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In the wake of Bruce Lee’s passing in 1973, the Hong Kong film industry found itself at a crossroads. How was the industry supposed to sustain the newfound global popularity of kung fu movies in the absence of the country’s most bankable and recognizable star?
Though the “Bruceploitation” trend that followed saw some moderate success, the “Lee-alikes” that populated the genre— mostly marketed on their resemblance or adjacency to Lee himself, by definition incapable of reaching the same heights of fame as their predecessor— could only placate and/or dupe audiences for so long. For studios not named Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest, the need for an alternative path forward soon emerged.
This July, we look at three radically different approaches Hong Kong studios took towards moving the industry out from under the long shadow cast by Lee’s legacy. Whether falling back on the old masters of the genre, pushing to coin another star of the same caliber, or allowing his very same clones the creative freedom to establish themselves apart from their namesake, each of these films is its own reflection of an industry’s need to reinvent itself following a world-shattering shake-up.