Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Bruce Lee, Fist of Fury

It's Chinese New Year so I thought I'll cover things Chinese. Who's the most influential martial artist in the twentieth century and a cultural icon? No, not Jackie Chan or Jet Li. They come after the one, the only Bruce Lee, 李小龍 (27 November 1940 - 20 July 1973).

Bruce Lee played his first leading role in "The Big Boss (1971)" which proved an enormous box office success across Asia and catapulted him to stardom. He soon followed up his success with two more huge box office successes: "Fist of Fury (1972)" and "Way of the Dragon (1972)". In 1973, Bruce Lee played the lead role in "Enter the Dragon", the first film to be produced jointly by Golden Harvest and Warner Bros. This film would skyrocket Lee to fame in the US and Europe. However, only a few months after the film's completion and three weeks before its release, the supremely fit Lee mysteriously died. "Enter the Dragon" would go on to become one of the year's highest grossing films and cement Lee as a martial arts legend. It was made for US$850,000 in 1973 (equivalent to $4 million adjusted for inflation as of 2007). To date, "Enter the Dragon" has grossed over $200 million worldwide. The movie sparked a brief fad in the martial-arts, especially Chinese Kung Fu and was epitomized in such songs as "Kung Fu Fighting" and such TV shows as "Kung Fu". [source: wiki]

Medicom released a 1/6 scale 12-inch Real Action Heroes RAH Bruce lee in 1999 (This isn't the recently released version). Unfortunately, the head sculpt wasn't up to scratch :( Medicom's Bruce Lee came with two pairs of extra hands, nunchuks and combat staff. Eric So from Hong Kong would produce his own Bruce Lee collection, all 24 of them. He wanted to chart the various stages of Bruce Lee's career and had him wearing 70s' style clothing/street wear. IMHO Eric So's head sculpt was way better so it was a matter of marrying the two. Put Medicom's outfit on Eric So's Bruce Lee body.






One of Bruce Lee's famous signature kick - his flying kick!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you buy the recent Enterbay version? Very nice!!

alex teo said...

Hi desmond, i only got this figure and followed up with Enterbay's Game of Death Bruce Lee. That's all the Bruce Lee i need :) Not a completist in this area.