Board 8 > Gauntlet Crew Ranks Martial Arts Movies - "Don't think! Feeeel!"

(+) Yeah! (+)

In this arc of Gauntlet Crew Ranks, 7 of us have decided to watch Martial Arts movies. A variety of different martial arts movies were chosen by myself.

The Rankers:
Inviso
Johnbobb
JONA
Karo
scarlet
Snake
Wickle

The list of movies:

Big Trouble in Little China
Bloodsport
Chocolate
Come Drink With Me
Crippled Avengers
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Drunken Master
Drunken Master II/The Legend of the Drunken Master
Enter the Dragon
Executioners from Shaolin
Fearless
Fist of Fury/The Chinese Connection
Five Deadly Venoms
Game of Death
Hero
House of Flying Daggers
Ip Man
Kickboxer
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Kill Bill: Volume 2
Kung Fu Hustle
Kung Pow! Enter the Fist
Master of the Flying Guillotine
Once Upon a Time in China
One Armed Swordsman
Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
Police Story
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky
Rumble in the Bronx
Rush Hour
SPL: Sha Po Lang/Kill Zone
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
The Big Boss/Fists of Fury
The Forbidden Kingdom
The Karate Kid (1984)
The Raid: Redemption
The Raid 2
The Street Fighter
Tom-Yum-Goong/The Protector
Way of the Dragon
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Awwww yeah! First alphabetically!
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Here are the point values of the 40 movies:

57
58
58
61
72
75
91
92
94
98
100
102
119
127
129
133
133
140
142
143
144
146
151
155
160
162
163
169
171
175
181
190
195
197
198
206
225
240
244
244

Ties will be decided by taking out the lowest and highest ranking of the tied movies. The movie with less points wins the tiebreaker.

I'll post last place later in the night but I will give you a hint.

In a Gauntlet Crew Ranks first, the last place actually has nobody rank it last.
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Wow, 5 points separating number 1 through number 4. MUCH more excitement this time around than the last few lists.
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Tag.
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So excited for another project to start!

My first guess will be Kung Pow! Enter the Fist
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Tag.
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The bottom two have average ratings of 35 each, so any high outliers are gonna make life difficult without a 40. I'm gonna guess "The Street Fighter".
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Woo, my first gauntlet ranking!

I'm gonna guess Master of the Flying Guillotine
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a tie for last?

this cannot be, one of these movies was significantly worse than everything else on the list
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PrinceKaro posted...

a tie for last?

this cannot be, one of these movies was significantly worse than everything else on the list

I felt the same way man
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40. Kickboxer - 244 points

Karo - 25
Inviso - 27
Johnbobb - 36
JONA - 39
scarlet - 39
Snake - 39
Wickle - 39

Karo - An arrogant american kickboxer goes to thailand and gets his back broken, and his brother trains to avenge him with the help of a kooky old muai thai master. By kicking a bamboo stalk a lot he somehow becomes the best kickboxer in the world and thus gets his revenge. It is just kind of Rocky crossed with the Karate Kid and doesn't really have any sort of originality, plus the characters are annoying and stupid.

Inviso - Holy SHIT Jean Claude Van Damme is a bad actor. His terrible acting sustains me in these movies, because once again, there is something utterly hilarious to me about how, once again, hes portrayed as American. Sure, he admits to being from Belgium (but lives in Los Angeles), but that doesnt explain his alleged BROTHER having a genuine American accent. But yeah, this movie is just as corny as youd expect, including a bizarre scene in which JCVD gets drunk, does some drunk white guy dancing, and then beats up a bunch of JONAs in the bar. All of this culminates in him fighting ponytail JONA in order to both avenge his brothers paralysis, AND avenge his love interest getting raped. This is a fucking bizarre plot. And honestly, the main thing holding it back from being a so bad its good masterpiece is how much I hate the training montages in these films. You CANNOT make me think that JCVD requires a training montage. You just cant. Its like that Simpsons joke where Rainier Wolfcastle plays a nerd. Its played for laughs, but this movie takes itself seriously.

