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The Kungfu Genius Behind THE MATRIX
Author: Martha Burr
It is the 22nd century, an eerie, mechanical world where machines keep their human slaves passive by literally plugging them into a virtual-reality universe that appears as the 20th century world we know. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, a computer hacker recruited by a woman named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) to join a band of freedom fighters. These rebels, led by Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne), are struggling against the powerful computers which have mankind locked in their grip.
The film's directors Larry and Andy Wachowski explain, "We began with the premise that every single thing we believe in today and every single physical item is actually a total fabrication created by an electronic universe. Once you start dealing with an electronic reality you can really push the boundaries of what might be humanly possible. So if characters in The Matrix can have instantaneous information downloaded into their heads, they should, for example, be able to be as good a kung-fu master as Jackie Chan."
This idea offered the Wachowski brothers another opportunity - to work into the movie fight choreography they had seen in Hong Kong action films. "We've always wanted to bring Hong Kong fight sensibilities into our Western story ideas," they said. "This was the perfect opportunity."
Enter Yuen Woo Ping
Larry and Andy Wachowski (whose last feature was the dark thriller Bound, starring Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly), had no problem making a choice about who they wanted to do the fight choreography. They had seen the work of Yuen Woo Ping, as a director in The Tai Chi Master, Iron Monkey, and Wing Chun, and as the fight choreographer in the Jet Li movies Fist of Legend and Once Upon a Time in China. And after seeing those, who would need convincing?
It was Yuen Woo Ping who had his own condition, and that was that the directors would guarantee that their cast train long hours to learn kungfu and wire work. "That's a big request," remark the brothers, "How do you tell an actor that they're going to have to spend four months training and learning kungfu when they could make another movie in that same time? That's what impressed us about Keanu. He understood why it was necessary and the dedication it required. In fact, the whole cast has amazed us with their dedication to the training regime - it's been incredibly rigorous."
Keanu, Lawrence, Carrie-Anne and Australian star Hugo Weaving all trained for four months before shooting the film in Australia, mostly in an obscure warehouse north of Hollywood, in Burbank. I was lucky to have the opportunity to visit the group on several occasions, watch the training and stunt sequences, and chat with Woo Ping, Keanu, Lawrence and more of the cast and Hong Kong stunt crew.
Watching the process was, well, history, at least a part of film history. The cast was undergoing rigorous training in kungfu and wirework, while at the same time Woo Ping was choreographing fights and action sequences, video camera in hand, experimenting with angles and techniques. At lunch he would watch the footage and make improvements. Sometimes, if the actors had worked extra hard, they got to watch a Hong Kong action film too.
Early Days
In Hong Kong Yuen Woo Ping is one at the top of his art. Here in America he is relatively unknown, something that might change quickly after The Matrix. His story is a real kungfu story, one intertwined with Chinese opera, Wong Fei Hung, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Along with Tsui Hark, Yuen Woo Ping has been one of the major forces to practically reinvent the modern kungfu movie, bringing innovation in fight choreography, camera angles, tone and editing. The more you watch his movies the more masterful he becomes.
One might think that the Yuen family had cornered the market on kungfu and movie talent genes. Woo Ping's father was Yuen Siu Tin, perhaps even more famous in his day in Hong Kong cinema than his son is there today.
"My father originally was a Peking Opera performer, in Beijing and Shanghai," recounts Woo Ping. "At that time the Cantonese Opera traditionally didn't have fight scenes. And the Southern styles had these kind of staged fight scenes that were horrible. So they figure they want somebody good who is from the North, Peking Opera style, to come and teach and show them. A very famous and far-seeing Cantonese Opera producer got my father, with some of his people, to Hong Kong to show people what the Northerners were doing. It was very enlightening."
Woo Ping continues. "And at that time movies, too, began having fight scenes so they got my father in there as well. His whole group. At first it was all individual, one actor doing his fight scene, another doing theirs. So they said to my father why don't you be the one to organize the choreography? So in that sense, practically my father was the very first founding father of Hong Kong movie fight scenes."
