i think the movie once upon a... is disrespectful towards bruce lee

There was a low-budget film that came out in '89 called Cyborg. Van Damme pretty much gets his ass-kicked by the baddie in that film. I saw this one in a theater with a friend (who happened to be a martial artist) and he was rather dejected. He said something like, "Man, all of his kicks just bounced off of him" as if he'd just seen a documentary of the future. In that moment it was "really real" to him. So yeah, there's probably something to the "Kung-Fu Beowulf/Achilles" idea. There's also the old Eddie Murphy bit



which mocks how audiences are seduced by film.



Add to this that what Bruce was doing was new to Western eyes. Add to this that he created his own martial art. Add to this that he had blazing speed and solid form and just looked "aesthetic" doing damned near anything. Add to this the "based on a true story" mythologizing that surrounded the release of these films. It was a perfect storm.

To give my basic thoughts on this controversy before I respond to what anyone else has written here so far, I get why Lee's family or anyone else would be bothered by his portrayal in Hollywood, especially since he was reportedly pretty humble on the topic of whether he could beat Muhammad Ali in a fight? (which makes his boasting in the movie an odd choice), and that scene would've been better if certain aspects had been altered somewhat... but that being said, it's still hard for me to get super-offended by it in the context of Tarantino's filmography, simply by the virtue of him having put worse things in his movies before, to the point that I expect something like it with every one of his efforts by this point.

I mean, the anachronism of 20-something Angelenos casually dropping the king of all racial slurs in the 90's in Reservoir Dogs, the pawn shop sequence in Pulp, casting Samuel L. Jackson as a "beard" to use more variations of the N-word in Jackie Brown, pretty much everything in Kill Bill, playing for laughs the protagonists ditching their friend to be potentially sexually assaulted in Death Proof, essentially turning Jews and slaves into the groups that oppressed them with their actions in Basterds & Django, and Major Warren's story in The Hateful Eight? On the one hand, QT's an obnoxious edgelord with his sensibilities at times, but on the other, he's also a very talented filmmaker (at times), so it's one of those cases where I kind of have to take the good with the bad. He's kind of like South Park by this point; yeah he's offensive, but I've come to expect it, so, it's hard to get too riled up over it anymore.

the movie is also disrespectful towards muhammad ali

calling him 'cassius clay'

the movie is in 1969 los angeles

muhammad ali changed his name around 5 years earlier

very disrespecful to call someone who changed their name with the previous name

muhammad ali got very mad when people called him cassius clay
very mad
the world is full of low intended people who are so disrespectful they wont call you by your new name even though they know u changed ur name
u have no idea how many unpolite low intended cocky people are in the world

I just don't see how being respectful to Bruce Lee automatically means that Bruce Lee must be able to win in a fight against anyone in the world. Isn't there a difference between being respectful to someone, and putting them up on a high pedestal?

bruce was human. a super star, but they all huffed their own farts. how many starts turned out to be really bad people, lee wasn't really that bad. Some people want to worship others as perfect, but don't expect the population to hold that view.

lee is kind of like kung fu asian prince. Except prince is probably the #1 goat songer writer of all time and lee is not even tough 100 in combat ability. lee was amarketing genius and charismatic.

Lee continuing the fight after being thrown into the car isn't much of an indication that it's an exaggeration, though; I mean, if it was, why wouldn't Cliff just choose to remember it as him completely kicking Lee's ass, rather than it ending in more or less a draw, as it did?

The whole reason Cliff even had that flashback in the first place was to remember why he wasn't allowed to be Rick's stuntman on the set of Lancer that day - because Zoe Bell's character (who already didn't like him because of his murder allegations) interrupts the fight in order to fire him, which effectively blacklists him from doing any more stunts. Regardless of how much he might exaggerate the details of the fight itself, the fact that it got interrupted by a third party remains incontrovertible (and is emphasised by the flashback concluding with a return to the present where he snaps out of his flashback by simply shrugging and saying "Fair enough", as if to admit that he was in the wrong there).

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