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Dragon Tiger Gate - A Wilson Yip
Film
aka Long Hu Men / Lung Fu Mun
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The Development of Comic Books in Hong Kong
Hong Kong is a place where the extraordinary often catches you by
surprise. In this small land legends are created. Amongst them, is a
group of gifted comic book artists who created the genre of ‘martial
arts comics’. This made Hong Kong unique in Asia, as apart from
Japan and the USA there are few countries that can boast their own
style of cartoon artwork that is loved by fans all over the world.
The Hong Kong comic book scene has been growing steadily since the
Second World War. In order to understand the development of comics
in Hong Kong we must first talk about the Japanese manga, its
biggest influence.
The publication of Japanese manga is prolific, there is much space
for all kinds of topics and therefore the subject matters cover the
widest variety – romance, science fiction, children’s stories,
sports to name but a few. There is no censorship in the theme or
form and there is a huge readership; all this gives rise to the
growth of TV cartoon productions. The impact of television on the
growth of the manga is undeniable – with the release of its
television cartoon, the sales of a comic book goes up. Since the
70s, manga artists such as Tezuka Osamu have produced numerous
works, together with the large output of animated cartoons (animé),
and can be seen as the ‘Big brother of comics’. On the other hand
Hong Kong after the war was mainly influence by Chinese cartoons.
The contents were conservative and without the support of animated
cartoons the development was slow and sales limited. In the 60s, the
most popular comic books such as Huei Keung’s ‘Magic Brush’ and Lei
Wai-Jen’s ‘Dotty Girl’ were both influenced by Japanese culture. The
popularity of ‘Magic Brush’ can be attributed to the huge craze at
the end of the 60s for Japan’s Ultraman, as Ultraman was a main
character of the ‘Magic Brush’ cartoon series. At that time,
Ultraman was being shown on TV, even the theatres were showing
Ultraman movies regularly and he was the most popular character with
children. Because of this, quite a few of the local comic books
would add in the character of Ultraman to boost their sales. ‘Dotty
Girl’ was Hong Kong’s first comic book aimed at the young female
market, its drawing style – the large eyed, long legged look came
straight from the Japanese comics. The work of Dung Fong-Yung’s
science fiction comics ‘Science Astro Boy’ and ‘Space Boy’ were
obviously borrowed from Tezuka Osamu’s ‘Astro Boy’.
Hong Kong’s comic books would have to wait for the 70s for its
breakthrough - when ‘The godfather of Hong Kong comics’ Wong
Yuk-Long appeared and created comics with a uniquely Hong Kong
style, setting a new direction for the art form locally. His work
‘Little Rascals’ (1971-1975), which cast him into the limelight, had
a highly distinguishable style of drawing and started the trend of
the Hong Kong martial arts comics. The story was about a group of
youngsters who were expert fighters and fought on the side of the
common Hong Kong folk. The comic was a reflection of society and
readers identified with it totally entirely. At the same time, the
martial arts of kung fu star Bruce Lee was sweeping the world, this
made ’Little Rascals’ an instant hit locally. In 1975 the Hong Kong
government passed a legislation censoring lewd and violent
publications. ‘Little Rascals’ morphed into the recognised ‘Dragon
and Tiger Heroes’. The violence portrayed in the comics was toned
down and settings also moved into an international arena - instead
of overthrowing local bullies, the heroes were thrashing overseas
triads like the Lousha gang.
The success of this storyline set the formula for the Hong Kong
martial arts comic – the showdown between Chinese kung fu
representing righteousness and the overseas warriors representing
evil.
In the 80s, another classic martial arts comic book ‘Chinese Hero’
appeared. Its creator, Ma Wing-Shing, became the most popular local
comic book artist since Wong Yuk-Long. ‘Chinese Hero’ set the sales
record of 200,000 copies of a singular issue. Ma was a great fan of
Japanese manga and continuously learnt from their masters. Japanese
manga artist, Kazuo Koike, had the greatest influence on the
structure of his stories and the development of his characters.
Unlike the typical Hong Kong practice of developing the story along
the way, Ma had already decided on the whole storyline and key
moments right from the start. Obviously Wong Yuk-Long had an
influence on Ma as well - in ‘Chinese Hero’, emulating Wong’s
formula, the main storyline is the Chinese martial artist against
the foreign gangs.
The majority of Hong Kong’s comic book artists publish their work
either through Wong’s ‘Jade Dynasty Publication‘ or Ma’s ‘Culture
World‘ and it tends to be influenced strongly by the two masters. As
a result the subject genre is mainly martial arts and the style of
drawing is similar to theirs. More recently, local artists have
taken their inspiration from Japanese animé and electronic games.
Take, for example, ‘Cyber Weapon’ and ‘The King of Fighters Z’, they
have both been influenced by ‘Streetfighter’ and ‘King of Fighters’.
In fact you can count over ten very similar local titles that are
obviously inspired by those two games, and the trend is still
continuing.
The Hong Kong comic book market has always been dominated by the
martial arts comic books and this genre is now seen as the
particular style of Hong Kong produced comics. It has been
criticised that local comics have only focused on the fighting and
tend to be lacking in content and creativity. In response ‘Jade
Dynasty‘, ‘Culture World‘, and ‘Culturecom Holdings Ltd‘ have made a
huge effort to create new genres and between them they have
published several hundred different types of comic genres,
experimenting with new subject matters and pushing at the
limitations of creativity – hoping that the comic scene in Hong Kong
will bloom and open up into a whole new world.
The Road to Dragon Tiger Gate
It has been almost five years from pre-production to the completion
of shooting of ‘Dragon Tiger Gate’. It took almost three years just
to finalize the script and to assemble the perfect crew and cast.
