Martial arts movie

Martial arts films are movies about martial arts. They are normally action movies. The martial arts shown in these films tend to include kung fu and karate. Martial arts films can also include the wuxia genre.

Notable actors who have contributed to the genre include Tony Jaa, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jet Li, Toshiro Mifune, Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Gordon Liu, Robin Shou, and Wesley Snipes, among others.^[1] Women have also played key roles in the genre, including such actresses as Cheng Pei-pei, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Mao, Zhang Ziyi, Josephine Siao, and Kuo Hsiao-Chuang.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]}

History

There were martial arts films in Asia. They were more focused on action than the plot. They became popular in 1943 when Akira Kurosawa made the movie Sugata Sanshiro about a young man who has to learn judo. In 1945, Kurosawa made a sequel which was the first movie ever to have karate in it.

In the 1970s, kung fu movies made by studios in Hong Kong like the Shaw Brothers Studio and Godfrey Ho’s studio were translated into English and were watched in the United States and Canada.

Animated movies

There are some animated films that are about martial arts like the Kung Fu Panda franchise from DreamWorks Animation, which consists of four movies: Kung Fu Panda (2008), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) and Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024).