Jackie Chan First Movies [extra Quality] -

His first starring vehicle was New Fist of Fury (1976), a quasi-sequel to Lee’s film. Jackie played a student avenging Bruce Lee’s character. The problem was catastrophic. The film forced Jackie into a grim, scowling, cold-blooded killer role. He wore tight bell-bottoms and a flat cap, trying to imitate Lee’s snarls and one-inch punches. But Jackie wasn’t intimidating; he was boyish and likable. When he tried to glare, he just looked constipated. The action was stiff, the story a carbon copy, and the film flopped hard.

That idea became Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978). Jackie played Chien Fu, a lowly, bullied orphan scrubbing floors at a martial arts school. There was no brooding. No revenge. He was clumsy, cheerful, and cried easily. An old beggar (master Simon Yuen) teaches him “Snake Fist” style, and Jackie invents a goofy, improvised “Drunken Snake” technique to win the final fight.

After Drunken Master , he would go on to direct The Young Master (1980), form his own stunt team, and eventually break every bone in his body for films like Police Story and Project A . But the complete story of his first movies is not one of early glory—it is the story of a boy who learned to fall, failed spectacularly as a copycat, and then got up, laughed at himself, and invented a new way to fly. jackie chan first movies

Jackie was devastated. Critics called him a pale imitation. For the next two years, Lo Wei put him in more failed Bruce Lee clones: Killer Meteors (where he played an actual villain) and To Kill with Intrigue . Each bombed. Jackie later joked, “I was the king of the box office flop. My movies were so bad, people would throw tomatoes. I took them home and made soup.” By 1978, Jackie was a pariah. Lo Wei was ready to sell his contract. Desperate, Jackie secretly borrowed himself out to a small, struggling director named Yuen Woo-ping (who would later choreograph The Matrix ). They had no big stars, no budget, and no script—only an idea.

This was the birth of “Jackie Chan comedy kung fu.” He got hit in the face, ran away, hid behind furniture, and used buckets, brooms, and ladders as weapons. The audience laughed with him, not at him. The film was a monster hit, breaking box office records in Hong Kong and Asia. Riding the wave, Yuen Woo-ping and Jackie immediately made Drunken Master (1978) the same year. This time, Jackie played the real-life folk hero Wong Fei-hung—but as a mischievous, disrespectful teenager who gets trained in the taboo “Drunken Boxing” by a vicious master. The final fight, where Jackie fights the killer “Thunderleg” while simulating drunkenness with staggering precision, is a masterpiece of physical storytelling. His first starring vehicle was New Fist of

Lee smiled and patted his head. That moment—the respect from the biggest star in Asia—cemented Jackie’s obsession with cinema. He later said, “I wanted to be Bruce Lee. But I couldn’t kick that high. So I decided to be the opposite.” After Bruce Lee’s sudden death in 1973, every studio in Hong Kong scrambled to find “the next Bruce Lee.” Jackie, with his lean physique and opera training, was an obvious candidate. Director Lo Wei (who had directed Lee in The Big Boss ) signed Jackie to a contract and gave him a new stage name: Sing Lung (成龍), meaning “Becoming the Dragon.”

Drunken Master was even bigger. It officially killed the “Bruce Lee clone” era and created a new genre: the martial arts comedy. Jackie had finally found his voice. He wasn’t the invincible hero. He was the underdog who got hurt, made funny faces, and won through stubborn creativity. From a terrified seven-year-old collapsing in fake snow, to an unconscious stuntman at the feet of Bruce Lee, to a failed grimacing lead, Jackie Chan’s first movies were a decade-long lesson in failure. They taught him that he could never be Lee. He had to be himself. The film forced Jackie into a grim, scowling,

These were the days of no safety gear. If a director wanted a child to jump from a roof onto a moving cart, the child did it or got hit with a cane back at the school. Jackie learned to fall before he learned to act. The breakthrough came when Jackie, now 17, was hired as a stuntman for Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury . This is where the famous story occurs. In the climactic fight at the Russian school, Bruce Lee’s character, Chen Zhen, kicks a man so hard he flies backward through a wooden doorway.