- All right guys.
Birth of the Dragon, have you seen the movie?
Maybe you love it maybe you hate it.
Bruce Lee versus Wong Jack Man, how much
of that is the truth, how much is that is fiction?
Today I've got Sifu Octavio with me joining us.
We're gonna talk about the movie.
(energetic music)
So Sifu what do you think of the movie overall?
Do you love it?
Do you hate it?
- You know that's that's a good question.
It's quite interesting.
I don't like to really say anything negative
or anything positive.
I think somewhere in the in the middle.
- You know some parts are good.
Some parts are like mmm...
- You know, three and a half stars.
- [Dan] Yeah that's good.
Well that's 'cause since we like,
well of course we're both like big Bruce Lee fans.
Anything that's Bruce Lee related we'll go see.
We went to see it.
- Right, right.
- And now I think the question people have
is first of all, how much of that it's accurate?
Because in the movie, Philip the actor,
the way that he portrays Bruce
is almost like a little bit arrogant.
Kinda like an arrogant young,
almost like a punk kind of feel.
- Right.
So how much of that is accurate from your perspective?
- Well yeah, I think maybe 15 percent of it is accurate.
I think a lot of the the story
was built around the director's vision.
- Yeah.
- Of how he wanted the movie.
- [Dan] Yes.
- [Sifu] It's all about entertainment.
- [Dan] Correct, correct.
It's not all like how accurate
compared to history and all that.
- Yeah, I mean really think about it,
I mean you're gonna have to go through a series
of things that make a movie,
and it gets boring it would be like a drama film,
and then you fall asleep.
- Correct.
- So they wanted some action in there,
and they wanted some twist to the story,
and then make it a little bit more pizzazz I guess.
- I do think the accent it's pretty good.
- I just got a call from one of my students,
Vinnie Wei, Steve McKee's friend.
- Yeah, I think it's the actor himself, yeah.
- Really thick accent, right?
- I think Philip did a really good job as far as
portraying the actor,
I'm sorry Bruce Lee.
But as an actor I think he did a great job.
- And one thing I do like
he's at least they found Philip
when 'cause Philip's got Wing Chun background.
It's being martial instructor for many years.
- Right.
- So they actually found like a kung fu person
to play this role versus
like someone has no kung fu background.
- Yeah.
- Trying to be like Bruce and it's not as good, right?
So then I think I give credit to the team,
to the director, producer, right?
- I totally agree.
His background stems from Wong Shun Leung.
- Yup.
- And so that's that's a strong point in the film.
- In case you don't know Wong Shun Leung,
he's also the one who taught Bruce Lee Wing Chun, right?
- Absolutely.
- Yeah.
- And he therefore, what he showed on film
was was pretty accurate
as far as a the Wing Chun was concerned.
Now I mean you see scenes where he's flying in the air,
again that's dramatic with effects,
but other than that, the Wing Chun look pretty good.
- And I think about one thing
that I personally I don't like the film
that the part I don't like
is he portrayed Bruce as like this immature person
that's like into fighting
and just like so arrogant and this and that.
Versus Wong Jack Man is this monk and philosopher,
but that's not quite historic as a Bruce Lee fan we know,
it's when Bruce was teaching
martial art to non Chinese--
- Yeah.
- And he upsets the Chinese martial community,
and the true history, the story is
they send Wong Jack Man to challenge Bruce.
Basically, hey you know what?
You cannot teach.
If you teach, we're gonna kick your ass, right?
- Right.
- Shut down the school, and that's how the fight,
how the guy did that fight
wasn't like Wong Jack Man such a philosopher
trying to teach this young guy a lesson.
It wasn't anything like that.
- No, not at all.
I think they extracted the philosophy part
and put it on to Wong Jack Man in the film,
and it seemed like they wanted to connect both of them.
- Correct.
- To then have to, say, transform Bruce's vision
of the martial arts
and actually his own attitude and character.
- Correct.
- Whereas actually in real life Bruce was the--
- Philosopher.
- The philosopher. - Yeah he was a thinker.
He was the philosopher.
- He was.
- Because he took philosophy when he was in university,
keep in mind that was his major.
- Right, and I think that that's
what kind of you know threw me off.
I'm like what?
You know they're portraying Bruce Lee
as an immature individual.
- Right.
- You know he may have been young,
of course everybody that's at a, you know,
immature age, thinks irrationally sometimes
and things like that,
but he was way ahead of his time.
- Yeah, but one thing Bruce,
like when I talk to his people that study under Bruce,
Bruce does have a hot temper, that's true.
(laughs)
That is true.
He does like to get into fights and stuff like that.
What about the fight itself,
about like they were doing, of course for Hollywood,
jumping and flying kick and doing all this stuff,
and all that of course it's not like that.
What was the fight like?
- My teacher, he ended up saying
that he spoke about the fight,
and he said that he just felt that he ran out of gas.
It was just a simple conversation.
It wasn't like a big dramatic effect
like oh my God, I got into this fight,
but he expressed that he was,
just that Bruce Lee was,
you know just winded.
You know he says that I needed to change it up, you know,
and that's, it was no specific details
in the way the story was shared to me.
But more or less if you see Linda Cadwell's interview,
Linda Lee Cadwell, you would actually see
the honesty and the truth come out of her own words.
And I believe that's the strongest truth out there today.
- And I think that fight taught Bruce
something he incorporated and more fitness training.
Also now then changed the way he approached martial art.
- Right.
- Which is in a way it's the birth of Jeet Kune Do, right?
- Yeah, absolutely.
And I think,
again, Linda's telling the story
about how the fight actually happened
was that he was chasing the other individual,
because I mean you imagine the straight blast,
and if you've seen Dan's videos of the straight blast,
you're chasing after people,
or at least you're maintaining contact,
and so when you're flooded with all that firepower
you just can't escape.
So you can imagine and like trying to get away from him.
But we don't know exactly what it looked like,
but I can imagine him just doing a lot of punches
whether it looked like this or like this,
he was probably just hammering away,
and probably doing low kicks.
- Yeah.
- The whole time, but that's the extent of it, you know.
And it took a while.
He said the guy started turning around.
He started hitting him back of the head a lot.
- Makes sense.
- So, but that's that's as much as I can understand
on how that fight went.
We weren't there, you know,
so we're hearing it, what, second hand, third hand?
- Second hand, yeah.
- You know that's all that's all we're getting.
But like I said, the most accurate truth
is coming out of a Linda's mouth.
- I agree, I agree.
So, Birth of the Dragon,
you like it?
Do you hate it?
Comment below.
Maybe share us your perspective.
What would you like about the movie,
what you don't like about the movie.
As a Bruce Lee fan, hey anything Bruce Lee's is all good.
I hope they keep making more Bruce Lee movies.
We'll keep going to those movies.
So comment below, and share with us your thoughts.