However, the Muay Thai fighting in these films has little resemblance to the real sport of Muay Thai. Some things about Muay Thai shown in these movies are true: leading practitioners are usually slim, fast and fit and wear loose, brightly coloured shorts. The big crossover came in 2003 with Ong Bak, starring Tony Jaa. It became popular outside Thailand in the 1990s and the first Muay Thai movies to reach the west followed soon after. Muay ThaiĪ combat sport from Thailand, Muay Thai uses a lot of striking and clinching. To be honest, it does look like a lot of fun, but it is very uncommon and should be thought of more as a curiosity than something you can pursue in your local martial arts academy. The result is they appear to be off balance and uncoordinated, but these are actually carefully practiced movements intended to make them both hard to attack and hard to predict. They only mimic the lurching movements of a drunk person as a diversionary tactic. And they always practice their art – which is often more of a dance than a fighting style – completely sober. While drunk Kung Fu – also called Zui Quan – actually exists, there aren’t many modern practitioners. It’s usually pretty funny: a character downs a few shots of alcohol and then reels about beating up bad guys before passing out themselves. Is “Drunken” Kung-Fu Just made up?ĭrunk-style Kung Fu regularly pops up in anime and video games. The unethical coaches who gave the orders would be permanently banned from the sport and probably face criminal charges. In a real competition, the climactic events of the Karate Kid movies would have resulted in the bouts being instantly stopped and the misbehaving participants summarily disqualified. In reality, Karate competitions – especially youth competitions – are run by strict safety rules and use a lot of safety gear. The films reach their climax in fights in which the main character (who has by now learned honour and discipline) faces off with other young people (usually part of an official academy) whose trainers order them to fight dishonourably and injure the main character. These movies all follow a similar sort of plot: an untrained young man or woman works one-to-one with a Karate master who teaches them over an extended period of time. While there are far fewer Karate movies than Kung Fu movies, The Karate Kid and its four sequels have made the style quite popular. Martial Arts in TV and Movies: The Karate Kidįor a Japanese martial art developed by 14th Century bureaucrats, Karate has today really taken on a life of its own. They’re great fun, excellent as sports and good for fitness, but not meant for actually dealing with threats on the street. ![]() The leaping and acrobatic styles fall somewhere in the middle. This means Kung Fu includes everything from the non-contact meditations of Tai Chi through to styles that stop an attacker so safely and quickly that they don’t make for an interesting movie fight scene. When the term is used for martial arts, it refers to a family of several hundred Chinese styles. Any skill gained through practice and hard work can be called ‘Kung Fu’ – including gardening and maths. In fact, the term ‘Kung Fu’ doesn’t even specifically refer to martial arts. Stars like Bruce Lee and Jet Li, can be seen taking out baddies with fly kicks, catching arrows out of the air, punching through walls and tangling their assailants up in blinding fast locks and holds. The most famous form of movie martial arts is Kung Fu. In the real world, martial arts don’t have much connection to the flashy and spectacular punch-ups of games, movies and TV shows. What’s our point?īatman’s “martial arts” are as make-believe as the rest of his adventures. ![]() He can also bend rifle barrels with one hand, hang-glide around cities using his cape and drive his car on the roof. Officially, Batman knows 127 styles of martial arts and puts them all to good effect in the movies.
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