There are few men today who are living national heroes. There are also few living men who have their own cartoon series starring themselves. As far as I can tell there are only two people on Earth that are cool enough to fit this bill: Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan.
I will be the first to admit that I have never seen -even one- episode of “Walker Texas Ranger” and that I have never seen any movie or TV show featuring Mr. Norris. I have heard hundreds of Chuck Norris facts, but not even these have convinced me that his films would intrigue me (nor have they inspired me to study “Chun Kuk Do” the martial art he created.)
Jackie Chan is a different story all together. Where Norris is a symbol of Christianity, the Republican party and the American South, what Chan symbolizes is not so apparent, at first.
Chan was born in Hong Kong when it was still a British colony- a place where the cultures of the East and West would grow and thrive together. Because of this, Chan’s influences came from both of these cultures. Chan’s first hero: Bruce Lee, the Chinese-American martial arts star of the silver screen. Chan’s second hero: Buster Keaton, the most famous silent-film star of all time.
Bruce Lee is the obvious choice for a little Hong Kong boy interested in martial arts, but it was Keaton’s influence is what made Jackie Chan a star. Chan admired Keaton’s comedic timing and the fact that Keaton performed his own stunts (Bruce Lee used a stunt double). Chan began his career as a teenager in the 70’s where he took roles as an extra or a stunt double in Hong Kong films.
Chan never met Keaton (who died when Jackie was young) but at the age of seventeen he did have the opportunity to work as a stunt double with his other hero. Chan appeared in Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”. Unfortunately, this would be the last time Chan and Lee would appear in a film together. During the making of the film, Lee suddenly took ill. Lee died just before the film’s release and was buried in Seattle Washington (Chuck Norris was a pallbearer).
With one great martial arts stars gone, it seemed that the universe had found another. Later that year, Chan took his first starring role in the film “Little Tiger of Canton”. It would not be long until Chan found his way to Hollywood.
Though Chan mostly stars in comedies, he takes his career very seriously. Chan holds the Guinness World Record for most stunts performed by a living actor. Chan also vowed never to play a villain (to avoid being typecast). He even turned down the lead villain in the film Demolition Man. Chan also wants to be a role model for children, so he rarely swears in his films.
Chan is also the ultimate good-guy in the real world. One of Jackie’s biggest regrets in life is never having a formal education, so he has helped to fund many schools worldwide. He also appears as the spokesperson for a “Clean Hong Kong” campaign that helps keep litter of the streets.
Eventually Chan became tired of Hollywood. He felt he had been typecast, not as a villain as he feared, but as “the humorous acrobat who must often improvise and use any near-lying object as a weapon”. He has been type-cast as the image he had created for himself.
In the last few years Chan has begun to take on different roles. He played a pawn shop owner in “The Forbidden Kingdom” and starred along side of Jet Li. He voiced the Monkey in “Kung Fu Panda”. He starred in the “Shinjuku Incident” which has no martial arts sequences and he played the Mr. Miyagi character in new “Karate Kid” film.
As a boy I frequently watched Chan movies with my friends, even before he was a household name in the States. But, other than Jaden Smith’s Karate Kid, I haven’t watched a Jackie Chan movie in over a decade. Now that I am moving to Chan’s home country, I think it is time I take a look at some of his classic films.
I conclude this blogpost with Jackie Chan singing “I’ll Make a Man out of You” from Dinsey’s “Mulan” (in Cantonese). Enjoy!
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