I still remember that year's "Huo Yuanjia", the version shown in the cinema was a bad movie at all, and it was all about patriotism. What people can remember is Jay Chou's song and Jet Li's unique voice. Later, I was fortunate to watch the director's cut version, and then I realized that the director's original intention was to film a person's mental journey from a warrior to a hero, and it doesn't matter whether the protagonist is Huo Yuanjia in this way.
Looking back at "Ip Man", I personally think that the biggest flaw in "Ip Man" is the ending part, the scene where Ip Man was shot and the masses rose up to resist. The most successful part of Ye Weixin's work is not the so-called patriotism, but the profound expression of people's helplessness in the trend of the times. In this movie, everyone is helpless and involuntarily. Lin Jiadong's Li Zhao is like this, the martial arts masters are like this, and so is Ye Wen. Ye Wen knew that he could defeat 10, 100, or even 1,000 Japanese soldiers, but he couldn't defeat this monster called "The Times". His compatriots could cheer for him, but they would just shout and cheer, Ye Wen said. There is no way to change the numb people and the weak Chinese, so he chose to avoid the world, chose to leave with his family, and went to Hong Kong to escape the war. After all, Ye Wen is not Chen Zhen, he can't face the Japanese's muzzle and jump high. Moreover, Chen Zhen's death did not wake up the people of the country, and the numb still remained numb, still intoxicated. Ip Man's success lies in the reproduction of all living beings in Foshan, and the details of Cantonese's living habits and markets. There are also many dramatic conflicts between guns and martial arts in the play, which can be regarded as a law-abiding shooting technique. (The conflict between guns and martial arts, starting from Kurosawa Akira's "Seven Samurai", has been used in many movies.)
It is nothing new for Ye Weixin's films to be harmonized. The end of "Slaying the Wolf" was harmonized. However, because I was in Guangzhou at the time, I still saw the original version of "Slaying the Wolf" (the scissors from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television simply removed the dragon's eyes). Therefore, I have reason to believe that Ip Man has also been reconciled, and I look forward to the director's cut version.
Anyway, "Ip Man" is still the best movie I've seen in the cinema in 2008.
PS: Actually, when I was in college, I knew about Mr. Ye Wen in the Southern Metropolis Daily and when I went to play with my classmates in Foshan. The local martial arts masters in Foshan people's mind are Huang Feihong, Ip Man and Bruce Lee. "Southern Capital" even compares Ye Wen to the ten tigers in Guangdong at that time (the ten tigers in Guangdong do have their own people).
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