Picking up that gun

[Ric Flair]

You guys ever noticed in Way of the Dragon w/Bruce Lee and Ong Bak w/Tony Yaa that there is a major similarity in the two films???

Ever notice how when Bruce or Tony somehow knocks out a gun or a weapon from a bad guy's hands, our heroes never pick em up for their own advantage??? What we have is Bruce or Tony continue attacking the rest of the heavily armed baddies with their bare hands for the most part.

What gives??? Does this make sense???
Is this a part of some universal martial arts code i never heard of??? If it was me and i somehow knock a gun/knife/weapon outta an attackers hand (the odds might be stacked up against me though!) and have the chance to pick it up, i would!!!!!! Especially if i know there are more attackers around armed with weapons!!!

Or is this done in the movies to show the honour of the martial arts in regards to not killing an opponent??? What about the martial art styles that encourage "do what you must to survive" tactics??? Like Wing Chun or the Filipino arts???

I'm sure in real life if Bruce Lee faced the situations he faced in "Way of the Dragon" he would probably have shot and stabbed a few of those guys set out to kill him if he had the chance.

 

[Henderson]

I guess it wasn't in the script?

 

[pete]

sad when we talk about movies as if they were reality, and the actors as if they actually existed in the role they were playing...

but if we were to, better question would be why the bad guys would throw their guns at superman after all their bullets just bounced off his chest? and what would george reeves (50's TV) or christopher reeve (70-80's movies) pick up the gun and bend the barrel or use it against them?

pete

 

[Ric Flair]

sad when we talk about movies as if they were reality, and the actors as if they actually existed in the role they were playing...

but if we were to, better question would be why the bad guys would throw their guns at superman after all their bullets just bounced off his chest? and what would george reeves (50's TV) or christopher reeve (70-80's movies) pick up the gun and bend the barrel or use it against them?

pete

I did not create this post to imply that movies and reality are one in the same. I know reality from fiction.

However when it comes to martial art films, i sometimes wonder the purpose of allowing the hero to catch bullets with their teeth, fight 7 guys who are armed with guns or machetes and survive, and even walk through a hail of machine gun bullets lol!!! Is it to deceive the Western viewers to think Asian martial artist are super beings??? If so this gives the viewer a wrong perception of the martial arts community. We'll still have those few artist who take an art and eventually go out into the real world thinking they are the hero and, get shot by a police bullet!!!

 

[Ric Flair]

But again, I also realize that without any sort of fiction a film regardless of its genre might not totally work. A director needs to allow his creativity to flow when making a movie, even a documentuary which is based on a real person.

There needs to be a balance between fiction and reality in certain films though. I mean, did we pay to see a martial arts flick for its authencity or did we pay to see a guy dodge 20 bullets and beat a machine gun maniac with his bare fist as if he is Superman???

Also i have to be open minded to the type of viewers who actually WANT to see a mystical martial arts hero destroy his opponents with a touch of death and stare of penetration...

Personal taste for each individual???

 

[Navarre]

Yes, I think it depends on what the movie is trying to convey. Watching Crouching Tiger I could "believe" anything that happened. But I wouldn't have accepted it if some guy ran along the treetops in a Steven Seagal movie.

Incidentally, Superman would never use a firearm to harm a human. It isn't in his character. In a life-or-death situation he would feel as unsure about it as the average citizen.

Batman, despite his aggressive attitude, also would not use a firearm. He is too traumatized by his parents' death at the hands of a gunman to use the weapon.

The Punisher would blow your kneecaps off and then start working up from the ankles while having a slice of pizza.

 

[OnlyAnEgg]

I did not create this post to imply that movies and reality are one in the same. I know reality from fiction.

However when it comes to martial art films, i sometimes wonder the purpose of allowing the hero to catch bullets with their teeth, fight 7 guys who are armed with guns or machetes and survive, and even walk through a hail of machine gun bullets lol!!! Is it to deceive the Western viewers to think Asian martial artist are super beings???

Maybe, it's just because the producer wanted to make a Martial Arts movie. I've seen plenty of other genres where the hero does superhuman stuff. I mean, if he wanted the hero to use a gun, he'd make a cop movie or a war movie.

(...)We'll still have those few artist who take an art and eventually go out into the real world thinking they are the hero and, get shot by a police bullet!!!

Darwin Award nomination here. I don't personally know of anyone that believes that MA beats a bullet.

Ultimately, movies are entertainment. I expect to see some crazy stuff when I'm watching an action flick.

 

[arnisador]

Off all the unbelievable things in these movies...this is pretty low on my list of objections!

 

[terryl965]

Movie are there for the entertainment value just Like Wrestling did you see John Cena win while he was Blindfolded what a scripted.
Terry

 

[pete]

Incidentally, Superman would never use a firearm to harm a human. It isn't in his character. In a life-or-death situation he would feel as unsure about it as the average citizen.

Batman, despite his aggressive attitude, also would not use a firearm. He is too traumatized by his parents' death at the hands of a gunman to use the weapon.

who cares, they are just movies. keep them in the theater or tv screen and out of your martial arts training. i don't care if they are catching bullets in their teeth or dancing across the bamboo forest. its fun but not real, and even movies that attempt to attempt to be 'realistic' or 'believable' are still movies.

what cracks me up is thinking about what the actor playing the character would have really done... like what would 'Bruce' have done. well, what would Michael Keaton do if he were in Batman's shoes... LOL

i give up. i'm going to the movies.

pete

 

[Navarre]

I don't understand, Terry. Are you saying pro-wrestling is scripted?? I find that hard to believe.

