 As the martial arts choreographer for Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grand Master”, what do you think of Ip Man trend?
Yuen Woo Ping: It might bring back the kungfu film wave, when there are so many Ip Man related films. Actually, the first was Wong Kar Wai, he talked about it for years, but only started shooting now. They have already finished filming Ip Man 2, yet he hadn’t even started. I have to hand it to him, such patience, taking such a long time to do the preparation. I don’t dawdle, dawdling grinds people to death.
Tony Leung is lucky to have met a good director, normally, they aren’t given so much time to train. Their collaboration is bound to be fruitful.
Is it bad for so many to jump on the bandwagon shooting the same theme?
Yuen Woo Ping: There are advantages as well as disadvantages, depending on how they are arranged. The audience might grow apathetic, like in the past, more than 100 Wong Fei Hung films were produced, but it was released at the interval of a few months, with no more than three being released each year. But if they released everything at one go, you’d be in for a big headache.
Each era is bound to have certain paragons, in the past, it was Wong Fei Hung, now it is Ip Man. If you only shoot a similar subject after some time, the audience would feel fresh, when what you shoot has certain standards, it’s fine, but I fear they might not be able to keep up.