A Conversation with 陈勋奇: Regrets and Hopes for Chinese-Language Cinema
Summary
陈勋奇 argues that Hong Kong action cinema’s truly irreplicable asset is not flashy choreography, but a generation of writer-director-performers who took the risks themselves and turned physical performance into on-camera credibility. CG can make Captain America fight more spectacularly than 成龙, but audiences will credit the effects team; the global standing of 李小龙 and 成龙 was “bought with their lives, all their energy, sweat, and blood.”
李小龙 and 成龙 globalized kung fu in two distinct ways: the former explained combat through philosophy, while the latter distilled silent-film technique into adventure that needed no translation. Big revenue from Japan, combined with action cinema’s cross-language, cross-market appeal, enabled “Operation Condor” to shoot across Africa, Spain, the Philippines, and elsewhere; 陈勋奇 says 成龙 “put stage performance into light and shadow through his own body.”
Hong Kong cinema’s decline was not a single creative failure, but the simultaneous collapse of its revenue model under piracy, the Asian financial crisis, and a break in genre supply. When 卫诗婕 asked why Taiwan’s market share fell from about 40% to below 1%, 陈勋奇 added that cinemas in Singapore and Malaysia were selling pirated discs at the door; while Korea was still buying, gangsters only had to lock in 刘德华 or 王祖贤 for Korean financiers to pay immediately, and with Taiwan included the project could make money—some even put a gun on an agent’s desk and said, “If my brothers have no food, none of you are eating either.”
Short-form dramas have lowered production costs without automatically creating healthy investment returns, instead amplifying rushed production, copycat projects, and opaque platforms. Some projects shoot 100 episodes for about RMB500K, compressing the entire process to roughly 1 week, with returns potentially limited to a few thousand or tens of thousands of yuan; even when someone offered 陈勋奇 RMB2-3M, he could not bring himself to hand over a script that had taken 3 months to write to that kind of production line.
The most important supply bottleneck facing kung fu cinema is the missing next generation of stars, while capital and talent wait for each other. 吴京, 甄子丹, and 释小龙 are no longer young, and there are few directors who understand kung fu; “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” can only serve as a starting point for rebuilding confidence, and another industry-wide rush to copy it would quickly ruin the formula. 陈勋奇 still sees upside: “Only at the end of the road can you find a way out”（绝处才能逢生）.
The reversal in reception for “Blossoms Shanghai” showed that television does not have to put all its money into cast, and that production design, lighting, and authorship can also create differentiation. Criticism flooded in during the first few episodes, positive voices increased after episodes 7 or 8, and halfway through the run the early critics “collectively went silent”; 陈勋奇 says the show “taught a lesson” to producers, directors, and buyers alike.
陈勋奇’s long-term industry bet is not on any single medium, but on whether creators can take responsibility for their work and keep building over time. Film, digital, shorts, and short-form dramas can all produce works that outlive their era, but no format can replace genuine care; he wants to “keep making films until 99” and hopes his next movie can train a new generation of actors, because “every director’s work is his child.”
Deep dive
1. Real physical risk is Hong Kong action cinema’s hardest moat to replicate
陈勋奇 distinguishes a genuine “成龙 film” from a movie that merely carries 成龙’s name. In his view, a writer-director-performer designs dangerous set pieces that he himself must execute, while directors hired to work for 成龙 in recent years would never dare put that level of risk into a script. Computers can generate more elaborate fights, but they cannot reproduce the audience’s awe at a real person taking a real risk.
In the sequel to “Project A,” a falling archway happens to land on 成龙 after it collapses. It looks like a light, almost effortless action beat, but a slight deviation could have crushed him. 陈勋奇 stresses that although 成龙 absorbed silent-film action design, completing the shot still meant “putting his life on the line.”
While shooting the tree-jump in “Armour of God,” 成龙 missed on the second take, fell, and hit his head on a rock. Later, when 陈勋奇 was filming a stair-jump for “The Tigers,” he knew the first take showed some hesitation but worried that a retake could cause an accident. 成龙 ultimately had the 成家班 release paper birds off camera; the flock taking flight added momentum to the fall and supplied the missing force.
He also believes 洪金宝 was better than 成龙 at judging instantly whether a move would look imposing and whether it could actually be done. The two, he says, were “the final masters.”
2. 李小龙 and 成龙 conquered overseas audiences in two different languages
陈勋奇 believes 李小龙 understood the foreign audience’s mindset. He could highlight his own kung fu advantage while explaining it in philosophical but plain language that “even children could understand.” Because overseas viewers did not understand this form of kung fu, they became more eager to learn and imitate it.
成龙 did not have 李小龙’s scholarly way with words, but he turned opera-school training and silent-film experience into physical language. 李小龙’s core was combat; 成龙 took the next step by turning performance into adventure, allowing action and danger to work without relying on dialogue.
