Despite this series having Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, at the helm as executive producer it suffers from the same embellished melodrama and historical inaccuracies that other Bruce Lee bio-pics have been plagued with.
This is understandable since Chinese productions are notorious with playing loose with the actual facts. The Donnie Yen "Ip Man" series of movies is a prime example of artistic license.
Chinese films have always been jingoistic and xenophobic, often villainizing other cultures as being evil invaders, as a means of elevating the Chinese hero in the movie who inevitably and selflessly fights the "foreign devils" for the right of the oppressed Chinese - - which is a bit ironic considering in the last 100 years, the Chinese are possibly the most pervasive cultures to globally migrate to other countries using the affluence of commerce and business as the means rather than military force. Just sayin'.
Hollywood is not any better with their highly embellished, Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story. A more apt title would have been A Bruce Lee Fable!
It's understandable because real life is much more boring than real life. From everything I have read on Bruce Lee, his life was not as fantastic as that portrayed in this and other films. He did not get into even half the fights and confrontations portrayed in this movie, he faced more institutionalized racism (lack of opportunities) than outward racism, he injured himself lifting weights (as another poster has mentioned), had a bad temper, but otherwise was a hard working, ambitious guy...not exactly enough for a Hollywood or Asiawood movie I suppose.
The danger to these over dramatized events of his life is that subsequent generations learning about Bruce Lee take them as fact and it really distorts the real life of Bruce Lee and his accomplishments.
I hate to say this but the most accurate portrayal of Bruce Lee might still be the 1976 exploitation movie, Bruce Lee The Man The Myth...and that's not saying much.
This is understandable since Chinese productions are notorious with playing loose with the actual facts. The Donnie Yen "Ip Man" series of movies is a prime example of artistic license.
Chinese films have always been jingoistic and xenophobic, often villainizing other cultures as being evil invaders, as a means of elevating the Chinese hero in the movie who inevitably and selflessly fights the "foreign devils" for the right of the oppressed Chinese - - which is a bit ironic considering in the last 100 years, the Chinese are possibly the most pervasive cultures to globally migrate to other countries using the affluence of commerce and business as the means rather than military force. Just sayin'.
Hollywood is not any better with their highly embellished, Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story. A more apt title would have been A Bruce Lee Fable!
It's understandable because real life is much more boring than real life. From everything I have read on Bruce Lee, his life was not as fantastic as that portrayed in this and other films. He did not get into even half the fights and confrontations portrayed in this movie, he faced more institutionalized racism (lack of opportunities) than outward racism, he injured himself lifting weights (as another poster has mentioned), had a bad temper, but otherwise was a hard working, ambitious guy...not exactly enough for a Hollywood or Asiawood movie I suppose.
The danger to these over dramatized events of his life is that subsequent generations learning about Bruce Lee take them as fact and it really distorts the real life of Bruce Lee and his accomplishments.
I hate to say this but the most accurate portrayal of Bruce Lee might still be the 1976 exploitation movie, Bruce Lee The Man The Myth...and that's not saying much.