Johnbobb - Cocky asshole is overconfident and gets beaten badly in a match hes completely unprepared for. Wait were supposed to feel sorry for him? Sorry, but Eric Sloane is no Apollo Creed, and injuring the heros friend doesnt really work as emotional motivation if the character wasnt sympathetic to begin with. Also, Jean-Claude STILL cant act. I laughed out loud at the montage of him walking around Thailand looking sad and Stan Bush singing in the background. This is one of the few on the list I feel comfortable calling an objectively bad movie.

JONA - I can see myself enjoying some of the cheesiness of this movie if I just watched it freely and not really compare it to other martial arts movies but it really doesn't stack up well here. It also doesn't help that the movie is more boring than it is cheesy. There are better training sequences, action scenes and even cheesier stuff out there.

scarlet - Kickboxer is a poor mans Bloodsport. Let THAT sink in for a moment.

Snake - A little too much focus on training and neither the characters or acting were able to keep my attention. The fights are predictable and the film is generally a yawnfest.
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Wickle - Kinda terrible watching two of his movies in a row, because you sit there watching him use the exact same finishing blow, and you get essentially an hour and a half movie that tells a more developed version of the last 30 minutes of his other
one. And by developed, I mean his brother is a complete douche that were supposed to believe is worth avenging, when hes a dumbshit that didnt listen to his brother Who proceeds to not listen to anyone and eventually get his girl raped, his brother kidnapped, and himself cut up in a match that if he just sat back and made himself unknown until he kicked the guys ass would have simply done well that. Kicked his ass. But yeah, cruel fighter beats shit out of white jackass, JCVD wants to enact revenge JCVD wins eventually. Never proves the moron deserved revenge. Just had more shitty characters Starring Will Smith who just wants to fuck bitches and Cho Chang who doesnt even believe in her fathers martial arts. What? Did the last guy her uncle taught try to become her lover but died before he got to be able to? No, there was not that type of back story. Terrible movie.
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ok yeah that's fair
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Hi Snake, Scar, and JONA... Kind of an odd group for me to share an opinion with.
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Hi Wickle

Almost guessed this one instead.
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Outlier Rankings
Karo - 15
Inviso - 13
Johnbobb - 4
JONA - 1
scarlet - 1
Snake - 1
Wickle - 1

Everyone's on the board with no one getting 40 right.

Hint for #39.

Has influences on the Kill Bill movies, whether it be casting and/or a reference.
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Gonna assume this is Gordon Liu and thus, 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

If so, we're eliminating this movie 3 places too soon.
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pretty sure this is The Street Fighter

edit: scratch that, gonna say Executioners of Shaolin instead
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I'm gonna go less obvious and say Master of the Flying Guillotine.
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I'm gonna stick with The Street Fighter.
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I have no idea what to guess here, maybe Guillotine because of the guy with the stupid beard?
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I'm not a gauntlet person but this category interests me so tag.
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It could also be Game of Death now that I think about it.
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oh damn, the yellow track suit. I think youve got it
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PrinceKaro posted...

I have no idea what to guess here, maybe Guillotine because of the guy with the stupid beard?

Guillotine is more on Gogo, since the weapon she uses during her fight.
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Snake5555555555 posted...

It could also be Game of Death now that I think about it.

PrinceKaro posted...

oh damn, the yellow track suit. I think youve got it

It's definitely a solid reference, but I feel like Game of Death won't drop this low simply by being a Bruce Lee movie (sort of). It'll definitely be the lowest of his five films on the list though
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Ooh, Kickboxer out already! I can't say I blame you guys. I've seen it twice and all I can remember is JCVD dancing awkwardly. Even Kickboxer: Vengeance was more memorable somehow, mostly because Batista.

Credit where credit is due. This movie inspired Rusev to be as awesone as he is and I'm so elated for that. You go tong po!
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39. Executioners from Shaolin - 244 points

Wickle - 25
scarlet - 33
Karo - 34
JONA - 37
Snake - 37
Johnbobb - 38
Inviso - 40

Wickle - Man is too stupid to listen to his wife and instead forces his son to make a mockery of Tiger Style but still avenge him. I felt like the beginning was kinda nice for creating actual character development, but it kind of failed to produce towards the latter half. The only character that was likeable by the end was the villain, since it didnt really play him out to be one, hes just defending himself from people that keep attacking him just for winning a duel to the death. They dont really play out why he must be beat, rather than just the avenge my master plotline that Why not take every advantage going in to do so? Why die trying when you could improve in many ways?

scarlet - When a movie starts with a gray haired grand master trapping a guys foot with his crotch, you know it's some kind of classic. So incredibly bad that it's good. The sound effects are insane. A few familiar faces, lots of silliness, and some crazy nonsense that makes it worth watching.

