In the late 80's and 90's in nearly every movie or t.v. show you saw, the Martial Artist always seemed to have:
long hair, tapered jeans, cowboy boots and rode a motorcycle.
Today it seems more like it's all about:
tattoos, shaved heads & beanie caps.
What are some others from past or present that you can think of?
all karate guys used to look like keith hackney
In the 70s their mouth were going one way, and the voice
said "HEY YOU KILLED MY MASTER, NOW I AM GOING TO
GET YOU. HAH."
:-)
Folks,
Well most ppl in movies and in RL to a degree viewed martial artists as men who has mysterious like abilities. Like Lil old men jumping off mountains and throwing lighting bolts hehehe, basically doing super human feats due to a special style or training method.
Also funny enuff, in the 60-80's, most ppl associated martial arts with only striking arts, none of the mainstream considered ground fighting much. Now a days it took a 360 degree turn and its everyone going ape over ground fighting and though striking is still here most focus is on the ground.
Sound effects is another big thing in the 70's and 80's whether in movies or the RL TMA ki'ahs(sp?) ehe when executing a technique.
AJ ;oD
Most of them looked asian
If they kicked you in theface you always would fly into some random wooden crates.
Funny!
TTT for a few more.
How about for some reason every bad guy in martial arts movies and their henchmen always knew some type of martial art. And the henchmen always had to have a theme associated with the leader.
Why does every Kenpo Karate guy have the "Mullet" as their hair style?
and usually wear Wife Beater shirts!
Every thug in Steven Segal movies attacks by either grabbing at his shirt or running full tilt at him with an overhand hammerfist strike...
...and now and then a Filipino man, looking sort of like Dan Inosanto, who happens to hang out in bars patroned by bikers and members of the Italian mafia (two groups known for their racial tolerance), tries to hit him with pool sticks.
For some reason many Caucasians somehow end up residing with an elderly Asian martial arts master either in a village in a remote part of Asia or in the depths of an American city's China/Korea/Japan-town.
This elderly master always has a hot Asian daughter/granddaughter/niece who is scornful, yet secretly stimulated by her new honky housemate.
Said Caucasian always discovers a hidden martial talent through everday tasks like sweeping floors or painting fences. This talent, and the longing glances given by the hot daughter/granddaughter/niece, of course infuriate the top Asian student of the above-mentioned elderly master.
Luckily though the skills picked up by the Caucasian from a few months of floor sweeping are enough to defeat the top student, who has trained all his life and is a champion in underground death matches. The hot Asian daughter/granddaughter/niece realizes through this victory that Caucasians are far superior, have quicker martial arts learning curves, and extremely large genetalia and, of course, gives up her body to this white boy with the blessing of her elderly father/grandfather/uncle.
oldnsnow that's the best message eva!!!!
Thank you, thank very much. As you can tell, I never ever watch martial arts movies.
"If they kicked you in theface you always would fly into some random wooden crates."
That is so true. That even made the rest of my family LOL.
Baz
What else... what else...
Oh yeah, every bad guy with a gun always aims for either the shoulder or the bicep - where we all know that bullets from high powered handguns do such minor damage that limb movement is not impaired at all when throwing punches.
The American guy is really good fighting other Americans, but gets tooled horribly when the Asian fighter comes to town. He always is in the hospital hooked up to a few IVs.
Then he hooks up with an old asian instructor and there is some friction at first due to the American's attitude and the asian instructors strictness, but eventually everything gets ironed out and we clear the way for a nice exciting training montage.
Basically some exciting music will play in the background and you see the fighter doing situps and pushups as well as punching a heavy bag and doing kata. But by the end of the song he's doing way MORE pushups and situps and he's doing kata again, but now the instructor is doing the kata with him. Then when the song ends, the guy is ready for the fight.
Nobody has commented yet on the stereotype that was big in the late eighties, and reborn agian only a year ago...
I'm talking about the Martial Artists that fought in the movie "Breakin'" and especially "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo." Those fighters looked like none I have ever seen in real-life, and even though I couldn't see any physical contact, their unorthodox attacks seemed to always cause immense psychological damage to their opponents.
I recently watched "You Got Served" and was even more impressed! Especially when the metrowarriors integrated what looked like a new-fangled form of Capoeira in their attacks!
The day a UFC fighter wins and tells his defeated opponent, "You got served!" is the day Martial Arts will reach Nirvana.
You can actually combine the last two stereotypes to form the "non-martial-artist-incorporating-movements-from-non-martial-talents-into-martial-arts-training-to-create-the-unbeatable-style-training-montage" as seen in Gymkata and every TV series where they have the main-character-gets-involved-in-martial-arts episode.