Thoughts on a double bill: the Way of the Dragon (1972) and Gamera Guardian of the Universe (1995)

This is a double feature I intended to view after watching YakitateJapan due to Tamoor Hassin’s recommendation on Jeff Jeff Bizarre Adventure. YakitateJapan is a manga-turned-anime about bake-off and much like its younger and sexier cousin about cook-off Food War! Shokugeki no Soma, sometimes it just wanted to do parodies.

One of those parodies disguised as bake-off is about colored animal shape bread. To choose between a “gold dragon” and a “jade turtle”, soon enough the judge pulls out nunchaku affected by the former then the twin-rod wielder starts to spin in the air after eating a piece of the latter. I looked at the Criterion Collection’s Bruce Lee His Greatest Hits and Arrow Video’s Gamera the Heisei Trilogy on my shelf, thinking now that’s an idea for double feature: a movie starring Brue Lee followed by one about giant flying turtle.

The reason why Naughty Dog can never impress yours truly: the Way of the Dragon

With the 1995 Gamera movie having somewhat a nationalist undertone, I originally picked 1971’s Fist of the Fury. But clocked at 114 minutes, it was the longest among the 4 starring Lee thus the poorest choice for a double bill in the bunch. So instead, I watched the 95 minutes long Way of the Dragon, sometimes titled Return of the Dragon and declared peak of cinema by Jeff Grestmann during a 2014 episode of the Bombcast. Also out of all 4 Lee’s Greatest Hits, it’s the only one Professor Daniele Bolelli did not criticize the script of.

Following a martial artist out of the slum of Hong Kong into the “eternal city” called Rome, this is an action comedy of 1970s that would serve as the cornerstone of Golden Harvest’s 1980s outings. Half fish-out-of-water slapstick comedy and half serious martial art business, the careers of Jackie Chan and Sammo Kam-bo Hung would have looked very different without this movie for them to learn from. And without watching those 2 in better action comedy growing up, I just might have bought into Naughty Dog’s “zombieland fantasy” known as Uncharted.

I personally think the camera angles during this movie’s action had inspired more than one generation of video games. There are of course the fabled profile shots. This perspective is present in musicals especially during dance numbers. Nothing displays choreograph better than that whether the dance is delightful or deadly. Side scrolling action games and fighting games can have complex character sprite movement are clearly mimicking this camera angle.

Then there is the camera behind a fighter’s back like them modern polygonal extravaganzas. When Bruce Lee and Chuk Norris went on the offense in this movie, they both got shots with camera following close behind their backs. “On the offense” since they managed to parry or dodge every strike thrown at them while landed every one of their blows on their opponents. Shout out to the late Robert Wall, who would “return” in Enter the Dragon as part of the rogue galley there. Lee fought him on a dusty field here, and you just know that all the strikes thrown by the writer-director-leading-actor landed for the clouds of dust around poor old Rob in those shots. Damn, they rarely make it like this anymore.

The stuff childhood delight is made of: Gamera Guardian of the Universe

The digital effect heavy modern science fiction adventure cinema hardly registers as live-action in my mind. In the early 1990s, Ultraman, the special effect heavy sci-fi adventure show from 1960s’ Japan, was sold to where I resided as a kid’s show and my 4 years old self tuned in whenever that little kid could. Build a miniature then blow them up you cowards, how hard can it be.

If Gamera Guardian of the Universe was sold there when it was a new release then it could have become my 5 years old self’s favorite movie ever, for Ultraman flies. Seeing Gamera taking off on jet legs after some glorious miniature destruction, my cynical in the 30s ass still yelled “Holy shit! It’s just like Ultraman!” within. Maybe my 5 years old self would just be scared shitless by it. Batman & Robin, and I do mean THAT Batman & Robin, frightened my 7 years old self after all.

Nowadays, it’s likely that more people read Dr. Ebert’s review of this movie than actually watched it. So, it would be shame for those people to think 1995 Gamera’s practical effect as “flawed” and Air Force One’s dated CGI as “flawless”. Both are flawed apparently, but the former simply holds up better for being shot in more tangible fashion.

If you have watched 2014’s Godzilla, then you have already seen a watered down and dragged out version of 1995’s Gamera. Both paid homage to Jurassic Park though. 1995’s Gamera was sold as a dark gritty reboot for a monster series started as campier affair for kids. Guess being Spielbergian is a nice balancing act for making a dark movie people still would take their kids to see.

1995’s Gamera runs tightly for 95 minutes and has 3 Gyaos for the titular monster to fight rather than 2014’s Godzilla only has 2 MUTOs in its 123 minutes. Having 3 means once the giant turtle showed their full glory to the camera, or, in the case of this movie, a night-vision goggle of a helicopter pilot, they can just slap one out of the sky and establish their dominance. The hour followed is just fun for people would tune for monster movie. Yeah, yeah, I know there is an animated Netflix show bearing the Gamera title coming, but I always consider the monster stuff better experienced as live-action things, it was burned into my thinking as a very young age.

To bring it all back to video game, do you know that Bowser and his Coopa clan are inspired by this giant flying turtle? Me, either or at least ain’t so sure about it.