“Operation Condor” could support a multinational production in the first place because 成龙 had fully broken into the Japanese market. Before mainland China opened up, Japan was one of the most important sources of outside revenue for Hong Kong films. Combined with action cinema’s appeal across regions and ethnic groups, that revenue gave producers the means to shoot globally. 陈勋奇 also believes action films are usually the world’s strongest box-office genre, and sees 李小龙 and 成龙 as representatives of Asian people standing up and winning recognition inside a white-dominated cultural conversation.
3. The Golden Age ran on collective creation and capital willing to backstop it
The competitive instinct among that generation was to see a peer make something good and immediately ask how their own next film could be better. During the Cinema City years, 麦嘉 and others would gather every night to argue through each scene, often colliding like they were fighting until everyone became energized. 成龙’s team would likewise “rack their brains” over a single line or one movement.
陈勋奇 points to 徐克 as an example: even after making films that failed, 徐克 still put in “101%” of his energy. 陈勋奇 composed the scores for “The Butterfly Murders” and “We’re Going to Eat You”; “Zu: The Warriors from the Magic Mountain” was completed only because its backer gave the production time, met its creative needs, and absorbed repeated overruns. In his view, film is both a product and an art form, and a producer’s patience is itself a production input.
That level of commitment does not mean every film needs a huge budget or life-threatening stunts. It means the director treats the work as his own child. What 陈勋奇 misses most about that era is the distinctiveness that came from “taking responsibility for the work, having ambition and standards for cinema, and working day and night to get it right.”
4. Hong Kong cinema’s decline was a three-way revenue collapse
Responding to 卫诗婕’s question about Taiwan’s market share falling from about 40% to below 1%, 陈勋奇 first points to piracy. As soon as a film opened, pirated discs were already everywhere; in Singapore and Malaysia, they could even be bought outside the cinema. Copyright fees collapsed, and 王晶 also drove production costs down by hiring a director to carry out the shoot.
The Asian financial crisis then cut off Korean capital. The Korean market had previously favored guns-and-gangsters projects: once a title signed 刘德华, 王祖贤, or another major star, Korean financiers paid immediately, and the combination with Taiwan could make the project profitable. At the extreme, some gangs held agents at gunpoint to force them to free up a star’s schedule.
As overseas markets shrank, Hong Kong audiences were also under pressure from mortgages and other expenses, and cinema attendance fell. 卫诗婕 later summarized the loop: action films deteriorated because production budgets were too thin, attendance fell in turn, and shrinking budgets fed further declines in quality.
Comedy supply also broke down. 陈勋奇 says his generation’s comedies depended on multiple people creating together; later, with the exception of 周星驰, other comedies stopped selling because “one person’s head has no sparks.” 卫诗婕 went further, framing the market as locked into the nonsensical-comedy template created by 周星驰 and naming 许冠文 and 张坚庭 among the actors who gradually lost market support. That last layer was the host’s framing, not a judgment 陈勋奇 developed on his own.
5. Short-form drama’s low cost does not exempt it from responsibility to the work
After Hong Kong cinema weakened, 陈勋奇 returned to Shanghai to make “Shanghai Tango,” reasoning that television did not require audiences to buy a cinema ticket, and therefore shooting a serial with film grammar could work. He has never felt that he had reached the end of the road; his motto is “keep making films until 99,” which is why he continues to test different media.
He admits that he missed 2 waves of opportunity: television films, which typically had budgets of RMB600-700K, and early web films, whose budgets were limited but whose platforms still depended on producers to supply content, making the revenue split a question of whether the platform had “a little conscience.” Before the Fan Bingbing incident, online platforms were also chasing idol costume dramas and fantasy series, with projects routinely spending RMB100-200M. Some made money, while many lost heavily.
He was willing to try short-form dramas, but took 3 months to finish a script. Meanwhile, people were pushing him to move faster, eager to shoot a title in 7 or 8 days and claiming they had already made many of them; the result, he says, was that “every one of them died horribly.” For a project costing RMB500K with 100 episodes of 1 minute each, online receipts of only a few thousand or tens of thousands of yuan per title were already considered a good outcome.
He also questions platforms that refuse to disclose real view counts and tell creators only how much they are allowed to share, while producers are too afraid to antagonize the platforms. 卫诗婕 summarized their common ground as “the format is not guilty”: shorts and short-form dramas can produce good work too. 陈勋奇 points to Oscar-nominated shorts as an example, while acknowledging that cost, efficiency, and production demands make the task harder. His bottom line is simple: “Money has to be made, but when you’re making money, you still need a little conscience.” No one should make something they themselves would not want to watch.
6. Kung fu cinema must break the loop in which nobody invests in newcomers
陈勋奇 believes directors can keep working into old age, while kung fu stars are constrained by the body’s clock. 吴京, 甄子丹, and 释小龙 are no longer young, and there are few directors who understand kung fu; capital will not fund newcomers, newcomers cannot prove themselves without work, and the result is a generational gap. 沃尔善 is one of the few directors he says “should have some ideas.”