The background in Peking Opera was passed down not only to Woo Ping, but also to all his brothers, who themselves went on to prominence in the Hong Kong film industry as well. (Including Yuen Chung Yan, Sunny Yuen Hsin Yee, Yuen Yat Chok and Brandy Yuen Chun Wei.) Woo Ping studied Northern style kungfu from his dad, and Peking Opera. In addition he attended Yu Jim Yuen's famous Hong Kong opera school for one year as a day student, where he first met classmate Sammo Hung.
Yuen Siu Tin was not only essentially the first martial arts choreographer, but he was also the one that began to make it an art. One of his forums for this was in the celebrated Wong Fei Hung movie series starring Kwan Tak Hing; it was also where Woo Ping got his first taste of the movie action.
"My father worked on a lot of the Wong Fei Hung movies, which were black and white at the time, in the 50's. He played many bad guys, and he did most of the choreography.
My father often brought me and my brothers to the set, and occasionally some big shot actor would ask, hey, whose kid is this, and they'd have us come over and play a little part. My father was teaching a lot of students as well, including myself and my brothers, and we were always trying to figure our which was the best move, from which school. I believe strongly that in action movies there is real gung fu, that you have to have something real. I learned that since I was very little."
It was this constant exposure, and a level of concentration rare for a youngster, that set a young Woo Ping into the irrevocable motion of a film career, embedding within him a deep love for the kungfu genre. "What was to be learned," remarks Woo Ping, "was the movie language, the camera positions, the character personality, and how the chemistry of two people in terms of the fighting styles would mingle together. That's not teachable, that's something you have to watch."
During some of the later Wong Fei Hung films in the 60's Woo Ping got more work on the production side, and started doing stunts and fighting at the Shaw Brothers studio. He recalls, "My si-hing was working for the Shaw Brothers, my younger brother was actually the choreographer, and I was the second, on a film called Blood Stained Tradewinds." You can also see Woo Ping's action in Wang Yu's The Chinese Boxer.
His first job as choreographer was on Ng Se Yuen's Mad Killer (1971), and Woo Ping spent the next half dozen years working with Ng and choreographing his films, some of which include Bloody Fists and Secret Rivals 2.
Directing Jackie Chan
This work gave Woo Ping a great deal of experience, and it was time to move forward. He recalls: "In 1977 I was arguably the best choreographer in Southeast Asia and I was offered opportunities to be a director, but I always felt a little humble, saying I'm not there, I'm not ready. As I was saying this so many of my colleagues, choreographers, were becoming directors one by one. So I said, well, if I don't do it I will be slowing down and not catching up with my friends. So I did my first movie."
For someone with sensibility, the question was what to choose to debut with. Woo Ping remembers, "All the action movies at the time were really bloody, and brutal, and I said, if I become a director, what can I do to break out of that? What can I make refreshing for the audience? I thought, well, I'll do a comedy. And I picked up Jackie Chan and did Snake in Eagles Shadow(1978). I knew Jackie before, and I believed that Jackie Chan had both the gung fu and the acting ability."
Woo Ping's father also came out of retirement to act in Snake in Eagles Shadow. "My father was slowing down quite a bit, but he came out for the film," recalls Woo Ping. "He decided that as an actor he wanted to come out. I looked around, couldn't find anybody that was good, and then, oh, my dad was right there."
The movie was a good match for Woo Ping and Jackie Chan, and they teamed up again for Drunken Master, which also became a huge hit. Then Woo Ping made the Lam Sai Wing movie Magnificent Butcher in 1979, and that same year formed his own production company. He choreographed and produced its first film Buddhist Fist, directed by Tsui Siu Ming, and went on to start up Donnie Yen's career in Drunken Tai Chi.
Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh
From then on it was a matter of Hong Kong film history. Woo Ping made contemporary action films with Tiger Cage, In the Line of Duty 4, and Tiger Cage 2, and then returned to traditional kungfu movies. His choreography for Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China is unforgettable, and Donnie Yen in Iron Monkey brought alive the legend of Wong Fei Hung's father, Wong Kay Ying.
By Tai Chi Master, Woo Ping had reached near perfection. With a cast that included Jet Li, Yuen Biao and Michelle Yeoh, both the choreography and the camerawork was dazzling, the story and the acting was strong, and not least, the action editing put Woo Ping's kungfu movies on a level close to Peckinpah's gunfire ballet montage.