Karo - Basically someone kills someone else, and then a third person wants to kill the first someone because of it. Like so many of these movies, the heroes are motivated by petty revenge and are willing to do anything to achieve it, including destroying their own family. In the climactic battle scene, suddenly the movie freezes and the text 'the protagonist eventually killed the bad guy, the end!' appears on the screen. Um, yay?

JONA - While the action can be pretty good and I liked the family moments between the three, it takes way too long to get there. There's some fun goofy stuff, like the fuckfighting, but it's just overall dull.

Snake - This one was a little repetitive and the comedy sort of feels out of place here with really poorly paced scenes.

Johnbobb - Can you find it? Man, theres not a ton to really love here. Alright fights, a goofy villain, a sometimes interesting but overall bland plot centered around revenge against a single person. But when I think about the movie, I dont think about any of that, I think about the heroes desperately grasping at Pai Meis crotch. Over and over again. Like way more times than any one movie needed. And then its just suddenly over? What a weird film.

Inviso - This movie was like Disney does kung-fu. And not good, animated Disney. I mean, shitty, 70s live-action Disney. Its the music that kills the movie for me. Its like someone was playing Bambi in during the filming process and no one bothered to fix the sound in post. Unfortunately for this movie, the music is the only really memorable aspect. The characters are all wooden, the plot feels very generic (lets have two characters fight for dumb reasons because weve gone two minutes without showing some kung-fu), and the tone is wildly inconsistent. Seriously, the movie switches from goofy JONA cant get his new wife to put out scenes to JONA must avenge his master, but Pai Mei will kill him scenes. Plus, the movie cant keep straight its main characters. Like, we spent 75% on JONA, only to switch over to JONAs shitty son, mini-JONA for the last quarter. And then that dipshit dicks around and half-asses his kung-fu to beat the biggest badass in the movie. Thats fucking bullshit.
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*high fives self*
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Outlier Rankings
Karo - 20
Wickle - 15
Inviso - 14
scarlet - 7
Johnbobb - 5
JONA - 3
Snake - 3

Karo extends his lead but Wickle gets a lot of points.

Hint for 38.

Has actors in it who are not Chinese.
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First thought is Bloodsport given how low Kickboxer was but that seems too obvious
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I can accept Kickboxer being low but if Bloodsport is this low we're gonna have a problem.
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Woohoo! First 40th place eliminated!
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Oh shit what am I saying

Strike Bloodsport, make it Kung Pow instead
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38. Game of Death - 240 points

Inviso - 17
Wickle - 33
Karo - 36
Johnbobb - 37
scarlet - 37
JONA - 40
Snake - 40

Inviso - Holy SHIT this movie is amazing, and NOT in a good way. Well, in a good way, but not in an INTENTIONALLY good way. For those who DIDNT get it from watching the movie, this came out in 1978. Bruce Lee died in 1973. This was not one of those movies where he died during filming and it came out posthumously. He died filming A version of Game of Death, but not THIS version of Game of Death. As a result, you have writers trying to come up with a plot that makes sense for a movie theyre clearly just making to milk the Bruce Lee name. Half the movie is BLATANTLY a body double, who I will call JONA, given that he wears sunglasses, or old man disguises. And when Bruce Lee IS really on-screen, its either in random close-ups of his eyes, or footage from the original Game of Death, where it makes NO sense given the movies plot. Its even funnier towards the very end, they keep switching from JONA fighting a dude, to a solo reaction shot of actual Bruce Lee, then back to JONA, whose face and clothes do NOT match the damage Bruce has sustained in his shots. This is a fucking masterpiece of not giving a fuck. I love it.

