I love talking about martial arts. All aspects of martial arts. I recently got the chance to talk with Jeremy Lesniak from whistlekick Martial Arts Radio and Scott Bolon (frequent author here) to talk about martial arts and how the rest of the world sees us and our weird little lifestyle. We’re putting out a 2 part episode with Part I on Martial Thoughts Podcast, and Part II on whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. While we were talking, it came up that most interactions non-martial artists have with traditional martial arts is through the media, specifically martial arts movies.
We also came up with the idea that martial artists, and non-martial artists, have different ways we watch the same movies. There are some movies that, as martial artists, influence the viewers and give us a bad or undeserved reputation. Scott Bolon and I decided to tackle which movies would be movies that show martial arts/martial artists in a good light and which ones only serve to further the bad reputation we already have.
You know it when you see it
Since I got the “bad” movie option, I want to talk first about what a bad martial arts movie is. We’ve all seen bad martial arts movies from the 70’s and 80’s. Some are bad because of acting, plot, or general production value. Some are bad because of the poor or unrealistic choreography in the martial arts themselves. I, and many other martial arts junkies, still watch them, despite their cringeworthiness. However, the “bad” movies I’m writing about here are the ones that either show martial arts in a bad light, or grossly, and usually purposely, misrepresent the people in martial arts. Think the Kobra Kai dojo. Its okay if that’s your bad guy in the movie. This shows that their motivations are not the most honorable, and are therefore when they’re defeated by the hero, i.e. Daniel-san, it shows how good triumphs. It’s another thing when the hero of the movie is more of a bad guy than the other movie’s bad guys. This anti-hero uses his martial arts skills in inappropriate, illegal, or immoral ways. To illustrate what I mean, here are some examples of bad martial arts movies to show to non-martial artists.
Steven Seagal Movies “Above the Law, Marked for Justice, Out for Death, etc.”
Okay, I know. I’m an Aiki martial artist, and Seagal Sensei has done an amazing job of bringing Aikido to the American consciousness. He and his movies, however, may not have been the best ambassadors for martial arts in general. I may be picking on Mr. Seagal, but many other martial arts action stars fall into this same mold. In his movies, he’s often, as in many martial arts movies, a cop or some sort of legal authority. When his authority isn’t enough, he turns away from any legal or socially acceptable means of conflict resolution and goes on a one-man death parade. The idea of a vigilante justice beating, though appealing, is not a positive image that we should be promoting to the public. Does Above the Law really make mothers want to bring their 10-year-old daughter into an Aikido class? Aikido is about harmonious conflict resolution, and hopefully arriving at a solution where everyone walks away unharmed. Mr. Seagal rarely lets anyone walk away.
Ninja, Ninja Everywhere, and not a Drop to Kick.
There have been a couple ninja movies that have made their appearance in the last couple years. Scott Adkins’ Ninja and Ninja II, as well as Ninja Assassin. And come on, who doesn’t love a good ninja flick? The Ninja duology are reminiscent of the Ninja series of movies from the 80’s. However, they both show an angry man who often uses his skills inappropriately. In the sequel, there’s a scene where the protagonist clears the room mainly because he’s pissed at the world, drunk, and a random guy bumps into him. It actually made me uncomfortable to watch that scene, as there was no “good” motivation for that fight.
Ninja Assassin has two main problems. First, the ninja weapons are typically computer generated, so they and the protagonist can do inhuman things, as they take out 20-30 trained assassins in a single scene only to do so again in the next scene. Secondly, there’s also a large amount of gore for gore’s sake.
The Raid Movies
First off, I LOVE The Raid and The Raid II. The good side of these movies is that it is rare that we get to see some of the atypical martial arts of the world portrayed in cinematic media. If you haven’t seen them, both movies are made in Indonesia, and feature the Indonesian art of Pencak Silat. However, both movies portray an exorbitant amount of physical damage and violence, even for a martial arts movie. Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, which had copious amounts of blood and violence, had almost a cartoonish feel to the violence. The Raid shows the specific, realistic and brutal aspects of violence without (pardon the pun) pulling any punches. Watching it, you actually have to turn up your internal “violence tolerance” meter to watch the movies. I had to stop watching it the first time I saw the movie and come back to it when I was in a different state of mind. This elevation of lavish violence is, again, not what we want the average non-martial artist to think this is what martial arts leads to.
John Wick Movies
When I first watched John Wick, I assumed it was going to be a simple shoot ’em up movie, with Gun-Fu thrown in. I was gladly surprised. The movie team does a good job of showing a mix of Judo/Jujutsu techniques in close-quarters combat situations with other martial arts and weapon retaining techniques liberally sprinkled in where appropriate. It seems Mr. Reeves has been keeping up with his martial arts training after the Matrix trilogy. However, John Wick suffers from the same basic problems as The Raid movies and Ninja movies, with a twist. It’s basically a revenge flick, but who can blame him. They killed his dog AND stole his car. There is hyper-violence involved, but there are also the superhuman capabilities of the protagonist. Any human doing what he does for more than 5 or 10 minutes would collapse, let alone for the full hour and a half of the movie. Those two things, although great for watching a movie, don’t show martial artists in the best light.
Conclusion
To be clear, I own all the movies that I mentioned above. They proudly sit amongst my collection of martial arts movies starring Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, and Jet Li. I also re-watch them occasionally. However, I only really show them to people who are already martial artists, and I don’t watch them when my kid is awake. That’s usually the threshold I have for what makes a movie a good thing to represent martial artists and our lifestyle which we love.
- Review of The Ankō Itosu Biography - September 13, 2021
- Suparinpei-The Last Kata of Goju-Ryu Karate - July 12, 2021
- Swords Are Cool…That’s All I’ve Got - March 4, 2021
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