I'm still wondering if a speeding city bus (with a bomb on it) could really jump a missing section of freeway.

 

[Navarre]

who cares, they are just movies.

Uh, yeah. That was my point too, Pete. I was just talking about what was in-character for Superman and Batman. That's relevant to the script.

 

[Cryozombie]

The Punisher would blow your kneecaps off and then start working up from the ankles while having a slice of pizza.

Don't talk about my Boy that way...

He would eat afterwords.

 

[Navarre]

Don't talk about my Boy that way...

He would eat afterwords.

You're absolutely right. Frank Castle's a professional. He wouldn't eat on the job. My apologies.

 

[Jagermeister]

To answer the question in the original post, no. There is no martial arts "code" that opposes the use of countering with a weapon. The Bruce Lee kind of films you are referring to do this for 2 reasons.

1. It creates the feeling that this style/character is so dominant, that nothing can stop it, and that equipping him with a gun only subtracts from its power.

2. If the protagonist kicks the first attacker in the head and takes his gun, the kung fu stops, the gun fight begins, and now you're watching Die Hard instead of a MA film. There's nothing wrong with Die Hard, but if you set out to make a kung fu film and half the movie is gun fights, you'll have a pretty disappointed audience.

I hope that answers your question.

 

[Ric Flair]

To answer the question in the original post, no. There is no martial arts "code" that opposes the use of countering with a weapon. The Bruce Lee kind of films you are referring to do this for 2 reasons.

1. It creates the feeling that this style/character is so dominant, that nothing can stop it, and that equipping him with a gun only subtracts from its power.

2. If the protagonist kicks the first attacker in the head and takes his gun, the kung fu stops, the gun fight begins, and now you're watching Die Hard instead of a MA film. There's nothing wrong with Die Hard, but if you set out to make a kung fu film and half the movie is gun fights, you'll have a pretty disappointed audience.

I hope that answers your question.

yes it DOES kind of answer my question. Now here's my thing,
I feel that since it is going on to 2006 and we as a world and society are in a totally different and less innocent time we need at least a few martial art films to represent this era. Just to even things out a little.

Sure its okay to have your invincible kung fu supercats fighting 12 guys who are armed with guns and knives but, we also need a martial art character who has been through it all.

A character who knows that there is no longer fighting fair out in the concrete warzones, its do what you can to see the next day!!! A character who trains not only in hand to hand and weapons training but, fire arms handling/safety/and use!!! So he is trapped in an area with a few crazed gun men and he MUST save his wife/gf/or daughter/son or not leave at all. He does what he can and beats one bad guy via the art of surprise and grabs the villains gun, ambushes and kills another 2 but runs out of bullets and somehow couldn't get the other baddies guns. So our hero resorts to picking up a broken broom and starts utilizing his Arnis skills against an unsuspecting bad guy. Our hero ambushes a few other guys by throwing sand into one of their eyes while stabbing the next and running for cover to make sure they don't hurt him in return, he finishes them off quickly. he uses his mind to overcome them, not just his m/a skills. Finally he meets the big bad boss and the boss knows all of our hero's tricks and NOW our hero is forced to fight hand to hand feet to feet for the next few minutes but, in the end our hero bashes the bad guy in the head with a crowbar he finds lying around in order to have time to save his loved one's life who is hanging over a tank full of sulpheric acid.

A Punisher of the martial arts genre, someone who also has the humor of Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan but the will to kill attitude of Mr. T (bad example???)

Though i understand that this is STILL a martial arts movie and needs to maintain its m/a essense and not overdue on the gunplay??? perhaps in between the gunfights/knife fights there will be some minor yet beautiful martial art focused fights with fist/feet/elbows/palms/knees/biting???

p/s Bruce Lee introduced guns and more weapons in "Way of The Dragon" which added realism to the times and made a reality often denied in movies before Bruce's time= bad guys using guns as their means of power!!! Though Bruce for evey scene where they had guns would throw wooden darts at the bad guys gun hands lol. Clever but fictional. Good movie still.

 

[Jagermeister]

Careful with those script ideas. Hollywood'll be stealing that stuff quick! :wink1:

 

[sgtmac_46]

The way of the gun is a martial art. Hojutsu was the japanese art of gunnery. Most kung fu movies focus solely on the unarmed skill of the star. Any movie, however, where skill with a firearm is displayed, is technically a 'martial arts' movie.

 

[FearlessFreep]

If you were not trained in using a gun or knife but were trained in underarmed combat and you knocked it out of your attackers hand...would you pick it up?

I think if you pick up a gun, you have to be ready to kill someone with it, it can't be a detterant unless you have the will to back up the threat and coupled with my lack of training, I'm not sure I would risk picking it up

 

[Navarre]

If you were not trained in using a gun or knife but were trained in underarmed combat and you knocked it out of your attackers hand...would you pick it up?

I'm not trained to an appreciable extent with a gun. If I knocked it out of an attacker's hand, I would probably make sure it wasn't available to be used by the attacker but I'm not sure I would use it.

Having a gun tends to make one mentally dependent on the weapon. Without proper training, I would find it to be an unnatural state for me and impeding the use of the unarmed techniques I know.

I'm not saying this is preferable. The lack of gun training in this day and age is no doubt to my detriment.

But, this is still probably going to be my initial reaction. I should probably become better trained in firearm combat, just in case. *looks for a Glock*