2002
Because I was home-schooled, I had better ways to spend my spare time. Besides Kung Fu class, my social life consisted of going to the local gym in Colne (which was underneath an Italian restaurant). I went there because my mother had won a free membership. I could now perform particular exercises which were listed in a Bruce Lee book that was compiled by John Little - The Art of Expressing the Human Body. There was one day when I was the only one who was there. One of the female trainers had a conversation with the male owner and they were hoping to spread word-of-mouth by claiming that Wesley Snipes had trained there. This was during a time when he was still considered a box office draw. It was April, and Blade 2 had come out in England circa late March.
2002 was my most computer-oriented year up to that point in time, I was gaming more than I watched TV because 2002 was very much lacking in quality programming. I mostly played on my Playstation 1 console. The only friends who I had played games with were 2/3 of my nephews. Although I had been using the internet since 2001, there were more games for me to play than sites of interest to visit. My family’s cable TV provider was a company called NTL (National Transcommunications Limited). They had a TV internet system, which lost its novelty by 2002. Because we didn’t have any computers, we went to the library to use some. It was only in 2005 that we had enough money to purchase our own, but I don’t regret going to the library. One of the white librarians was an Asian cinema fan who was kind enough to offer me some films to borrow. I also learned about a select group of DVD sites. A decade later, most of the best ones (HK Flix, DVD United, Poker Industries and Sensasian) were already defunct (except Yes Asia).
In February, I became a fan of Wong Jing after renting Columbia’s DVDs of High Risk and The New Legend of Shaolin from Blockbuster. Both movies starred Jet Li. The good news was that the visual quality was excellent. The bad news was that they were only available in English dubbed format despite the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ironically, the theatrical release of this film was available in both dubbed and subtitled formats. Because of Jet Li’s increasing popularity in 2001 with Kiss of the Dragon and The One, the two Wong Jing movies were re-released on DVD. In 2002, Fist of Legend was also re-released on DVD because it was an influence on the two Wachowskis in regards to hiring Yuen Woo-Ping to choreograph the fights for The Matrix.
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The brothers wanted Jet Li to play Seraph in The Matrix Reloaded. When he declined, they hired Ngai Sing (a.k.a. Collin Chou), who was in three of Jet’s movies - Kung Fu Cult Master (written and directed by Wong Jing), The Bodyguard from Beijing and My Father is a Hero (written and produced by Wong Jing). The latter two movies were re-released on U.K. DVD in April as The Defender and The Enforcer. Similarly, Jet Li’s The Tai-Chi Master was re-released on DVD as Twin Warriors. The first reason was to cash in on the fact that Michelle Yeoh was in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The second reason is because that Yuen Woo-Ping was the main fight choreographer of both films. Strangely, The Tai-Chi Master didn’t get a Western cinema release. Also strange is that despite the digital remastering, the wires were not digitally removed from the fight scenes.
In late September, Channel 4 aired a documentary called Jackie Chan: Dragon Power. Despite the implied emphasis of the title, it may as well have been a promo for Hong Kong entertainers in general. The documentary gave away its trendy motive by making a point about how the likes of Blade II and Windtalkers were benefiting from H.K. talent. The main interviewees were Wesley Snipes, John Woo and Lee Evans (the co-star of the then-upcoming Highbinders). The other notable interviewee was Robert Shaye, whose company had produced Blade II. He remembered the popularity of Kung Fu movies in the `70s: “I think the major characteristic of a Hong Kong action movie, which was known as a Karate movie at that time, was the star’s personality. I don’t think anyone could get terribly excited about the directorial expertise, but the actors were very amusing in different sorts of ways. Of course, Bruce Lee was the most spectacular of all of them.”
When I saw Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997) in the fall of 2002, I didn’t realize that this would be Sammo Hung’s last movie as director for a very long time. I, like many others, assumed that Sammo was just gearing up for his next project. A film wouldn’t come out with his name as the director until 2016 which marked the release of The Bodyguard. Fans didn’t realize it because the success of H.K. choreographers in Hollywood made it seem inevitable that Sammo would follow suit. In the late nineties, he had the commercial momentum of starring in his very own American TV series. By 2001, he was going to be the choreographer of the next big Jackie Chan movie. Had the movie (Highbinders) been a success, we may have seen him being hired on some stellar Hollywood productions…but Sammo returned to China where he found himself in the unusual position of being credited on a movie (Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle) where Yuen Woo-Ping hogged the spotlight. Years later, the Ip Man movies restored his credit and credibility but Hollywood wasn’t calling because the star of the series (Donnie Yen) wasn’t exactly becoming Hollywood’s next movie star.
Back to 2002, reading about Sammo’s final nineties movie as a director had confirmed in my mind about the difference between Sammo and Wong Jing as storytellers. According to an issue of Hong Kong Film Connection, there was a lunch break where Sammo and his collaborator huddled together to discuss the film’s ending. Patrick Lung Kong, one of the actors, had a suggestion which was eventually shot down by Sammo, who noted that the movie’s main conflict would have to be solved by Wong Fei-Hung (thereby conventionalizing it). This is where Jing surpasses him as a storyteller because High Risk was a Jet Li movie where his character didn’t resolve the main conflict. Martial arts fans like to criticize Jing for wasting talent, but Sammo squandered the martial talent of Wei Pei on The Prodigal Son. Jing replaced Sammo as my favourite director because he actually made me laugh with his wry wit. His humour also has a darker edge. When Jing lampoons Bruce Lee, it’s funny. When Sammo does it, it’s just weird. Jing had cited Sammo as an influence in an interview, so I would say that the apprentice had surpassed the master.
As for 2002, it was the last year where I felt completely calm and confident. I felt more safe being at home to the point that I was almost agoraphobic except for Kung Fu class where the teens were more sensible. Going to college in 2003 brought up my anxiety about dealing with immature teens. It didn’t help that I didn’t live in the same town as any of my classmates, but then it was a college situated in a county (North Yorkshire) which a lot of them didn’t even live in. This is because they came from West Yorkshire. For example, some people who bullied me at secondary school had attended this college. They didn’t bully me at college but there were no opportunities for them to do so. If I had it my way, I would have continued to study at home until it was time to go to a university. While school life was better than what happened to me in the nineties, I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life. With hindsight, meeting people from online was all that I needed to improve socially. College just got in the way and diluted things. 2002 was probably my favourite year of that decade because there was nothing to worry about. I was about as carefree as I could possibly be in my entire life. On the CNX channel, I saw a H.K. movie which marked the end of this era. It was titled 2002.
