Fist of Legend SE (1 Viewer)

[ThomasTreasure]

It happened to me for the first time. One week ago I bought the bare bones, non-anamorphic, dubbed edition of FIST OF LEGEND. Today, I read the following in The Hollywood Reporter:

link
So needless to say, I take credit for this news due to my purchase. I'm not sorry, though, because I enjoyed the hell out of the film (a blind buy) and only paid $7, so I'll gladly upgrade for an anamorphic, original language edition when the time comes, if that's what we get. (the article also says that this same company is handling The Killer and Hard Boiled)

 

[Citizen87645]

I'm concerned The Weinstein Co. is doing these because it was Miramax that earned the name "MirmaAXE" due to heavy editing of its Asian cinema releases, which includes the Fist of Legend disc you picked up. That one is relatively unscathed, but IRC the title credits and music have been changed. The one bright spot is Tarantino and Bey Logan are involved, so that might prevent any tampering.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

It's going to take an act of God to get me to purchase any Asian film that has any connection whatsoever to the Weinsteins and their Editing Machine Spawned of Satan.

 

[James D S]

I'm anxious to see good R1 versions of all four movies you mentioned. My fingers are crssed...

 

[Lee-c]

This is awesome news! I hope they take The Killer, Hardboiled, A Better Tomorrow I and II and
seek out the best master prints available and give them a full restoration, for some stunning new transfers
to DVD. These are the greatest Hong Kong blood operas ever, and we've been waiting a long time for
some really superb transfers on DVD! =)

They should get John Woo to oversee the restoration and/or transfers, to make sure the colors are right
and the translation of the English subtitles are approved by him. And to make sure the original mono
Cantonese soundtracks are available on the DVD for each film.

By the way, if you're interested in Hong Kong action movies, check out the excellent site,
"Love and Bullets" (see link below). Great name, huh?! =)

http://www.loveandbullets.com/

 

[Ruz-El]

there are many titles in that announcement I'd love to pick up: as long as they are uncut and properly represented.

I had heard of Mirimaxs heavey handed cutting. Was this a Weinsten thing or a Disney corp thing?

Tarantinos name attached to the imprint should offer some hope that these remain uncut. I don't think anything got edited out of his "Rolling Thunder" releases.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

My understanding is that it was a Weinstein/ Miramax thing.

 

[Donnie Eldridge]

Let's hope this version will be uncut.

 

[Random Hero]

I hope this is uncut with original language and some good English subtitles.

Unfortunately with Weinstein involved, that probably won't happen. Logan isn't helping either, since he likes what Weinstein does with Asian films.

 

[PerryD]

Wow, Tai Chi Master is my all-time favorite wire-fu movie, looking forward to a decent release of this and the others mentioned.

 

[George_W_K]

After seeing Jet Li for the first time in Lethal Weapon 4, I immediately purchased Fist of Legend. I thought it was very good as it was. How badly edited was it? I definitely wouldn't mind seeing this in its original form. I liked how the fighting appeared more grounded than wire-fu'd.

 

[Citizen87645]

The opening credits is totally different - in fact, I'm not sure if the original had opening credits. The score is also new/different. As far as I can tell the actual feature content was left untouched. And of course there is the English dub.

 

[Ian_H]

It looks like the stuff coming out is the stuff they have had the rights to for a long time and did nothing with. Harvey Weinstein claims to love films but he has no problem cutting them to what he sees fit. I just don't understand why a film that gets international acclaim everywhere in the world gets chopped up and dumbed down for America. Generally the stuff they cut is what made them so popular. Look at most of the Jackie Chan releases from all the various companies. Jackie is so popular because of the comedy involved in his best films. When they come to America what do they cut? The comedy!

I also can't understand why when one of their acquisitions went straight to DVD, it couldn't be uncut and have the original language. I have no problem with them throwing a crappy english dub on the DVD. That is one of the features for DVD, multiple language tracks!

Fortune Star has a new distributor in HK for their catalog titles and I am looking foward to those releases. 9 times outta 10 I will probably grab the HK version over anything the Weinsteins put out becasue I just don't trust them!


--Ian

 

[Random Hero]

The original version did have opening credits. If I recall, they were just plain credits on a black screen with the theme music playing.

Not only was the score changed, but the sound effects are completely different. Instead of the classic sound effects from martial arts movies that we all grew up with, we get shoddy and repetitive grunts, groans, and smacks. Basically, the kind of sound effects you can buy on those cheap 1,000,001 Sound Effects collections.

 

[Chris Roberts]

Dragon used to have this listed on their website as a December 07 release. Now its no longer listed on the site at all. I didn't see any other Jet Li movies listed there either.

 

[MattMC]

It is still coming here is the news link:

http://www.dragondynasty.com/news/show/5

 

[Matthew Brown]

Lee -
Thank you for mentioning Loveandbullets. I am going to start the reviews up again as soon as I get HARD BOILED.

The dubbing is horrible in FIST OF LEGEND. In this case it actually changes the motivations of one of the characters. The Japanese Master is almost a mentor to Jet in the Buena Vista version. In other versions, he is more of an equal and there is a mutual respect, but that is about it.

It also downplays the political tension between the Chinese and Japanese and practically omits it. It dumbs the movie down incredibly and takes a whole demension away.

In the movie Fearless, Jet Li is actually portraying the master he is avenging in Fist of Legend.

I plan on doing a review for what they call "The Protector" with Tony Jaa at some point. If you want to see a perfect example of how they change these movies the Dragon Dynasty has the "US" version and "International (UNCUT)" versions. The US versions is literally all the action scenes edited together. They cut about 20 minutes.

Not to derail this thread so back to FIST OF LEGEND. As long as the uncut version with original soundtrack is included in the Dragon Dynasty release I will be happy.

 

[Ruz-El]

thats a neat post Mathew. I had no idea about "Fist Of Legend". I've only seen the Buena Vista version, it's easilly my favorite Jet Li movie. I'd love to see it closer to it's original intentions.

 

[Matthew Brown]

Thanks Russell -
Now we need to hope that they don't use "dubtitles" from the Buena Vista release.

I think I am going to write another e-mail to Bey Logan.

 

[Citizen87645]

The trend has been good with these Dragon Dynasty titles (I guess the Weinsteins finally listened to all the complaints about the Dimension releases) so I'm cautiously optimistic this will happen.