Summary

• Jackie Chan's drunk fighting style in Drunken Master is inspired by a real martial arts form called Zui Quan or "Drunken Fist."
• Drunken Master was a groundbreaking film blending action and comedy, showcasing slapstick humor in martial arts fights.
• While the Drunken Fist style in the movie is exaggerated with actual alcohol consumption, real-life practitioners focus on mimicking drunken movements.

Jackie Chan’s intoxicated fighting style in Drunken Master might seem fake, but it’s actually based on a real martial arts style. Released in 1978, Drunken Master was one of the first movies to introduce the possibilities for slapstick humor and endless entertainment in a cinematic hybrid of the action and comedy genres. Chan’s Wong Fei-hung learns an unconventional fighting technique from his alcoholic master that requires the user to get drunk before practising it. Wong’s frustrated father thinks it’ll be the best way to teach his unruly son some discipline.

Drunken Master has been praised as one of the greatest martial arts movies ever made, frequently appearing on the genre’s best-of lists. The martial arts used in Drunken Master might come across as a fake fighting style created just for the movie, because of how impractical it seems to fight while intoxicated. But the drunken fighting style that Chan uses in the movie actually exists in real life. Drunken-style boxing is a real form of martial arts called Zui Quan, also known as “Drunken Fist.” Drunken Master just brought it into the mainstream.

Yes, Jackie Chan's Style Of Martial Arts In Drunken Master Is Real

Most of the martial arts fights featured in Drunken Master are designed to employ as much slapstick humor as possible, introducing the style of action comedy that would make Chan both a cinematic innovator and a global superstar. The game of Keep Away between Wong and his arrogant but hopeless assistant instructor is played for laughs. The unorthodox style of “head fu” used by one of Wong’s opponents is featured in the film simply because it looks ridiculous. But the Drunken Fist fighting style that Wong is taught is, indeed, based on a real martial arts style.

Chan’s protagonist Wong is named after a real-life folk hero. The real Wong was renowned for practising the Hung Ga style of Chinese martial arts. The Drunken Fist style used in the movie is infused with unique animal-based fighting styles. These animal-based fighting techniques – dubbed Snake, Crane, and Tiger – are derived from the Hung Ga system. They have only a tenuous connection to the real-life animal-based fighting styles of Snake, Lama Pai, Black Tiger, and the Fujian White Crane. There’s also a brief use of Monkey-style kung fu, which is popular in the Southern Chinese martial arts community.

How Drunken Fist Works In Real Life

Drunken boxing or “Zui Quan,” known colloquially as Drunken Fist, is not in itself a specific martial arts style; it’s a blanket term that covers every style of Chinese martial arts that mimics the movements of a drunk person. It might seem like a modern development, but it can actually be traced back to ancient times. Its origins were in the Buddhist and Daoist religious communities. The Buddhist style is connected to the Shaolin temple, while the Daoist style is taken from the Daoist story of the drunken Eight Immortals.

Zui Quan is known for having the strangest and most unconventional body movements out of any style of Chinese martial arts. Drunken boxing incorporates such combat techniques as hitting, locking, grappling, dodging, and feinting, and it includes both ground and aerial fighting. It’s intended to mimic the movements of someone whose body has been loosened and limbered up by consuming a lot of alcohol. It’s an internal fighting style, as it depends on the user’s mental and spiritual state as much as their physicality. It’s all about getting into a drunken state of mind (but not by actually getting drunk).

Drunken boxing leans heavily on deceiving one’s opponent. Defensive strategies like bobbing and weaving and slipping are popular, because they keep the opponent on their toes, unsure of where to throw the next punch. Drunken boxing involves a lot of acting, as the fighters have to pretend to lack focus and stability to trick their opponent into a false sense of security. It involves a lot of attack moves, too, like striking, wrestling, chin na, and trapping range fighting. There’s also a lot of improvisation and mid-fight game-plan changes, because drunk people can’t make up their minds.

How Accurate Jackie Chan's Drunken Fist Is In Drunken Master

While the Drunken Fist fighting style is real, it was fictionalized a bit for its appearance in Drunken Master. Drunken Master takes the style of drunken boxing to its most absurd extreme by having the fighters actually drink alcohol and become intoxicated, but real-life Drunken Fist practisers just imitate the movements of a drunk person; they don’t actually get drunk. That aspect was added to bring some comedy to the film, and to match the recklessness of Chan’s character, offering a perfect middle ground between his hard-partying lifestyle and his father’s demands for discipline.

While the Taoist Eight Immortals are a staple of real-life drunken boxing, the “Eight Drunken Immortals” forms seen in Drunken Master aren’t taken from any particular style of Zui Quan. They were likely invented by director and choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, based on routines from other martial arts systems. In the movie, Eight Drunken Immortals is supposed to be a secret martial arts style created by Beggar So. It made sense to use a fictional style as the secret; if it was taken from a real-life style, then it wouldn’t be much of a secret.

The main villain in Drunken Master, Thunderleg Yen Tie Hsin, is played by Hwang Jang-lee, a Korean martial artist who specializes in Taekwondo. He’s renowned for his high-flying kicks, which are featured heavily throughout the film. Within the movie, Thunderleg uses martial arts systems called “Devil’s Kick” and “Devil’s Shadowless Hands.” While his kicks are taken from his real-life Taekwondo training, the systems of Devil’s Kick and Devil’s Shadowless Hands used by Thunderleg are entirely fictional. They’re just cool-sounding names made up for the movie.

Other Martial Arts Movies That Use The Drunken Fist Fighting Style

Drunken Master is the most well-known movie to feature the Drunken Fist fighting style, but it’s far from the only one. Drunken Master was followed by a sequel and a bunch of spin-offs, as well as a handful of movies inspired by its inventive use of intoxicated fighting. Edgar Wright parodied Drunken Master with the pub brawls of The World’s End, in which the characters need the Dutch courage of a pint of lager to fight the body-snatching robots. From Come Drink with Me to Drunken Dragon Strikes Back, there are many great drunken kung fu movies.