Here's how the Once Upon A Time In China series ranks from worst to best. Any fan of the martial arts film genre and especially of the Hong Kong variety knows the name Wong Fei-hung well. The legendary healer, master of Hung Ga kung fu, and Chinese folk hero has been the subject of innumerable movies. While their stories are largely apocryphal to Wong's actual life, the legend he left behind is what the adaptations are truly inspired by, and few have been as popular as the Once Upon A Time In China movies.
The first Once Upon A Time In China debuted in 1991, directed by legendary filmmaker Tsui Hark with the then still relatively new Jet Li portraying Wong. The film was a colossal hit, and also popularized George Lam's rendition of "A Man Of Determination" as the definitive take on the theme song associated with Wong as a kung fu movie hero. Two direct sequels would swiftly follow in Once Upon A Time In China II and Once Upon A Time In China III.
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Li's departure from the franchise ahead of Once Upon A Time In China IV led to Wong being played by his Fong Sai-yuk co-star Vincent Zhao for the next two films. Li would later return as Wong for the final chapter of the series, 1997's Once Upon A Time In China & America. While the franchise would occasionally have its rockier moments, the Once Upon A Time In China series is nonetheless the arguable modern face of Wong Fei-hung's big-screen adventures and utterly essential viewing for martial arts fans. Here is the Once Upon A Time In China series, ranked from weakest to strongest.
Vincent Zhao gives it his all as Wong Fei-hung in his first time in the role, but despite some of the early promise he exhibits as the lead of the martial arts movie, Once Upon A Time In China IV is a major step down from the previous trilogy. For Once Upon A Time In China IV, Wong returns to Beijing for a Lion Dance competition and ends up battling the Red Lantern Sect. He also meets the sister of his love interest Yee Siu-kwan (Rosamund Kwan), May, a.k.a. "14th Aunt" (Jean Wang) in recognition of their distant familial ties, and her romantic feelings for Wong bring to light one of the biggest issues with the movie. Released in June of 1993, just four months after its immediate predecessor, Once Upon A Time In China IV plays less like a passing of the torch from Jet Li to Vincent Zhao, and more as a weaker rehash of elements from its predecessors with less impressive kung fu action scenes. In the role of May, the Lion Dancing competition, and the Red Lantern Sect, so many elements of Once Upon A Time In China IV have a direct and much better-executed parallel in the previous three movies. It doesn't help that the lower budget and watered-down sense of scale compared to the previous Once Upon A Time In China movies make Once Upon A Time In China IV feel far more basic and routine.
While the Once Upon A Time In China movies always dabbled in wire-fu, Once Upon A Time In China IV is at once utterly enamored with it while not knowing how to handle it with any sense of weight or fluidity. Not a single martial arts fight scene in the movie is as memorable as those of the original Once Upon A Time In China movies, and despite Zhao's physical talents, the wire-heavy kung fu fight choreography just doesn't have the same magic as Wong's previous adventures. Once Upon A Time In China IV didn't resonate at the Hong Kong box office and marked a rocky start for Zhao as a leading man. Sadly, Once Upon A Time In China IV is ultimately the series' low point in just about every way.
After the letdown of Once Upon A Time In China IV, things would start to improve in the series with the next installment Once Upon A Time In China V, though still not by much. The movie sees Wong and his friends battling pirates, while Rosamund Kwan also returns as Yee, which forms a love triangle between her, Wong, and May. For what it's trying to do, Once Upon A Time In China V is marginally enjoyable. Released in November of 1994, Zhao had more time to grow into the role of Wong as a formidable martial arts master compared to the rushed nature of his entry into the series, and for his second time as the revered kung fu folk hero, he gets the job done adequately if not spectacularly. Still, many of the same problems that were the downfall of Once Upon A Time In China IV are still present here, including its diluted tone from the epic, grand historical adventure of the first three movies in the series.
