Bruce Lees Original Way of the Dragon Plan (And Why He Changed It)

Bruce Lee’s Original Way of the Dragon Plan (And Why He Changed It)

Originally, Bruce Lee wanted to use Way of the Dragon to adapt a failed project. Here’s what his plan was for the movie, and why he didn’t use it.

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Bruce Lees Original Way of the Dragon Plan (And Why He Changed It)

If Bruce Lee had gone with his original plan for Way of the Dragon, the finished product would have been completely different from the beloved kung fu classic. Way of the Dragon, Lee’s third Hong Kong martial arts film, is his second most well-known project. The 1972 movie is best remembered for its iconic, ten-minute showdown between Lee’s character and Chuck Norris’ Colt.

Though not as famous as Enter the Dragon, Way of the Dragon has a special place in the martial arts icon’s legacy. That’s largely due to the level of involvement the actor had in making the movie. Of the four kung fu projects that Lee completed in his lifetime, Way of the Dragon was the only one where he had complete creative control. Lee wrote the script, directed and co-produced the film, and played the starring role. With Way of the Dragon, Bruce Lee delivered a story about a kung fu expert who travels to Rome and helps defend his cousin’s restaurant from a crime boss and his minions. His efforts to save their business from collapse culminated in a match being arranged between his character and Colt.

Lee biographer Matthew Polly explained in his book, Bruce Lee: A Life, that the actor had a very different idea in mind when work began on Way of the Dragon. Apparently, Lee saw the film as an opportunity to adapt his Warner Bros. TV show pitch (The Warrior), which had been rejected. In 1971, Lee tried to convince the studio to produce a kung fu western about a Chinese immigrant who comes to San Francisco during the American Wild West and defends locals from villains. The show didn’t work out, but when he was brought on to write his own kung fu movie for Golden Harvest, he saw a chance to bring his story to life.

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Lee thought he could make the concept work for the movie, but ended up scrapping this plan on account of budget issues. The actor understood that filming a period piece in the United States would have been a costly endeavor. And as Polly notes in the book, Chinese directors didn’t make movies in the West. Even so, Lee still intended to pull it off, just in a more cost-effective way. After abandoned the period piece idea, he settled on a modern-day story in Rome, partially because he wanted to film the movie’s final fight scene with Chuck Norris in the Colosseum (which he did).

Bruce Lee’s early thoughts on what Way of the Dragon could be certainly had potential, even if it was originally designed for a TV show format. But while it’s disappointing that The Warrior never manifested in any form during Lee’s lifetime, what he managed to create with Way of the Dragon proves that the extreme changes made to the story weren’t a mistake.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/bruce-lee-way-dragon-warrior-plan-cancelled-reason/

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