![\"\"](\"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/IpMan2Poster.jpg\" "\\"IpMan2Poster\\"")
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Despite all of the bad things that I had to say about the first film, Ip Man<\/em><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Ip Man 2<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading Ip Man 2<\/span>