When Mandarin Entertainment (Holdings) Ltd was listed on the main
board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in September 2001, Chairman
Raymond Wong set the plans to achieve his goal of reviving the dying
film industry in Hong Kong by making investments in quality movies.
Wong has had years of experience in the film industry and has been
involved in or invested in numerous films covering all genres, but
never a film adopted from a comic book series. Wong, wanting to do
something different, started talking to his good friend Wong
Yuk-long, also known as the godfather of Hong Kong comics. As a
result he bought the film rights to many of Hong Kong’s most popular
comics.
Wong Yuk-long is best known for his martial arts comics of which
most of them are period pieces. Raymond Wong’s original idea was to
adapt a comic story set in the past, and produce an epic period
martial arts film as the company’s maiden piece. At the end of 2002,
the period martial arts film ’Hero’ was a box office hit. This was a
huge boost for the Asian film market and further strengthened his
belief in the success of a period martial arts film. As Wong was
developing his project, Tsui Hark, his old friend from the Cinema
City days, was about to start shooting ‘Seven Swords’, a period
martial arts epic. He liked Tsui’s project and decided to invest.
But with the completion of ‘Seven Swords’, Wong predicted that many
other similar projects would soon be flooding the market, so he
decided to delay the period martial arts piece and shoot the more
contemporary action film ‘Dragon Tiger Gate’ instead.
Wong said, “‘Dragon and Tiger Heroes’ is Wong Yuk-long’s piece de
resistance and after 35 years it is still being published. It is a
miracle in the comics world. To adapt it into a film would be very
difficult and would require a long time to prepare.” It would be
impossible to tell a story panning 35 years in a mere 90 minutes,
the shear amount of characters and fighting moves are overwhelming.
What would be the best way to cut down the story or choose from the
thousands of scenes? What characters should we focus on? How
faithful to the original story should we stay? The endless amount of
choice became a stumbling block in the creative process. In
contrast, by removing ourselves from the story of the original
comics our creativity would be free to soar. To date, we have been
through 20 different storylines, and more than 10 versions of the
present script.
‘Dragon Tiger Gate’ is set in the present, yet the fighting styles
are of the familiar martial arts period film vein, such as the
‘Eighteen Dragon Slaying Kick’. Marrying the past with the present
is an idiosyncrasy of the comic world. How do we translate this into
film world? How would it look if a contemporary character fought in
this obviously antecedent style? Instead of being put off by all
these questions, Wong was further spurred on by these challenges to
shoot ‘Dragon Tiger Gate’. He remarked, “To succeed one must be
original, and if we can solve these problems we will be able to
create an original and fresh style of action film.”
Wong also believes that the reason an audience can accept
unbelievable actions in a period martial arts film, such as leaping
up a three story building, is because all period martial arts films
show this and the audiences have come to believe this was really
possible in those bygone days. As for modern action films, the
audience can accept exaggerated gun fights because they know that
guns exist, but when they look at body combat they will be guided by
their logic, which is why fight action set in the contemporary world
tend to be more realistic. Wong also said, “We need to inform the
audience that the world of ‘Dragon Tiger Gate’ is neither
contemporary nor antecedent, but the fantasy world of the comics!
Take films like ‘Superman’, ‘Batman’ or ‘X-Men’, they are set in the
comic book world, the only difference is they use technology and
super powers while in ‘Dragon Tiger Gate’ we use the legendary
skills of Chinese martial arts.”
Faced with such a large investment not everyone has the courage and
far-sightedness to embark on something untested. However, Wong found
a strong supporter in Nansun Shi, an influential figure in the film
industry, who commented that, “This is the perfect timing for
‘Dragon Tiger Gate’.” This gave Wong a boost of confidence as Shi,
recently nominated as ‘Producer of the Year 2005’ by Cineasia,
undoubtedly has foresight and knowledge of what the film industry
needs. Shi believes that action films should be humanistic and not
rely solely on digital effects, as the audiences have had their
share of glamorous digital effects and are yearning for something
more real. Yet if the action scenes become too lack lustre, it would
then appear outdated, so the trick is to find the right balance. In
‘Dragon Tiger Gate’ the action scenes are fantastical yet not over
the top; the fights are authentic yet innovative; the imagery lavish
yet realistic, by mixing the perfect cocktail a new film style will
emerge.
In order to transfuse the spirit of the period style martial arts
with a modern touch, the action director had to be someone with a
deep understanding of martial arts with a contemporary outlook.
Donnie Yen was a name that came to the forefront for both Wong and
Shi. Yen’s action choreography has always had a contemporary style
and he has always been keen on innovation and originality. This
makes him the perfect candidate for the position of action director
for ‘Dragon Tiger Gate’.
A good script needs a good director to make it into a good movie. As
the emphasis on ‘Dragon Tiger Gate’ was its innovation, Wong decided
that a younger director would add what was needed to the mix. Wong
noted, ”Yip Wai-Shun stands out amongst the generation of young
directors. There is often an element of surprise in his
steadfastness. ‘SPL’, the film he collaborated on with Yen, was
critically acclaimed. And as the two have worked together before,
this will be a great advantage in the shooting of ‘Dragon Tiger
Gate’.” Shi also added, “Yip has a fine touch when dealing with the
characters of his films. He also has a very unique style in his
handling of scenes. He is a director with a strong personal style.”
Wong has stood up to all the challenges to assemble a stellar
ensemble – Producer, Nansun Shi; Director, Yip Wai-Shun; and Action
Director, Donnie Yen. Together they will create a brand new style of
action film that will stun the audiences like never before.
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About The Production #2
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