Bruce Lee helped set the mold in the 1960s and 1970s: good looking, extremely tough, and with the air of a natural-born fighter. Looking back at past generations of martial arts superstars, one thing they all have in common is that they each established a unique and highly recognizable screen presence, almost from their very first screen appearance.

By the time Wu started acting in the late 1990s, Hong Kong action and martial arts cinema was past its peak, both creatively and commercially, and “Tai Chi Boxer” failed to launch Wu’s career the way “Shaolin Temple” made Li’s. After “Shaolin Temple,” Li struck up a mutually beneficial partnership with the Hong Kong action director Tsui Hark, before eventually making the jump to Hollywood. In 1995, at the age of 21, Wu was handpicked by the famed Hong Kong martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping - best known for his work on “Drunken Master,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and “The Matrix” trilogy - to play the lead in Yuen’s “Tai Chi Boxer.” Co-directing the movie alongside Yuen was Chang Hsin-Yen, the same man who had cast Li in his breakout film “Shaolin Temple” 13 years prior.Ī still from the 1996 film “Tai Chi Boxer.” From Doubanīut if Wu and Li shared similar roots, the paths available to them could not have been more different. They studied under the same coaches, and both won national championships. Wu and Li both came up through the famed Beijing Wushu Team, albeit a generation apart. While there’s something to these comparisons, they overlook the first half of Wu’s career - and how those years shaped the actor he is today.Įarly in his career, Wu looked to be cut from the same cloth as past Chinese martial arts superstars like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. Outside of China, Wu’s playful mix of charisma and muscular nationalism has earned him comparisons with Hollywood stars like Sylvester Stallone, whose “Rambo” films were an obvious influence on the actor. In the words of a popular joke: “Only Wu Jing can beat Wu Jing.” Between “Lake Changjin,” “The Wandering Earth,” and the “Wolf Warrior” series, the 47-year-old action star has now headlined three of the top five grossing movies in Chinese history. Many Chinese film fans greeted the news with a knowing shrug, in part because its success only confirmed what we already suspected. In the little over two months since its release, the Korean war epic “The Battle at Lake Changjin” has earned more than 5.74 billion yuan ($858 million) late last month, the film passed 2017’s “Wolf Warrior 2” to become the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time.

Wu jing success