Ip Man 2

Despite all of the bad things that I had to say about the first film, Ip Man was still genuinely enjoyable due to the freshness and authenticity of its martial arts scenes. I am sad to say that this is not true of the sequel. While there is certainly a frisson of thrill as one anticipates the showdown between Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, the overall quality of the fights in the sequel is dramatically lower, making it a thoroughly average martial arts film.

One of the reasons why the first film was so exciting was because it featured martial artists with styles that were visibly and palpably different one from the other, even to the inexpert eyes of martial arts laymen. This was possible because the film frequently used full body shots of the actors and long camera takes. This contributed to the feeling of the fights being authentic and grand, making every punch and every kick feel real and visceral.

Ip Man 2 however has reverted to the more standard industry practice of using lots of close-in camera work and quick cuts. This makes the action feel disjointed and artificial. Case in point: seeing the shot of Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung on the table facing each other with both of their bodies visible in their entirety in a single frame looks awesome. Seeing lots of close-up shots of faces, fists, kicking feet etc. when the action actually starts is lame.

Why do filmmakers do this? Because filming an extended fight sequence showing the bodies of the participants in their entirety in a single flowing take is very, very difficult. You typically need to film such scenes many, many times to get it right because a single error will cause the whole take to become unusable. This takes lots of time, which costs lots of money as everyone on the set needs to work extra hours. It also calls for perfect choreography and actual fighting skills. Editing and using close-in shots can hide gaps in choreography and make even someone with zero martial arts training look good. Once you remove these crutches, you know who’s really good and who’s not.

Given that the two films share just about the same cast and Sammo Hung was in charge of martial arts choreography for both films, why the huge difference in quality? I can only speculate that the production team was pressured to bring a sequel to market as soon as possible to capitalize on the success of the first film. But I also wonder whether or not Sammo Hung’s medical condition was a factor as he had major cardiac surgery just before the filming for the sequel started and expressed disappointment with how his fight scenes turned out.

I don’t really feel like adding more about the story as it basically continues the historical inaccuracies of the first film and plays to the same nationalist and racist sentiments. According to Wikipedia for example, Ip Man was an opium addict while staying in Hong Kong and charged what was then considered high tuition fees in order to finance this habit. While this time around, the producers did make the British seem slightly less villainous than the Japanese, they also failed to dwell on why Ip Man and his family stayed in Hong Kong anyway despite the bullying British. Presumably the reason was that the communists in China didn’t exactly welcome them?

Finally, there’s the Bruce Lee factor. I found it very amusing that the climactic fights were framed as a Western boxing vs. Chinese kung fu sort of thing and only Ip Man’s final speech saved it from being a fantastically foot-in-mouth catastrophe. This is because while Bruce Lee was indeed initially trained in Wing Chun, he soon moved on to his own style that borrowed quite a bit from Western boxing. He was famously critical of Chinese kung fu for being unnecessarily rigid and impractical and his own training methods, which rely heavily on intensive physical conditioning, cardiovascular exercises, muscle training and sound nutrition, seem much closer to Western ways than Chinese ones. You need only to watch videos of Bruce Lee fighting to see the difference. Does he fight like Donnie Yen in the film or like the brash British boxer?

3 thoughts on “Ip Man 2”

  1. I disagree about the choreography. I found the fights to be better in Ip Man 2. Ip Man 1 also had many close ups, especially during the fight with the Japanese General at the end.

    The reason the camera goes close is because Wing Chun is a close quarter combat system. It doesn’t have big wide sweeping movements and doesn’t look very good in wide shot. It is the hardest kung fu style to choreograph for the screen because of this. What makes it doubly hard is the continuous very fast flow of movement in Wing Chun.

    IMHO what they did in both films was fantastic. But the second film is much, much better Wing Chun wise because they have made it more fluid. In the first film I felt the Wing Chun to be too stiff and not in keeping with how the style flows for real. The sequel has corrected this minor flaw.

    Lastly I felt that although Ip Man 2 is basically a rehash of the first film, I found the end fight of the sequel to be much more emotionally satisfying. The end fight to the first film felt emotionally flat to me. Whereas I was pretty much cheering at the end of Ip Man 2 when he made a comeback to defeat the boxer. Ip Man wasn’t portrayed as a superman. His fighting abilities were not shown to be flawless. He takes a real beating at the end, and that for me allows me to get emotionally behind his character more and stops the end fight from just being a choreographic display.

  2. We just have to agree to disagree though perhaps I should try to watch the first one again to refresh my memory.
    I came away from the fights in the first film with a strong sense of always knowing was going on. This was not true in the second film for me. When the camera cut to the close ups of fists for example, I kept wondering: what are his feet doing, how is his body positioned etc.
    As for the story, both are pretty bad so it’s hard to make any sort of comparison. But the British villains in the second were comical to me, like cartoon characters, due to the way they over-acted and delivered their English lines very slowly, enunciating every syllable one by one. At least the Japanese villains seemed more like real people.

  3. I think this goes back to classic Sammo Hung choreography when he was at his peak with films like Pedicab Driver. A perfect blend of high impact movement and montage editing.

    It is very quick cut and intense, but that is what Wing Chun is like. Ip Man 2’s rival film, Young Ip Man contains the long wide takes that you desire. But although that type of choreography worked well with Prodigal Son, I feel that there is something not quite right and too stagey looking about it for a film made today.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS6HeUngiKc&feature=player_embedded

    I agree that the British were comically bad, and my face is probably still stuck in the cringe I was making at the time of watching. Though nothing has really changed. British actors in HK films have always been abysmal.

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