It’s Kung-fu Movie Time
by Jeff Crook
March 26, 2001
It has been some time since I last opened the Book of the East Wind. Quite a bit has happened during this period. I now have a son - Bry Alexander. I have a new used car, which replaces my old used car of twelve years. Interest rates have gone down a full percentage point, and the stock market has tanked. All I can say is, I am glad I am too poor to lose my shirt on Wall Street.
And I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Which brings me to a subject I have been avoiding in this column for far too long – kung-fu movies. First let me say that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is more than just a kung-fu movie, in the way that The Seven Samurai is more than just a samurai movie. This movie is an event, the performances genuine, the language poetry. Trust me, if you can take your eyes off the spectacle and see through the sub-titles, you’ve got to believe that the dialogue was written with poetry in mind. The interplay of the voices is like listening to music, and I don’t even know Mandarin or Cantonese.
What is great about this movie is that it is also a fantasy. It’s both historical and mythical China, and this is an aspect that I am trying to recreate in Qigung. Qigung is a game of fantasy martial arts, with heavy emphasis on the fantasy. In creating it, I drew upon the kung-fu movie genre for inspiration. When I was a teen, a local television station ran Hong Kong Action Theater every Friday night and Saturday Morning. Those visions of flying monks and deadly spearmen never left me.
As I have mentioned before, those who first encounter Qigung are often overwhelmed by the possibilities present in this game. Players ask me, what can I do? What kind of character can I play? The answer is – any kind of character you want to play. Literally. That is sometimes a frightening prospect. So where do you begin?
As good a place as any is with kung-fu movies. So for this article, I’ll take three of my favorite kung-fu movies and compare them to the game, both in its mechanics and its insprirations for a storyteller or a storyplayer.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
First let me apologize. I am terrible with names. I easily forget character names, even in movies and books that I love.
What is the one thing most people remember from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? The flying. Characters fly over rooftops, leap across the surface of reflecting pools, battle among the tops of a bamboo forest. In Qigung, you can fly if you know the correct technique. It’s a skill, like everything else in the game. Toward the end of the movie, we see Chow Yun Fat’s character lay his hands upon the girl character in an attempt to heal her. Later, he uses meditation to try to stave off poison. In Qigung, this is called qi healing. You can lay your hands upon another person and heal them of damage, disease, or poison, and you can also heal yourself. With disease and poison, if you don’t have the cure or the antidote, qi healing is your only recourse, and if the poison or disease is powerful enough, you might fight it for hours or days and still lose, or succeed.
Of course, in this movie there are some spectacular fight scenes and a dizzying array of weapons. Some are quite unusual. Qigung has nearly every weapon that you will see in this movie, including the twin melon hammers and deer horn knives and swords like the Green Destiny sword.
But most importantly, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has a wonderfully rich story. It is a fantasy adventure, with a magical sword that is stolen and must be found, combined with some pretty traditional kung-fu movie fare, like the man who must avenge his master’s death at the hands of a kung-fu rival. Yet we also see the interplay of class and culture in the delicate way the heroes attempt to recover the sword without offending an influential family. We also see the conflict between the traditional roles of man and woman in both the greater social culture as well as the culture within ancient martial traditions.
From a storytelling standpoint, the inspirations provided by this movie are in its broad strokes -–the conflicts of cultural and social mores, the desire for the adventurous life as represented by the Giang Hu (I think that is how it is spelled), and the ways in which someone with martial skills can make his or her way in the world without succumbing to kung-fu movie stereotypes. The plots themselves are old standards, some of which I had already planned to use in a long-term stage called The Demon Sword.
The Five Deadly Venoms
This one is a cult classic of the kung-fu genre. In it, a young apprentice of the five venoms master is sent to try to find five former students, each one representing one of the deadly venom styles – Centipede, Snake, Scorpion, Lizard, and Toad. The young student studies Lizard style, which includes the ability to walk and stand on walls, something you can do in Qigung, provided you know the skill.
Centipede is a quick and powerful style, it’s practitioner displays blinding hand speed and a poisonous palm strike. Although Qigung doesn’t have a Centipede style per se, there are skills that, when put together, could reproduce this deadly combat technique. I have left plenty of room for players to create their own unique styles
Snake style is much as you would imagine it. It doesn’t stray far from how it is protrayed in numerous other movies. The Snake can slide along the ground on his back to get close to his opponents, and he has a deadly two-finger fang strike. Both of these abilities are available in Qigung.
Scorpion is the most elusive of the styles, and is rather hard to describe. The power of this character really comes from his elusiveness and mystery. In Qigung, a student of Leopard style might closely resemble the Scorpion.
Finally, there is Toad style. The Toad is invulnerable to damage, except that he has one weak spot which, if struck, destroys his invulnerability. This goes to the heart of qigung: the skill. With qigung, you can absorb damage from some weapons and most empty-hand attacks, however, if you do take damage, it hurts your ability to absorb future damage. There is also the Iron Vest skill which makes you completely immune to damage.
In this story, Centipede and Snake have become evil, Lizard and Toad have remained true to their master’s training. Scorpion plays only for his own ends. Snake and Centipede need him because they can’t defeat Toad’s iron vest, and Scorpion is the only one who can find Toad’s weak spot. Once they defeat Toad, the young Lizard and the old Lizard have to team up to defeat the evil trio and restore the honor of their school.
This is a bit of a twist on a standard plot, something that can be used by storyplayers and storytellers alike. Once the Qigung Grand Theatre is in place, I plan to allow the players and storytellers to pretty much drive the individual or personal-level plots of the game, while I direct the encompassing stories.
Shaolin Master Killer
Also sometimes called The Thirty-Six Chambers of Shaolin, this is the story of a young scholar who, his family destroyed by the Manchus, flees to Shaolin where he learns the skills to go back and defeat the evil general and his lackeys. You can see this plot coming from a mile away, but this movie is most famous for its portrayal of life in a Shaolin monastery, and for the hero’s invention of the three-sectional staff. The characters are unique, and there is very little of the cheesiness common to many kung-fu movies.
In Qigung, the parallel of Shaolin is the Lohan monastery. I know that, when I begin building my first Lohan temple, I’ll be watching this movie over and over. And as for character design, this movie shows us that not all the monks studied the martial arts. Kung-fu was but one path for the monk; keeping and maintaining a temple required a wide variety of skilled people. Finally, this movie also gives us a glimpse of the place of the wandering monk in the world at large. Anyone wanting to play a Lohan monk in Qigung should definitely watch this movie.
Last Word
I can say in all honesty that finding these movies is sometimes a difficult undertaking. In my own neck of the woods, they are a bit rare. At the video stores, we have to settle for the usual Jackie Chans (not that there is anything wrong with these, but there is oh so much more), American Ninja IIIs and Bloodsport 17s. We have a metro population of over a million people, but only one (crappy) martial arts store. We also only have one game store, and it hovers on the verge of bankruptcy nearly all the time.
But I recently found a pretty good online store at www.kungfumovies.net. They have a large selection of titles in both VHS and DVD formats, including most of the "classics." I am not in any way affiliated with this organization; this is not an advertisement for them. This site is simply a resource, the best I’ve found so far. If you know of other ones, click below and post them on the forum. Also feel free to point out your own favorite movies..