Wickle - Still dont really get the point of fighting all the way to death in more modern films. You can just walk away and go be someone elses bodyguard and get paid again. But really fuck all these characters, fuck the stupid shit girl who literally took 3 seconds to go from Im not gonna cry anymore, to throwing the biggest tantrum weve seen on this list, fuck the old man that literally was acting like a spoiled brat at one point of the movie, fuck Billy for not just letting the stupid bitch die when she wouldnt listen to a word he said. Oh and to stop fucking the characters I liked the one song towards the end of the movie UNTIL IT KEPT REPEATING UNTIL THE MOVIE ENDED. Fuck you movie.

Karo - This was a movie Bruce Lee died during the production of, yet they still thought it was a good idea to try and finish the film anyway. By finish the film I mean write a completely different story and then awkwardly insert prerecorded footage of Lee fighting from the unfinished movie. As there wasnt enough of this to make a whole movie, Lee's character thus has this rather curious propensity to always look away from the camera, or wear thick dark glasses or a fake beard. Oh boy. Listen, trying to replace Lee at all was a bad idea. Replacing someone with the presence and charisma he radiated on camera with this scrawny kid who skulks in dark corners mumbling is fucking sacrilegious. It is just simply something that should never have been made, and a very tasteless attempt to cash in on the legacy of a great man.

Johnbobb - When Heath Ledger died, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was his final film, having been unfinished at the time of his death. So director Terry Gilliam changed the plot to honor the loss of Ledger, rather than to deal with it. He brought in Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, all friends of Ledgers, to play parts of the role. It never pretended that they were Heath Ledger himself, but instead made the new actors into magical extensions of Ledgers character, making Ledger himself feel larger than life. It was a powerful and fitting tribute to Ledger, and immediately became one of my all-time favorite movies because of this. Game of Death is sort of the opposite. The techniques they use to deal with Lees death feel forced, and take away from the movie rather than adding to it. And once I realized that the funeral scenes from the film were Lees actual funeral, I was a little disgusted. This didnt feel like a tribute to him, it seemed like an attempt to simply cash in on his name one more time.
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scarlet - A few decent Lee fight scenes mixed with a lot of shots of the back of someone elses head.

JONA - The very few scenes we get of the actual Bruce Lee are great and almost saved this from being my movie in last. It's a shame that the rest of the movie is just incredibly dull and Billy Lo is a fucking loser who gets his ass kicked. I guess you can get some enjoyment from them trying to hide the fact that it's not Bruce Lee in the movie but it really isn't worth it.

Snake - First of all, that awesome yellow-and-black tracksuit definitely has to be noted! The plusses stop there though. Sadly however, as this was an unfinished film with Bruce Lees death, it nowhere near as strong as it couldve been. As only about 11 minutes of actual Bruce Lee scenes were used, the replacements do not do a very convincing job of replacing him. Showing Bruce Lees actual funeral was a weird choice for sure. The scenes in this are generally poorly edited and constantly switch between film types, and what that horrible mirror reflection is such crap. It feels unfair judging an unfinished film, but hey, it was their choice to release it.
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damn it 2 in a row that I'm one off of
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Outlier Rankings
Inviso - 35
Karo - 22
Wickle - 20
scarlet - 8
Johnbobb - 6
JONA - 5
Snake - 5

Inviso now leads the pack with a huge jump of 21 points and Wickle closes the gap between him and Karo.

Hint for 37.

Has somebody that's in at least 3 of the movies on the list.
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well that would've been a good one for Game of Death
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JONALEON1 posted...

Inviso - Half the movie is BLATANTLY a body double, who I will call JONA,

So JONA is the only Asian you know, huh!? YOU DAMN RACIST! HE'S FROM NEW Y-... Oh right, wasn't this movie pretending to be in New York?
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I may guess Rush Hour for this one.
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Oh, I got it, I've been shuffling through actors and found this guy. Yuen Wah (he needs to pee)

He was Bruce Lee's stunt double, so part of those four movies, also had a minor part in Fists of Fury. Also is in Hero and Kung Fu Hustle. Next movie is KFH! Clearly!

To be more serious, I'll actually go with Jimmy Wang, either Master of the Flying Guillotine or Kung Pow is more likely here (not One-Armed Swordsman yet, but naming the third movie he was in).
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You guys are no fun :P
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Feel like you guys (except maybe Inviso) may have liked Game of Death a bit more if you didn't know the history. The reviews (except Wickle's-- I guess 33rd place is "a bit more") read like you guys were trying to find how blatant it is Bruce Lee is not actually present for most the movie than just trying to watch it as a movie.

