In 1971, Hollywood lore has it that the legendary Bruce Lee pitched an idea for a TV series about a martial artist in the Old West. Skittish studio heads passed on the project (and on Lee as its star), opting to make Kung Fu with David Carradine instead. Now Lee’s vision is getting a second life, as Cinemax prepares to debut its new period drama, Warrior, based on the martial arts master’s own writings.
When he was first approached about adapting the material for a TV series, Justin Lin (who directed Fast and the Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond) was intrigued, since he had long admired Lee’s work and his breaking down of racial barriers for Asians in Hollywood. But it was the source material that clinched the deal for Lin: Lee’s own writings, provided by his daughter Shannon, who gave her blessing to the project. The writings were “rich with Lee’s unique philosophies on life, and through a point of view rarely depicted on screen,” Lin told The Hollywood Reporter.
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Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) arrives in San Francisco from China.YouTube/Cinemax
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“You think you can take me on?”YouTube/Cinemax
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“That’s the wrong question.” Ah Sahm is a fighting prodigy.YouTube/Cinemax
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The head of one of the Chinese tong factions.YouTube/Cinemax
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Brawling for sport.YouTube/Cinemax
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Joanna Vanderham plays Penelope Blake, who catches Ah Sahm’s eye.YouTube/Cinemax
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Dianne Doan plays Mai Ling. Brothels were big business for the tongs.YouTube/Cinemax
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Tong gangs insist on loyalty.YouTube/Cinemax
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Anti-Chinese immigrant sentiment was rampant in the mid-1800s.YouTube/Cinemax
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Two factions face off in battle.YouTube/Cinemax
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A flying warrior leap.YouTube/Cinemax
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Ah Sahm marches through Chinatown with his band of brothers.
Warrior follows a by now familiar outline. A young Chinese martial arts prodigy, Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), arrives in 19th-century San Francisco. Why he left China is a mystery, but he soon finds himself embroiled with the Tong Wars, a period of particularly violent disputes between rival Chinese gangs, called tongs, in the Chinatowns of several American cities. (There were as many as 30 tongs in San Francisco at the height of the Tong Wars; it took the great earthquake of 1906 to end the violence, since the tongs never recovered from the damage to their businesses.) Ah Sahm also must contend with rising anti-immigrant sentiment against the Chinese and perhaps a forbidden interracial romance.
Judging by the trailer, Warrior is tonally kin to shows like Peaky Blinders and Boardwalk Empire—all gritty period dramas centered on criminal pursuits of one kind or another. But with a martial arts prodigy as its protagonist, Warrior also boasts some impressive fight choreography. It isn’t likely to feature many of the pithy aphorisms (borrowing heavily from the Tao Te Ching) that made Kung Fu so beloved to Western audiences in the 1970s. To quote Kingsman‘s Eggsy, “This ain’t that kind of movie, bruv.”
Warrior premiers on Cinemax on April 5, 2019.
Listing image by YouTube/Cinemax
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1468299