Jackie Chan’s recent movie A Legend 传说 was released in July 2024. Launched with great fanfare, iIt had all the elements that would attract a younger audience. It had action, romance and special effects. In the latter department, AI was used to create a realistic younger Jackie Chan for an earlier part of the storyline. The producers expected the movie to be a hit, but it turned out to be huge flop.
Jackie Chan is undeniably an icon of the Hong Kong movie industry. He saw its golden age in his 20s. He also saw its decline in his 60s. It all started when he was an extra and a stuntman in the 1970s. Discovered by director Wang Jing after a few box office failures, he rose to become a superstar. How did he end up a failure today?
Born in 1954, Jackie Chan’s original name was Chan Kong Sang 陈港生, meaning born in Hong Kong. His parents escaped from China to Hong Kong after the CCP took over the mainland and took up menial jobs in the British colony. Back on the mainland, his father Charles Chan was a law enforcer, a mole in the underworld. His mother was a member of the underworld dealing with drugs and gambling. Charles would join her instead of turning her in.
When Jackie Chan was 6, his parents found work in Australia and left him at a boarding school that taught Chinese opera. 7 of the students from that opera school would later become the 7 little stars in Hong Kong’s movie industry in the 1970s. The late 1970s saw Hong Kong grow from a cheap factory to a booming financial centre. Foreign investments poured in. Incomes went up and the locals had disposable income to spend on entertainment.
The Hong Kong government of the time gave movie makers tax incentives. Within a short time, both local and international syndicates (some legal, some not so) started investing in filmmaking. The sheer quantity of films made during that time brought on the golden age of Hong Kong movies. Kung Fu films proved especially popular. The first Kung Fu megastar was born – Bruce Lee.
Educated in the US, Bruce Lee majored in philosophy at the University of Washington. Unlike the Kung Fu movies of that time, Bruce Lee’s moves on the set were real and potentially lethal. His speed and power required no special effects to embellish. Western audiences were impressed and started paying attention to Chinese martial arts. Unfortunately, Bruce Lee died at his prime, passing away at the age of 33 in 1973. He had only made 4 Kung Fu movies in his short career, but all four were box office hits at only a fraction of Hollywood budgets. Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest jumped on the bandwagon, each churning out dozens of low budget formulaic Kung Fu films every year.
However, the kind of profits seen in Bruce Lee films remained elusive. The 7 little stars who just graduated from the opera school entered the job market at the right time. Everyone of them achieved some level of success but the luckiest among them was Jackie Chan. His 1978 movie Drunken Fist was a huge success in Hong Kong and Japan. While some people saw Jackie Chan as the next Bruce Lee, the two Kung Fu stars have very little in common. Jackie Chan’s specialties are acrobatics and comedy while Bruce Lee didn’t even try to make the audience laugh. You won’t find much in the way of serious fighting techniques in Jackie Chan’s movies.
While Jackie Chan may not be a true martial arts expert, his stunts were truly death-defying. He claimed that he had never used a double. You can ask ChatGPT for a list of Jackie Chan movies and how successful they were at the box office. His audiences were awed by his stunts and his fan base was built on youngsters’ admiration for his guts and dedication.
“The stuntman’s life is also precious. How can I risk someone’s life for my own gains?”
Many were touched by this statement. They called him Big Brother Jackie. He was an idol to many moviegoers.
In May 1989, Chinese students occupied Tiananmen Square in Beijing in protest, demanding dialogue with and reforms from the government. Many Hong Kong celebrities supported the students. The most vocal among them was Anita Mui. A Concert For Democracy was held at the race course to raise funds to help the students. On 27 May 1989, practically all Hong Kong singers showed up. Jackie Chan suddenly became a singer and stole the limelight on stage. He proudly announced that no Chinese person will bow before an autocracy.
Then, the shooting started on 4 June 1989. Many Hong Kongers were infuriated. Celebrities like Anita Mui and members of the underworld raised funds to rescue fugitives. Jackie Chan was silent and went straight back to work.
A movie entitled 鼠胆龙威 inadequately translated as “High Risk” was released in 1995. The movie starred mainland Chinese star Jet Li 李连杰 and Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung 张学友. I saw that movie and found it hilarious. It’s a parody and the person they were making fun of couldn’t have been anyone else but Jackie Chan. In High Risk, Jacky Cheung the singer played a Kung Fu star wannabe who was cowardly and dishonest, using stuntmen to do all his stunts while claiming that he did all his stunts himself.
There was one memorable in scene in which the star wearing a Bruce Lee yellow jumpsuit got a stutman to jump from a building and land on a pile of cardboard boxes while he wore the exact same jumpsuit hiding at ground level. Once the stuntman hit the pile of boxes, a herd of workers crowded around that pile of boxes. The stutman who just landed crawled out while the star crawled in. The crowd dispersed and the star raised his hands in triumph. Apart from his dishonesty, the star was also a womaniser. 鼠胆龙威 means timid as a mouse, disposition of a dragon.
