Jet Fighter

Kungfu Superstar Jet Li Makes His First Movie Appearance in Five Years with Blades of the Guardians

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Kungfu cinema did not begin with flying kicks or gravity-defying stunts. Its origins evolved from earlier forms of Chinese entertainment like Chinese opera, which often featured stylised martial arts movements. In the 1920s and 1930s, early Chinese filmmakers began spinning tales of wandering swordsmen, honour-bound knights-errant, and ghostly assassins inspired by the vast historical martial arts literary tradition. These first martial arts films were known as wuxia films. They were slow, stagey and often fantastical, relying on painted backdrops, theatrical gestures to convey a world of righteousness and revenge, and special effects in fight scenes. Wuxia movies may be slow and gimmicky, but they slowly paved the way for what would one day become one of Asia's most influential cultural exports.

Over the years, Kungfu films began to erode the popularity of wuxia flicks, and by the 1970s, Hong Kong Kungfu storytelling reached its height. Shaw Brothers Studio industrialised Kungfu action cinema with story conferences, stunt teams, sound stages, and an assembly line of director-choreographers who treated martial arts on film with almost scientific precision. Under filmmakers like Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung, the genre grew teeth. Chang's films introduced a masculine, blood-and-brotherhood ethos, while Lau - himself a martial arts master — brought authenticity and technique, grounding the action in real styles and philosophy.

This era produced the first wave of legends. Ti Lung and David Chiang became icons of heroic brotherhood; Gordon Liu's bald-headed monk in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin became the definitive image of Shaolin discipline. Audiences devoured these stories not only for their action, but also for their moral clarity, where honour still meant something, and a single skilled fighter could confront corruption head-on. Then came the shockwave that changed everything.