The strong reception for “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” gave him a chance to see Hong Kong cinema rebuild confidence, but he repeatedly warns against a rush to copy it. A real recovery requires a second film and a third film that keep improving, as well as different directors making action and kung fu films in different styles, gradually changing the distrust audiences have already developed.
In 陈勋奇’s definition, an action film can use any style as long as it looks good; a kung fu film must let the audience see clearly what discipline the character has trained in. 章子怡 used baguazhang, 张晋 used xingyiquan, and 梁朝伟 used wing chun; the different characters in “The Prodigal Son” likewise had clearly defined systems. That recognizability carries Chinese traditional culture.
7. Film’s exit was a change in production constraints, not an aesthetic verdict
The opening section of “Chinese Zodiac” was shot on film, but once production moved to Africa, Vanuatu, and Latvia, the team ran into processing problems. The footage had to be sent back to Australia, processed, converted into digital files, and then delivered to the visual-effects company. After the team switched to digital photography, the finished film showed no inconsistency; from then on, 成龙’s films moved fully to digital as well.
“The Grandmaster” also began on film, but many processing labs closed during the shoot and the stock originally ordered ran out. The crew gathered remaining inventory from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and continued shooting, eventually stopping when “the last roll of film was used up.” 王家卫 then switched to digital while preparing “Blossoms Shanghai.”
When 陈勋奇 heard that a new film camera had appeared, he said film could return if the story and visual language required it. The real questions are whether the technical workflow can be rebuilt and whether the additional funding and costs can be carried.
8. “Blossoms Shanghai” exposed television’s path dependence through its reception reversal
During the preparation of “Blossoms Shanghai,” the production was looking for a sound recordist who spoke Shanghainese. A recording engineer from Shanghai Film Studio whom 陈勋奇 recommended declined, saying, “Director, I want to live a few more years. I don’t dare take this job.” He was worried about 王家卫’s all-night schedule and uncertain production cycle. 陈勋奇 also relayed the lament that the passion for film and television found in that generation has become difficult to recover.
In the first 2 or 3 episodes, criticism focused on 王家卫’s inability to make television, confused editing, and unconventional narrative structure. Positive reviews increased after episodes 7 or 8; halfway through the run, the early critics “collectively went silent.” 陈勋奇 sees the shift as a complete example of people repeating one another, not merely a win or loss in word of mouth.
卫诗婕 further noted that 王家卫 was both producer and director and therefore responsible for profit and loss, leaving open the possibility that the project could lose money or simply make less during its early broadcast. 陈勋奇 responded that television revenue can be estimated broadly; with sharply divided early reviews, anyone lacking confidence would naturally worry.
The lesson “Blossoms Shanghai” delivered to the industry was that television can take production design and lighting seriously. 陈勋奇 criticizes buyers who once recognized only stars, putting all the money into cast fees and leaving no one responsible for the work after the actors were paid. In the platform era, platforms demand script changes and then blame the director when the result fails. These outcomes, he says, “all have causes and effects.”
9. An old filmmaker’s persistence and commitment to passing the craft on
陈勋奇 rejects the idea that age equals retirement. 王家卫 is simply “more obsessive and more immersed,” while 徐克, who is 1 year older than him, is still working. Experience cannot be replaced, but creators must also keep up with the times and hold on to artistic standards. A downturn demands even more care because opportunities are fewer and harder to capture.
He admits that he may not yet have a new work capable of proving to everyone that “陈勋奇 is not a spent force,” but he still believes accumulated work waits for the right wind. 吴京 was once regarded as a “box-office poison” before proving himself with “Wolf Warrior.” 陈勋奇’s metaphor is: “When the wind comes, it will be exactly my wind; even a pig could grow wings and fly.”
While preparing “The Grandmaster,” 张震 trained in bajiquan for 3 hours every morning and 3 hours every afternoon, continuing for 8 months. The behind-the-scenes footage was supposed to capture the tree with its leaves full and then bare; the production did not start until the leaves had fallen. He fights for roughly 1 minute in the film, but gained substantial bajiquan skill and later won a gold medal at a bajiquan competition in northeast China.
梁朝伟 was introduced by 陈勋奇 to a 李小龙 junior student who returned from the United States with his son and taught him wing chun at home, ultimately giving him a different style from 甄子丹. 陈勋奇 hopes his next film can train a group of new-generation actors—not merely people who know how to pose through a move, but performers willing to suffer for a goal—so that the work can rebuild kung fu stars from the ground up. He cites “The Prodigal Son” from 1982, which remains within the global top 10 action films selected by “A-List Magazine,” as proof that artistic value can keep commercial relevance from going out of date.