial arts. He is a master boxer who is invincible in Seattle and even opened a martial arts school and has accepted many Chinese, European and American disciples.

Later, by chance, he became a martial arts actor.

So in Wu Yuan's movie "Bruce Lee", Bruce Lee is not just an actor, he is also a real martial arts master, and the scenes of him practicing martial arts and fighting in martial arts when he was young are not trivial at all.

This is also the significance of biographical films, allowing people who don’t know Bruce Lee to clearly know who he is after watching the movie, instead of vaguely thinking that he is just a very famous kung fu actor, the previous Jackie Chan.

Of course, these scenes are of utmost importance to Chen Guokun. How to make the fight look good and beautiful while also conforming to Bruce Lee's own martial arts skills is a very difficult thing to do.

If another actor were to do the role, he would definitely not be able to pull it off. You cannot expect a martial arts actor to be able to master Wing Chun, Tai Chi, Hung Gar, Choy Li Fot and other styles of boxing.

But Chen Guokun is not an ordinary actor. He knows Bruce Lee well and has actually studied and learned these boxing techniques over the past decade in order to play this character well.

Although he cannot be compared with the true master Bruce Lee, Chen Guokun has also mastered these boxing techniques. At least he can fool the laymen with some fancy moves.

The action director Wu Yuan specially invited from Cheng Long's martial arts class didn't even have much room to play. Sometimes he had to discuss with Chen Guokun how to fight so that it would be more in line with the character.

This kind of shooting situation also made Wu Yuan feel quite interesting. The protagonist knew the characters in the script better than he, the screenwriter and director, which really saved him a lot of trouble.

Looking at the footage shot by the camera, and watching Bruce Lee, played by Chen Guokun, using all kinds of cool and photogenic boxing techniques to beat up the short Japanese karate fighter, Wu Yuan immediately thought of a word that is currently very popular on the domestic Internet.

"Bi Bo Ran!"

Just the fight between Chen Guokun and a small boss in the first third of the movie was very exciting. A biographical film managed to capture the flavor of early Hong Kong kung fu films, which really surprised Wu Yuan.

Perhaps his previous views on the film were too conservative.

Even though it's a biographical film, this "Bruce Lee" has the potential to be a big hit!

Apart from anything else, there is the legendary color of Bruce Lee himself + the elements of retro Hong Kong Kung Fu movies + the Hollywood style of the 70s.

With these elements combined, perhaps this movie can achieve better box office results than "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"!
After all, the "retro" trend is actually quite popular in the film market, especially for the generation of European and American movie fans who were once fascinated by Bruce Lee and Hong Kong kung fu films. Even though they are at least fifty years old, they might go to the cinema for this movie!
Think of the global box office of 3.29 million U.S. dollars for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", and then think of the plot in the movie that "tribute" to Bruce Lee that made most movie fans dissatisfied.

Wu Yuan was a little excited.

Perhaps the final box office of Bruce Lee will bring a special surprise! (End of this chapter)