Woo Ping remembers about Tai Chi Master, "In Hong Kong everybody was very afraid of filming anything tai chi wise. Because it's hard, it's not the traditional thing, not easy to play with. But, I always want to come up with something new. I figured, OK, it may be hard, but I think I can do it. And do it well. It turned out to be a great hit."
The legendary story about Zhang San Feng took 3 months of shooting, all in Beijing. The ending fight scenes alone took a month. What makes the film stand out, even among the best of Hong Kong cinema, is the cinematic use of slow motion, camera angles and stylization.
Woo Ping elaborates: "The slow motion, I figured that should be the style, that should be the tone of the film because tai chi is a very floating, ascending move. I asked Jet Li to do it with real speed and real power, and we filmed it in slow motion to make it look like a flying form that fits with the style of wushu and taiji.
"Before I started shooting the movie I knew I wanted to use slow motion, and use a lot of it. The reason that I improvised everything on the set is because we design on the set. It's just all there when I'm filming, not ahead of time. As I'm filming I'm also editing in my head."
Yuen Woo Ping films are very imaginative, yet at the same time the martial arts looks real. I asked him, how, as a martial artist, and a choreographer, and a director, does he find a balance between the artistry of the stylization, and also keep the martial arts looking real and authentic? He answers, "It's really not very difficult. I always know what the approach is, sometime just by heart. I think of the character, first of all, of the chemistry, the personality. Designing it, I decide if I want to exaggerate or make it realistic, or both. An action movie is cross-cultural, cross borders. So my goal is always to tell a story non-verbally. If I can, I would prefer not to have much dialog to tell the story."
Through the years Woo Ping has also developed profound artistic relationships with many of his actors who are both martial artists and non-martial artists, and the relationship between director or choreographer and actor remains individual.
"Everybody has an input," he says. "Everybody knows what he or she does the best. Sometimes we design the moves and the star comes in and says, well, this is not what I can do the best, can I do that? We'll talk about it and go over it. To work with a great martial artist like Li Lian Jie (Jet Li) gives me a lot of confidence. Whatever you can think of, they say, sure, I can do it. I really like Michelle Yeoh because she's very, very smart. I worked with her on Wing Chun. It was a woman's story. She knew a lot of moves, even though she was not a martial artist, from being a dancer. She can learn quickly, and she works really hard. Michelle never, ever said a word about pain or difficulty or anything. Not even once. And after practically every fight she would have a lot of bruises."
Fist of Legend
Fist of Legend was one of the most influential and powerful films to come out of Hong Kong in the 90's, drawing rave reviews from both critics and audiences. It was one which Woo Ping choreographed so beautifully that many people actually consider it a Yuen Woo Ping film. A re-make of Fist of Fury, I asked him if it was hard to re-make a Bruce Lee film that was iconized by so many people.
"I didn't really feel pressure," Woo Ping answers. "From the start, head on, I just felt that I could do a better job. Because I had seen all the Bruce Lee pictures, and upon starting this movie I knew what people could do nowadays and what people could do back then. It's different eras, different times. Things have developed. Basically you tailor the film to the star, like tailoring a suit to someone. Bruce Lee was something Americanized, and Jet Li was a traditional Chinese kungfu artist. You do things accordingly, to each different artist."
Many Yuen Woo Ping films have not only a visual but a moral resonance. Heroes like Wong Fei Hung and Iron Monkey's Wong Kay Ying, The Ching Woo's Chen of Fist of Legend, or Tai Chi Master's Zhang San Feng are all heroes who battle despotic individuals and the corruptions of society or society's elite, defending innocent men and seeking justice for those who deserve it. I ask Woo Ping why he is drawn to these recurring themes.
"The average Joe," he answers, "the average person, feels oppressed, feels depressed, through whatever, you know? And to see somebody on the screen being able to break out of it by fighting, and fighting very hard, gives people a lot of hope. My movies are not intentionally to be political, but to give people this hope. Average people have their big and small problems, and they look on the screen and they see this model and they feel there is someone still in our world who can do something for u ...