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I love the ip man films from a martial arts entertainment perspective and the actors behind them. I can tell that tons of work is put into making the fight scenes great esp. by the legendary Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo Ping. But I never thought about how accurate the forms and styles of Wing Chun that is portrayed in this film esp. the part when Ip man starts doing very high kicks to take down his opponents (like in the fight against twister and the black belts). Which I heard is not common in wing chun.
For anyone that practices/studies the art, do you think the film is well portrayed or is it stylized/very inaccurate?
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It's a movie, made for entertainment
The first one is fun. They get progressively more cringe as they go on.
Just like any martial art- there is practical and there is made for movies 🎥…. I watch to enjoy and sometimes grin when I see moves used that I have been taught. I don’t watch movies for real life scenarios and unpractical responses
Almost every single move that he uses in the movie are real wing chun moves. Ip Man's son Ip Chun was at the movies supervising Donnie's art during the movies. The only problem is that everything is staged and produced so all of the moves are eloquently set up to properly portray the art. There has been some times during classes where people were having trouble understanding a sequence of moves during Chi Sao or just regular sequential sparring. I'll pull up a clip from the movie and show it to them to visualize the move or the counter and being able to see it helps them sometimes.
There are alot of secrets in that movie if you know what they are
secrets? like forbidden moves?
Forbidden moves are more of a fantasy trope. "Secrets" are usually more along the lines of "things that aren't immediately apparent, but are in fact the intended use of a movement with no clear explanation."
Yeah. Definitely more like secrets. I would say that some other martial arts have "forbidden" moves that are more art based but wing chun Definitely only has secrets. Forbidden moves would be more like kill moves or moves that cause serious injury that something like tai chi doesn't openly approve of but is inherent in defensive martial arts and would frown upon people if theyre used. Wing chun is very open in the fact that using this is to defend your life and you do whatever you have to to protect yourself.
Like learning biu tze is a sequence of the moves and you can learn the moves. But knowing the little tricks and nuances of it and knowing how to apply it to kill somebody or cause serious bodily harm are part of the secret. Even Siu Nim Tao and Chum Kiu have a lot of those secrets in them that are only known to people in the club.
I remember hearing the stories from my sifu about when great grandmaster Ip Man's was teaching grand master leung ting everything before he died. He spent alot of the time reteaching him all three of the forms and spent the most time on Siu Nim Tao because while he knew the form extremely well, he didn't fully understand the form or the secrets inherent to it.
It’s very stylized choreography. There’s wing chun techniques on display but it’s not representative of real fighting. Other movies with great wing chun choreography are prodigal son and warriors two.
Ip Man 1 is one of the best Wing Chun movies of all time up there with Prodigal Son and Warriors Two however in terms of realism isn’t that great. I absolutely lost it when they started to do running chain punches on a table in the second one. The Grandmaster has real wing chun moves from the applied wing chun lineage but the movie is terrible.
I think that one thing to keep in mind is how many people got introduced to Wing Chun from the ip man movies. It's a lot like how Ong Bak introduced a lot of people to Muay Thai, is it stylized oh yeah beyond belief but so is quite literally every other martial arts movie in existence, there are some that are less stylized than others and there's some that are just straight up wuxia movies. I do think that they did continually jump the shark as the movies went on but they were all still good
Donnie Yen's wing chun is pretty bad...
I think the movies are a fun watch, but, like what others have said, the movie drags things out quite a bit. When you have a fight on trying to defend your life, fights tend to be quite short. If I remember correctly, Wong Shun-leung would on average end up doing 3 techniques before ending the fight.
Wing chun doesn't look pretty
The choreography is beautiful and well executed. It is pure movie wing chun though. Related to real wing chun application in name only.
You can’t chain punch the crap out of 20 black belts without breaking a sweat in real life. Even Yip Man would have been hospitalized or killed in the situations presented in the movies.
Btw, each installment moved further away from reality. Ip Man from the movies is a fictional character. Yip Man was a real person.
To be precise, the spelling doesn’t matter. Officially though, Ip Man is the official spelling according to his real passport.
Additionally, his sons spell their surname as Ip. Hence Ip Ching and Ip Chun.
Ip Man and Yip Man are just two different romanizations to pronounce the name of the same person whether real or actor-portrayed.
“Yip” is simply an alternate spelling to help Westerners understand how to pronounce it. As has been seen, some people think Ip Man is pronounced “eye pee man”, mainly because the film has all letters in caps, and people are more familiar with the term “IP Address”.
I know but…. do you have a better way of distinguishing between the fictional character from the movies and the actual person?
I’ve seen people try “Donnie Yen’s Ip Man” but that fails given he isn’t the only actor to play the character. There are also a surprising number of people who mistakenly believe Yen actually is Ip Man.
The unfortunate reality is people think the movies are based on real life and the fights actually happened. While great publicity, they also set up some very stupid expectations about what wing chun should look like. We definitely need a way to convey the difference between fact and fiction for casual audiences.
Separating by spelling seems logical as the majority of material uses Yip for the real person and the movies use Ip.
Honestly it’s frustrating that this is an issue in this day and age.
Just keep things simple. "Real" vs "fictional" or any synonyms that easily clarify at the 5th grade level. A new system/convention just complicates things, especially if it's based on incorrect naming conventions that isn't used anywhere else with this logic. It now becomes one more thing to remember for a very niche topic not even used within the Wong Chun community.
If they still can't understand, then... Move on.
Besides, extending this logic would suggest "Siu Nim Tau" as the spelling for the fictional movie version while " Sil Lim Tao" is the real life version. Is this correct?
If you know your Wing Chun, then you'll likely feel that trying to differentiate "movie 1st form" vs "real 1st form" by spelling is not correct, even if well-intentioned.
You might even feel offended/insulted if what I proposed as the fictional spelling is actually how your school spells your 1st form in English (because I may have now implied that your school teaches fake stuff).
Keep it simple. Real vs fictional. 5th grade level comprehension.
You mean the passport in which he doesn't actually use his real name?
The one that spells his surname as Ip in cursive?
The only one I know of where that is the case, is the one isn't his real name.
You're talking about the 1963 document, right; the one that has the false name.
Personally, i can’t stand the choreographies. IMO the movie was terrible in every way.
Donnie Yen gets better at it as the movies go on, you see it in his energy and smoothness, but the first has fantastic choreography generally.
It is up for opinion, but a lot of joyless people will leap to criticize it.
It is a style showcase film. Treat it accordingly.
Some of the choreography even demonstrates plausible application.
Movies r for entertainment. I practice wing chun too. Doesnt work all the time in a real fight. Its not choreographed. Especially against multiple opponents. Ive been in real fights all depends on how crazy the opponent is. My sifu always tell me best move in a fight is to walk away. Worst is to get killed or kill someone. Not life is worth taking and going to prison for.
It's pretty much perfect, that's how I fight in public places.