It's been nearly 50 years since Bruce Lee died suddenly in the prime of his life, but
his legend lives on in ways that even he could never have imagined.
Here's a look at the highlights and lowlights of his long and varied career, from the movies
that made him an icon to the ones we'd rather just forget.
Game of Death was a movie famously built around the footage Bruce Lee left behind from his
unfinished final film, most of which consisted of fight scenes that took place on various
levels of a pagoda.
After Lee's death, Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse took that footage and integrated
it into a new story about a martial arts movie star being hunted by a crime syndicate.
Game of Death is also notorious for integrating footage of Lee from other movies, often to
jarring effect, and at one point even uses footage of Lee's actual body in his casket.
If Game of Death had simply been made as a '70s martial arts flick full of subterfuge
and slick fight scenes, it wouldn't be a bad movie at all.
As it is, the footage that doesn't try to trick you into thinking you're watching Bruce
Lee is solid, the opening credits are killer, and John Barry's score is probably the best
thing about it.
Watching it in context as a film cobbled together from Lee's unfinished work, however, makes
it a trying viewing experience, and a sad reminder of what might have been.
The Game of Death was supposed to star Bruce Lee as a retired martial artist who is coerced
into retrieving something valuable from the top of a mysterious pagoda — with each level
guarded by a martial artist with a different fighting style.
As you know, however, the true version of the movie never came to fruition, thanks to
Lee's untimely passing.
What footage did exist was later released as part of the documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's
Journey.
The Game of Death's climax featured Lee in his now-iconic yellow tracksuit, taking on
these martial artists in a series of precisely choreographed battles, culminating in a fight
with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's character at the pagoda's summit.
Watching what exists of The Game of Death is a bittersweet experience, because while
we'll never get to see the full film, seeing what Lee was able to do with this level of
creative control and precision is truly astonishing nonetheless.
Bruce Lee's first major introduction to American audiences was as Kato in The Green Hornet,
the superhero action-adventure series in which he stole the show as sidekick to the titular
masked hero.
The show was successful in America, but overseas it made Lee an even bigger star, to the point
that in Hong Kong it became known as "The Kato Show."
Lee's international popularity as Kato, combined with the mythology that sprung up around him
after his untimely death in 1973, led Fox to consider repurposing the old Green Hornet
episodes to capitalize on his fame.
So, in 1974, they cut together several episodes from the 1966-67 series and released them
as a feature film.
It did well in some markets, but as you might expect from a heavily episodic series like
The Green Hornet, it doesn't actually work all that well as a movie with a narrative
throughline.
The Way of the Dragon is the first film in which Bruce Lee officially stepped into the
role of both director and screenwriter, giving him more creative control than he had on any
of his previous works.
The story is relatively simple: a martial artist heads to a foreign land to become an
enforcer in a fight to save innocent people from a tyrannical crime boss.
However, more than any of his previous films, this one is truly infused with Lee's personality,
sense of humor, and sense of pacing.
Because of that, Way of the Dragon is funnier than Lee's previous Hong Kong films, as he
plays the fish out of water with a huge amount of fun.
It's also got a more ambitious sense of action, as exemplified by the scenes in which he single-handedly
takes on a gang of thugs inside the restaurant at the center of the conflict.
Most famously, though, this is the film in which Bruce Lee fights Chuck Norris, who made
his big-screen debut with Way of the Dragon.
That fight, which is set inside Rome's Colosseum, still holds up as one of the coolest things
to have ever happened in martial arts cinema.
Bruce Lee's first major leading role in a martial arts film was in The Big Boss, the
film he made after returning to Hong Kong following a short and frustrating attempt
to break Hollywood.
Lee plays Cheng Chao-an, a young man who moves from China to Thailand to live with family
members who are unknowingly connected to a drug smuggling ring run out of an ice factory.
Things start to get rough almost immediately, but Cheng can't join the fight because of
a promise he made to his mother to never get involved in violence.
Let's be clear: The Big Boss is actually a pretty good movie.
It just happens to be the worst of the major martial arts films that Lee had completed
at the time of his death.
There are some terrific fight scenes here, and Lee's onscreen swagger is palpable.
When viewed alongside his later work, though, you can easily see just how much further he
could really push himself.
Sadly, it's impossible to separate the release of Enter the Dragon from the death of its star.
Bruce Lee died just weeks before this film was released in America, and while it was
supposed to make him a global star by bringing his Hong Kong kung fu stylings to a bigger
audience, in death it made him an icon.
Enter the Dragon remains one of the most culturally significant films of the 1970s, a watershed
moment that informed and influenced countless martial arts films that came after, as well
as action cinema in general.
Even when you try to see the film outside the context of Lee's death, you'll still experience
a masterpiece.
Enter the Dragon is the work of a young star who poured everything he'd learned from his
past hits into this one, perfection-seeking megahit.
It remains a riveting film, from Lee's "emotional content" speech near the beginning all the
way to that legendary mirrored room fight scene at the end.
"What was that?
An exhibition?
We need emotional content."
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