The fight scenes also go overboard into outright silliness with their over-embrace of wire-fu. Among the six films in the series, Once Upon A Time In China V isn't the worst, but it's certainly the most generic, and certainly one of the weaker efforts of Tsui Hark's career. Despite its financial failure, Zhao returned in the Wong Fei-Hung Series, running from 1995 to 1996. The kung fu-driven franchise made a massive comeback, albeit one that was also the series finale, with Once Upon A Time In China & America, in which Jet Li returned as Wong. When it comes to Zhao's career, the Once Upon A Time In China series proved an ill-fit for the leading man. Western fans of Asian cinema would do better to give 2010's True Legend a look to see Zhao's talents really shine, and with much better wire-fu execution, to boot.
Move over, James Bond and Iron Man. The Guinness World Record for the hero with the most appearances in any media series goes to Hong Kong cinema's Wong Fei-hung. Born in 1847, Wong was a real-life martial artist and doctor who has been mythologized to legendary status. But among the 107 films and 20 TV shows made about Wong so far, Jet Li's take on the character remains the most iconic. Envisioned by Hong Kong New Wave wizard director, Tsui Hark, the Once Upon a Time in China series from the 1990s successfully rebooted the hero for the modern age, fusing stunts from the peak of Hong Kong cinema with a potent questioning of national identity.
The original Once Upon a Time in China takes place in the late 19th century, when the ruling Qing Empire of China was invaded by Western powers with major ports of the country colonized. Wong (Jet Li) runs Po Chi Lam, an ancient Chinese medicine clinic, and teaches kung fu to apprentices, forming a civilian self-defense militia. His activities attract the ire of American general Jackson (Jonathan Isgar), who is trafficking Chinese laborers to San Francisco for the California Gold Rush. Jackson is helped by the Shaho Gang of bandits, a collaborationist Qing official (Wong Chi-yeung), and even a rival martial arts, Master Yim (Yen Shi-kwan). Wong now has to survive these parties' attempts on his life, all while trying to protect his love interest, Thirteenth Aunt (Rosamund Kwan), from falling into the traffickers' captivity.
Even though there had already been 85 Wong Fei-hung films before Once Upon a Time in China, Tsui revitalized the folk hero and pushed the franchise to new heights. At this point in his career, Tsui was already known as one of the leading figures of the Hong Kong New Wave, and he brought American film school sensibilities and a nihilistic, political edge to Hong Kong cinema. At the same time, he was reviving folk legends and other intellectual properties as wild, trailblazing spectacles with nascent Hollywood special effects. Once Upon a Time in China became his greatest directorial success and spawned five sequels. At this point, Jet Li was already a star from his debut movie, Shaolin Temple, but had only acted in six films. Once Upon a Time in China kickstarted his prolific decade in the 1990s, by the end of which he reached Hollywood stardom. The series would reunite the two men many more times in other projects like The Swordsman II and Black Mask, unofficially starting a martial arts craze.
The immediate appeal of the series is that it features stunts from the prime of Hong Kong cinema, as Tsui united master choreographers, Lau Kar-leung and Yu Jim-yuen, the latter of whom was the master of Jackie Chan. Any of the action set-pieces in the first movie can easily be a spectacular highlight in most Hollywood action films, but the first defining characteristic of stunts in Hong Kong cinema is clarity. Even though Tsui's film is beautiful to look at, his camera is never cumbersome or flashy; Tsui is solely dedicated to capturing the physicality of the choreography in the simplest, cleanest way possible.
The second trait is creativity, which is where the movie shines. The stunts of Hong Kong cinema are thrilling because they are always finding ways to engage with the geography, and an early example in Once Upon a Time in China takes place in a restaurant where the characters fight with plates and knives. The engagement with geography guarantees the fights are always versatile and fluid, with characters appearing to constantly think on their feet, getting the audience's undivided attention.
But above all, the core element that makes Once Upon a Time in China so potent and enduring are its themes. Tsui Hark is a figurehead of Hong Kong New Wave, and the defining commonality across all Hong Kong New Wave films is capturing its people's anxieties concerning their self-identity before the 1997 handover of Hong Kong sovereignty from British rule to China. Even though the film is set a century in the past, it still captures that uncertainty and questioning. As Tsui was making this movie, China was going through Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening up" policy in the time after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. As aforementioned, Wong at first tries to be diplomatic, but when foreigners are invasive and colonizing, is there really a space for diplomacy? When they're borderline genocidal, are extremism and xenophobia justified? These are all questions that the film poses to the audience. 152ee80cbc
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