I mean it's not particularly good either way but yeah.
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37. Kung Pow! Enter the Fist - 225 points

Inviso - 19
Wickle - 23
JONA - 25
Snake - 38
Johnbobb - 40
Karo - 40
scarlet - 40

Inviso - Watching Kung Fu Hustle and Kung Pow back-to-backits like night and fucking day. Sure, both movies are early 2000s and use some pretty shitty CGI, but Hustle is almost too self-aware that its a parody. Pow, meanwhile, while still a kung-fu parody, manages to play it a lot straighter and go into a lot of the common tropes from the genre. I knew this would be funny from very early on, when you had the moment of baby Chosen One falling down a hill to be found by a peasantand then the peasant comments on how cute he is before rolling him away down another hill. That just started the ball rolling. And really, the whole concept is hilarious. You take an undervalued kung-fu movie from the 70s, CGI an actor into it, redub it so all the JONAs speak with shitty voices and dialogue, and create a whole new plot. Its like what happened with Game of Death, only INTENTIONALLY. There wasnt even a whole lot of fighting, and I didnt mind that. It was just REALLY amusing the way they threw in random non-sequiturs. Of course, some jokes fell flat (the cow fight is a big one, and the baby fightreally anything focused on the shitty CGI), but overall it was pretty fun.

Wickle - Ive called a few movies parodies that werent as much of a parody as this. Like JCVD movies, except this movie had a CGI cow that fought better than JCVD himself. And like a parody movie it was awful and sometimes got funny in the process of being censored by GameFAQs... Guess it earns points for being funny at some pieces...

JONA - Is this movie stupid and immature? Absolutely but I can't help but enjoy the movie. There are scenes which are big duds, like the baby and cow scenes, but I still found the rest of the movie pretty funny and it's really quotable.

Snake - Too much in the realm of silliness and ridiculuousness. I feel like a lot of the humor here is forced and just not very funny, just awkward and cringey. An annoying film to watch through.

Johnbobb - The film was at its best when playing out like Mystery Science Theater, poking fun at things like bad dubbing, ridiculous action scenes and shoddy acting. The problem was that Steve Oedekerk really wasnt at the top of his game here. Most of the jokes were weak, feeling like a Friedberg and Seltzer movie. The funny song choices are pretty horribly outdated, the effects were godawful and the humor was often juvenile. The standout worst scene was that fucking cow fight, which combined awful CGI, immature jokes and TWO Matrix parodies. In fact, I originally had this ranked higher because there are SOME funny scenes, but the more I think about that damn cow fight scene, the lower this movie sunk.
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Karo - So basically what happened here was that some american filmmaker got the rights to some chinese kung fu flick and decided to edit it into a parody of martial arts movies. Ignoring for a moment just how disrespectful to the original director this is, the new edit is so idiotic, low budget, incompetent and talentless that it may have well been something thrown together on youtube by a 12 year old boy. It fails catastrophically at even its primary goal of being a kung fu film sendup, as it lacks
even the slightest bit of respect for the genre. Its idea of parody humor is either 'lets make something silly and random happen with dated CGI' or 'lets be racist as all fuck'. It is a cataclysmicly bad steaming pile of fecal matter that is built on the back of outright plagiarism, and to even call it a movie at all is extremely generous.

scarlet - Reminiscent of when a Saturday Night Live sketch is turned into a full-length film, resulting in the same amount of content in one sketch being spread across an hour and a half. Youre pretty much done with this movie by minute two.
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I haven't seen probably a bit under half the list but that would almost certainly be my number 40 right there. Hideous and cringeworthy movie.
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Outlier Rankings
Inviso - 53
Wickle - 34
Karo - 25
JONA - 17
scarlet - 11
Johnbobb - 9
Snake - 6

Inviso extends his lead even more while I get a couple of points to get to the middle of the pack. Snake still looking comfortable at the bottom.

Hint for 36

First movie eliminated to be in someone's top 10.
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Yeah, this isnt gonna be a great list for me, as I love cheesy action movies. Its just like the Bond rankings.
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