EVER WATCHED A kung-fu movie? I used to watch them a lot as a kid, loving the fantastical tales of redemption replete with bad dubbing, outrageous stunts and frequently outlandish deaths. I wrote my own. Sort of:
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“He must die!” Wei Ping, the Golden Bear stood defiantly in the middle of Tu Langs modest yet entirely functional home.
“No – I will not let you kill him!”
“Tell me where your great teacher is hiding, and I will not harm your pet goldfish!”
“Not my goldfish! Please!”
“Such manners!” said Wei Ping, a ripple of respect washing over him. “But still! Where is Chan Li? Tell me and you will be spared.”
Tu Lang felt he had no other choice. He began running.
Through the back door he sprinted, winding through alley ways, nearly knocking over a woman with her wares and accidentally kicking a cage of chickens in the process. Gasping for breath a short while later, he stopped and looked back. No sign of Wei Ping. Ha!
As if from nowhere Wei Ping appeared in front of Tu Lang, whose face turned to shock. “Thought you could speed things up a bit by running? Well try this for size!” said Wei Ping stroking his white goatee. “I nearly kill you. You leave this forsaken place along with the girl you could never get, and the goldfish. You train hard, fail, try again, fail, and eventually become a champion fighter, even defeating your old master Chan Li who turned against you through jealousy. Upon hearing of your success, the girl wishes to marry you. But juiced up on your own success, with greater clarity than before, you realise she never loved you anyway, and is more shallow than a goldfish bowl. You turn to a true beauty who comes from a village in the hills. With unparalleled fighting talent, the respect of your people, and the woman of your dreams, you return here, to your home town, to avenge the death of your family, killing me, and everyone else I taught at the Golden Bear.”
And with that Wei Ping, the Golden Bear dropped dead.
Freakin’ hilarious! Your film was playing out in my head as I read it (those poor chickens, being caged and kicked around!).
Whne a story becomes like a mind-film then I know I’ve done a good job 🙂 Glad you got the humour of it, thanks so much.
Nice spin on a classic, Fionn! Good read. I still love Kung Fu movies! I grew up watching them too. Just three words: “Five Deadly Venoms.”
Hiiiii yaaaa! Merci.
I don’t think I’ve seen Five Deadly Venoms, but tbh a lot of the VHS ones I watched were when I was really young, I don’t remember the titles.
If you’ve seen it before, you’ll recognize it right away. https://youtu.be/kX6EHqcvqyo
Cheers for the linkage.
Haha, takes me back! You had me hooked from the title… I have an unhealthy love of Big Trouble in Little China, back when Kurt Russell kicked ass… 🙂
Cheers Al. There’s something beguiling about films with relatively little plot and a whole lot of ass kicking lol
Films that have lines like –
I came here to kick ass, and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of bubble gum
😀
And…(captured CIA agent in China’s punishment by an evil Doctor)
“Take him to Detroit!”
‘No! Not Detroit! No, please! Anywhere but that!’
Even more funny/ relevant/ sad decades later.
Haha! 😀
Great character names and a good natured stick-poke at the genre. Funny stuff to start my day – nice job! My brain was immediately transported back to the Fistful of Yen spoof in Kentucky Fried Movie (which youtube has if you’ve never seen it!)
Cheers ☺
I think you have just reunited me with a movie I forgot the title of and have been searching for – there’s one called Kung Pow in a similar vein but nowhere near as funny which I mistook for it.
That’s 30 mins of my day sorted ☺
I couldn’t read this without cracking up. Job well done!
😀
I’m glad you got it.
I’m a fan of this satirical side, gave me a good chuckle this morning 🙂
Good to know 😀
That pretty much sums up kung-fu drama for me – apart from the last line!
Yeah, that last line hasn’t really worked.
I live and learn. Cheers.
Well, that is one less person to kill. You did this well. You captured the essence of these movies.
Cheers man. It was an idea I had lying around and fired it out. Going for the spoof aspect.
Someone sat on the tv remote…LoL
I liked the condensed story, it was an unexpected death.
Lol, that’s it!
Thanks ☺
Hehe this is a bit of fun.
Have you watched kung fu hustle?
It’s perhaps my favourite from Hong Kong cinema.
Haha, yes great film.
I love any of the low budget ones too and also bruce lee of course. Ong Bak is another great modern martial arts flick.
Cheers for the read ☺
I think it must have been you that wwrote all those kung fu stories I watched when I was younger, LIon. This is pretty much how they went.
Haha, thanks Chris. The plot is so often the same, yet somehow still watchable.
@lion, am really scratching my head hard right now, I really love what you have written here, but I don’t know if it’s me that is dumb, but I didn’t understood the omega of this story.
Wei Ping dropped dead!!!! when he was talking to tje other dude, scratching head…:)
Thanks for reading.
Wei Ping predicted what would happen based on the usual kung fu film story arc and dropped dead to speed up the process.
I was going for a satirical take ☺
Scratching head 🙂 yes, okay, thanks.
I kinda just put it out there. I can totally get it didn’t make sense ☺
No it’s not that it don’t make sense, perhaps it’s me that didn’t well understood, but it was a great read. I love Kung Fuzzzz 🙂
😀
Very good, this would be good in a longer story as well. I can see more happening.
Thanks.
I tried to condense it into as short a story as possible, riffing on the predictability of the story arc in kung fu films.