All this was of course not missed by Jackie Chan. He promptly called a press conference denying the “accusations” in the movie and insisting that director Wang Jing 王晶 had an axe to grind. Unfortunately for Jackie Chan, Hong Kong’s journalism in the 1990s had reached a whole new level of tenacity and audacity. They reviewed suspicious scenes from his movies, finding evidence which forced Jackie Chan to confess that he had in fact used stuntmen in most of the dangerous stunts.
His stunt team 成家班 went as far back as 1976. There were about 20 members in this team and they were all professional stuntmen. Very little was known about this team until Jackie Chan went to Hollywood and the team swelled to over 50 members. Hong Kong journalists’ revelation shattered Jackie Chan’s image as a noble Kung Fu star who would rather risk his life than others’.
Is using a double something that Hong Kong audiences couldn’t accept? Certainly not. People were simply pissed off with his dishonesty. Look at his less successful senior at the opera school, Sammo Hung. He had used stunt doubles and not only had he never denied it, he called them out on the stage and let them share the limelight.
Thanks to the now defunct Apple Daily, another aspect of this fake hero was exposed in 1999. Former Miss Asia Elaine Ng Yi-Lei announced that she was pregnant. She was single and hinted that the child was some Kung Fu superstar. Fans knew that prime suspect Jackie Chan was married to Taiwanese actress Lin Feng Jiao in 1982. Later that year, Elaine Ng gave birth to a baby girl and named her Etta Ng. Was Apple Daily’s report factual?
When Etta was 2 years old and after the persistent questioning from the media proved unbearable, Jackie Chan finally admitted that he is indeed the father of Elaine Ng’s child. During the press conference, he made a foolish remark that would get him branded as an asshole for the rest of his life.
“I have made a mistake that men throughout the world can make.”
His mistakes were many and this included a much publicised relationship with Hong Kong actress Cherie Chung. At that time, Jackie Chan’s wife Lin Feng Jiao was told to keep a low profile in the US. Though there were rumours going around that he might be married and Lin Feng Jiao’s son looked like him, Jackie Chan denied that he was married until the media was hounding him and Cherie Chung about marriage. Lin Feng Jiao read the news, flew to Hong Kong and confronted bewildered journalists, announcing that she was the rightful Mrs Chan. Cherie Chung was stunned.
By then, Jackie Chan’s image in Hong Kong was severely tarnished but audiences in the mainland were still kept in the dark. Jackie Chan played the “patriotism” card, singing praises for the CCP and trying to erase Hong Kong’s unique character, saying that there is no such thing as Hong Kong movies. All movies made in Hong Kong are Chinese movies. In the 1980s, Hong Kong produced 300 movies a year. The territory now produces less than 50 movies a year.
Jackie Chan told Hong Kongers that too much freedom is bad. Chinese people need to be controlled. He was later appointed as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory board that does nothing apart from nodding.
In 2020, Hong Kong national security law was passed in response to protests against extradition which erupted into riots. From then all, all Hong Kong media would be subjected to censorship. Getting movies approved became a major hurdle for filmmakers. As a CPPCC member, Jackie Chan burst onto the scene, loudly supporting the National Security Law. At a conference for moviemakers in China the following year, he declared his admiration for CCP members and espoused the greatness of the CCP and how quickly the party was able to get things done.
Jackie Chan certainly got things done. He started acquiring properties in main cities in China (contrary to Li Ka Shing who bailed out) started businesses, including restaurants and collaborated with public listed companies like Kweichow Moutai. A few bottles of that and a few phone calls to the right people could get his scandals censored in China.
But his political career had not been smooth. He was named official Narcotics Control Ambassador by Chinese police in 2009. He also openly supported the death penalty for drug trafficking. Not long after that in 2014, his son, Jaycee Chan was arrested for having marijuana in his apartment. He would spend 6 months in jail.
Following that companies he had promoted or collaborated with went bust one by one. Gym chain California Fitness was one, also Chinese brands like Ba Wang hair tonic, Fen Huang Cola, Ai Duo Electronics, Si Nian Dumplings etc. Industries call it the curse of Jackie Chan. Sure, he still has his fans but Chinese people are too familiar with bootlickers and regard them with contempt. Besides, that’s not the only character flaw that Jackie Chan is trying to hide with “patriotism” and bootlicking. The big question is, is there still a market for movies starring this pathetic individual? While it’s true that getting on douyin to stomp on Japanese or American flags can instantly earn one fans and money, these are zero capital “ventures”. Jackie Chan’s movies cost millions to shoot and the number of fools needed to break even are much larger.