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| Jackie as a henchman in Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury |
In the 1980 film Shi di chu ma, also known as The Young Master, was starred and was directed by the now iconic Jackie Chan. During the 1980s Jackie Chan was one of the first to push forward the new action-comedy genre in the film industry. In The Young Master Jackie was one of the first to successfully eject comedy into a martial arts film. As many of these action-comedy martial arts films Jackie starred in became a hit took this to his advantage. From 1980-1987 Jackie rode his success on the many and numerous action-comedy films and thus propelled himself into the spotlight. However at first this newly acquired fame had only was only present in Hong Kong because of Jackie Chan’s return to Hong Kong films. Like his mentor Bruce Lee, Jackie became greatly disheartened by the American film industry’s refusal to grant him a leading role in martial arts/action films. These films however granted leading roles to white actors because they felt that the American audience would relate better to a white actor.
Deprived of leading roles in America Chan turned to Hong Kong for his key to stardom in the 1980s. His prayer was answered as became a star in Hong Kong and his movies skyrocketed Chinese box offices charts. As an added bonus his success even spread to America as many of his films found their way back to the United States. His fame and popularity also spread across East Asian countries and reached wide markets such as Japan with the films titled, The Young Master and Dragon Lord. Slowly and slowly as his popularity in China increased, so did the interest for him to return to the United States. The 1980s for Jackie Chan was the career boost he needed to reach stardom. Through this new action-comedy comedy he helped create and promote got him where he is in his career today. For in the late 1980s and early 1990s Jackie Chan returned to the United States and has become an ionic figure in Hollywood ever since. Because of Jackie’s unique clownish charm with slapstick humor and amazing action stunts, the genre action-comedy is very popular genre today.
However, it is his success he created within Hollywood makes up his iconic legacy. Along side with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan is one of the most successful and renown Asian American actor of all time. Picking up where Bruce Lee has left off, Jackie’s struggle and tribulations have cleared the way for Asian Americans in the film industry. Without his decision to not give up and pursue his acting career in Hong Kong that has had an impact on the lives of the aspiring and current Asian Americans actors and actresses of today. Still even today there is still a somewhat small percentage of Asian American performers in Hollywood however it is because of Jackie that this number has increased.
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