Drunken Master II is the most defining movie of Jackie Chan's career. 1978's Drunken Master was one of Chan's break-out movies in his early career, with Chan playing a comedic take on the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung and showcasing the martial art Zui Quan, or Drunken Fist. 16 years later, Chan returned to the role of Wong in the sequel Drunken Master II, which was later released in the U.S. in 2000 under the title of The Legend of Drunken Master.
While Chan has been a part of many highly acclaimed action-comedies, Drunken Master II is often regarded as one of, if not, the best Jackie Chan movie ever made. Indeed, Drunken Master II has some of Chan's most unbelievable action scenes, but the key to its popularity is the combination of numerous elements that elevate it to the upper echelon of all Jackie Chan movies. Here are the five reasons why Drunken Master II is Chan's defining movie.
5 Drunken Master II Follows On Jackie Chan's Breakout Hit
Following a string of middling and underperforming kung fu movies in the '70s, Chan finally achieved success as a leading man with 1978's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow. However, it was Chan's follow-up Drunken Master that cemented that success that same year. With his portrayal of Wong Fei-hung as an irreverent youth and exponent of Drunken Fist, Chan was presenting a very specific take on Wong that was unique to him.
By returning to the role of Wong Fei-hung in Drunken Master II, Chan was making a comeback to the very role that not only launched his career, but the one that enabled him to become the biggest star in Asia. To be sure, Drunken Master II is enough of a standalone story that one need not have seen the original Drunken Master to enjoy it, but the background behind it enriches the experience and legacy of the film a lot. Also giving Drunken Master II a boost was the body of work Chan had crafted between it and Drunken Master.
4 Drunken Master II Dials Up The Jackie Chan Experience To 11
After Chan broke out with the success of Drunken Master, he began to craft a very specific style of action-comedy that was all its own. Chan had always been adamant about positioning his action hero image as the inverse of Bruce Lee's, and the '80s and early '90s were where he really honed his style with a blend of stuntwork, martial arts, and comedy. Movies like the Police Story franchise, the Armour of God movies, Wheels on Meals, and Dragons Forever helped set the template for what a Chan movie looked like, and he had the benefit of being able to draw upon that for Drunken Master II.
While Drunken Master II positions itself as a classic kung fu movie in the same vein as Drunken Master, its action scenes also feel distinctly closer to the likes of Chan's '80s work with the combination of physical comedy and jaw-dropping stunt work. With Drunken Master II, Chan was able to essentially apply the elements he had developed in his post-Drunken Master work to the same character and setting as his 1978 breakout. It also gave Chan the chance to do something historic within his own career.
3 Drunken Master II Has One Of Jackie Chan's Most Daring Stunts
Jackie Chan doing his own stunts is the stuff of legend, with many of his movies including outtakes of stunts gone wrong, as indeed plenty of them have with the laundry list of injuries he has endured. However, Drunken Master II delivers a stunt that is among Chan's most harrowing when he falls into a bed of flaming coals during the climactic fight with Ken Lo. Moreover, Chan even reportedly did the stunt twice.
The amount of courage on display in Chan falling into the bed of coals and frantically scrambling out is beyond belief, and even by the standards of his career, the palpable reality of it makes it painful to watch. Chan's closest brush with death would come when he fell from a tree and cracked his skull on Armour of God, a fairly tame stunt compared to his more memorable ones. However, the bed of flaming coals in Drunken Master II is something that remains seared into the annals of Chan's stunt reel like only a handful of other stunts he has done ever have been.
2 Drunken Master II Brings The Jackie Chan Formula To A Period Setting
Though Chan started out his career in many period kung fu movies, his post-Drunken Master career largely saw him as a protagonist in modern settings. As an off-shoot of applying the Jackie Chan action-comedy template to his breakout character, Drunken Master II also more generally brought the Jackie Chan style of comedy and action into a period movie. That makes the fight scenes and stunts of Drunken Master II stand out even more with the freshness Chan's prior brings to them.
Testimony to the power of bringing the Jackie Chan formula to a period setting, Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights would do the same in the Old West, and it is perhaps no coincidence that both are seen as two of Chan's best Hollywood movies. Funnily enough, Drunken Master II's early 20th century timeframe is quite the anachronism with Wong Fei-hung's life, Wong having died in 1925 at the age of 77, a far cry from Chan's more youthful portrayal of Wong. In this way, Drunken Master II might have somewhat influenced the Shanghai films which are even more rife with causal anachronisms and historical inaccuracies.
1 Drunken Master II's Final Fight Is An All-Time Great
The climactic martial arts battle in Drunken Master II pits Chan's Wong Fei-hung against Ken Lo's John, and to say it is Chan's best on-screen fight is just scratching the surface. Chan's former bodyguard Ken Lo is a Tae Kwon Do champion who has displayed his skills in other martial arts films like Rush Hour and Muscle Heat, and his kicks in Drunken Master II's final fight defy belief. Considering famed superkicker Hwang Jang-lee was the villain of Drunken Master, only a villain with comparable kicking skills would ever do for Drunken Master II's final fight, a feat Lo accomplishes with unbelievable speed and power.
Additionally, Chan's own use of Drunken Fist against Lo's kicks makes the fight an explosive martial arts battle, Chan's skill in the art never more pristine or fine-tuned than it is in his fight with Lo. The fight scene itself was quite possibly the most arduous of Chan's career, requiring an astonishing four months to complete. In the end, that level of commitment and hard work paid off beautifully in one of the greatest martial arts movie fights there has ever been and Jackie Chan's opus as a kung fu movie star, all of which solidifies Drunken Master II as the definitive Jackie Chan movie.
