The 6 Most Needlessly Dangerous Jackie Chan Stunts
Jackie Chan is famous for his spectacular stunts. He's the man who base jumps onto hot air balloons and roller skates under speeding trucks. He's been called crazy and has spent most of his life almost dying, yet almost all of Jackie's insane stunts were necessary. For example, if the script calls for Jackie to get dragged by a helicopter ladder, the best way to film that is to drag Jackie Chan from a helicopter. If he breaks his foot jumping onto a hovercraft and you still need to film him water skiing from the back of it, it only makes sense to paint his broken foot like a shoe and tell the crew to get back to work. That's not insanity -- it's badass.
One of the reasons Jackie Chan movies are so amazing is that he replaces Hollywood magic with balls. However, like all balls, Jackie's didn't always make sense. A lot of his stunts seemed to be painful and ludicrous for no reason other than adding a line of trivia to a film's IMDb page. In fact, from a filmmaking perspective, some sequences would have looked better and more realistic if they were less dangerous. Here are six of those sequences.
Electric Pole Slide from
One of Jackie's greatest and most painful stunts took place at the end of Police Story. After kicking China's largest gunless criminal organization to death, supercop Kevin Chan finds himself at the top of a mall watching the final villain escape four floors below. Instead of shouting down for any of the hundreds of onlookers to grab the elderly, unarmed man, Jackie leaps onto a metal pole covered in lights and explodes down it, shattering through the mall's very, very last unbroken pane of glass. Then, without a camera cut, he climbs from the ruins of a sales kiosk to hold a shard of glass against the man's neck. Because when you make an arrest in Hong Kong, the only Miranda right you give the perp is the right to shit his pants.
"Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you!?"
Why Was It Unnecessary?
Supercop Kevin Chan had to get to the bottom floor as quickly as possible. Narratively speaking, sliding down the Christmas-light-covered pole and falling through glass was the right move. However, the pole wasn't wrapped in "special" lights or pyrotechnics. They were regular bulbs being smashed open with a naked human hand, and instead of a crash mat, Jackie landed on a Sunglass Hut. Sure enough, he hit the floor way too hard, and with second-degree burns all over his palms. You can even see in the middle of his slide that he had to adjust his grip to accommodate his sudden lack of hand flesh. Why did such an experienced stunt crew approach an electrified four-story death drop with all the foresight of a drunken frat boy dare? I have no idea, but I'd sure call you a pussy if you asked them.
Jump to 4:15 to only see the stunt, but skipping this fight scene is more or less the stupidest thing you will ever do.
Hot Coal Crab Walk from Drunken Master II
The final fight takes place in a steel factory where Jackie faces off against Ken Lo, the man who kicks the crap out of him for about a third of each Jackie Chan movie. In this one, Jackie turns the tables on him by getting hammered on ethanol. In American movies, heroes overcome adversity through love or spirit. In China, it's perfectly reasonable for the protagonist to kill his problems with industrial grain alcohol. That's good news, USA -- it means that when the Chinese finally do invade us, that's only going to make this great nation more American.
The epic steel factory fight is filled with deadly stunts. Jackie is attacked by glowing red-hot steel poles. Giant metal barrels are dropped centimeters from his dong, which may be confusing since that means "Smith" in China. And then Jackie gets kicked onto a holy-shit-real pit of hot coals. He tries to scurry across it before his extremely flammable pants figure out that they're sitting on molten steel and he doesn't make it. By the time he gets to the other side of the 9-foot fire pit, he's more steam bun than man and can barely roll free. Luckily, safety rails are for capitalists, so he only had to make a 10-inch jump to get to non-flaming land.
Why Was It Unnecessary?
Fire is one of those special effects that's hard to fake. If a blacksmith is hammering hot metal in a movie, it's usually exactly that. If someone is burning alive, it's probably a cranky stuntman covered in gel and not CGI. But there is no reason to believe that a group of industrious 1994 filmmakers couldn't come up with a way to make pretend hot coals, or at least coals cool enough to add a small element of non-death. This stunt instantly transforms a riveting action sequence into a room-wide conversation about what's wrong with Jackie Chan's fear glands. I should also mention that when he gets out, he is kicked in the chest before he stops smoldering. I appreciate that he does these crazy things, but this scene may have looked better if Jackie wasn't suddenly and unexplainedly wearing oven mitts. Or if Ken Lo wasn't awkwardly throwing kicks several feet above Jackie's head while waiting for the immolated action star to regain lucidity. As a viewer, it would have been less jarring if he had turned to the camera and said, "Hi, I'm future skin graft recipient Jackie Chan. We'll get back to the movie, but first -- here's how you trick lava into sex!"
Please enjoy this montage of near-deaths from the set of Drunken Master II.
Clock Tower Triple Fall from Project A
Why Was It Unnecessary?
For one thing, he did it three times. There was nothing but two flimsy, unpredictable cloth awnings between him and the ground, and the second awning wanted him dead. During his initial attempt at the stunt, the awning didn't break and bounced him head-over-heels in a neck-crunching heap. It looked more like a suicide than a stunt, so he filmed it again. This time the awning broke, but still managed to flip him onto his head anyway. Now, here is where a normal person would wake up and whisper, "That'll ... do ... fine," or maybe just "SpluRBbbb" while their bowels move into a drainage bag from their wheelchair. Instead, Jackie said the scene would be better if his character got up and delivered a line. And I guess in 1983 it was faster to climb a clock tower and throw yourself off than it was to edit two pieces of film together, so Jackie Chan did the fall a third time.
On the third drop, he landed slightly more on his torso and was able to squeak out the line. What were the precious words he risked his life for? Roughly translated, "I proved there really is such a thing as gravity!" He threw himself off a third-story clock for that garbage joke? That's like feeding yourself to a shark and hoping your remains come out as a strange fart. It's like diving in front of a watermelon truck to save Gallagher. And here's the craziest thing -- after falling three times in order to get it perfect, they used two different falls in the final cut anyway. And I don't mean edited together in some multi-angle sequence. Viewers of Project A see Jackie fall once in a continuous shot and eat total shit, then fall again and eat shit in a completely different way. It's one thing to take your audience out of a movie; it's another to make them think they went back in time 10 seconds and slightly changed history.
Here is the sequence as seen in the film, starting from Jackie Chan being tortured by a giant clock gear.
And here are the full outtakes featuring the most disastrous clock tower fall.
21-Story Skyscraper Slide from Who Am I?
Although "story" seems like such an inadequate word for it, the story of Who Am I? culminates with Jackie in a fistfight at the top of a Rotterdam skyscraper. He drops an important disk off the roof and knows his only chance at getting it back is sliding 21 stories down the side of the building. When Jackie Chan, the actor, saw the leap that his character, Jackie Chan, was supposed to make, he had two words to say. The first one was "SHIT." Obviously. The second one was "YES," but it took him two weeks to say it. That's how long the world's most derangedly brave man took to work up the nerve to do this stunt.
Why Was It Unnecessary?
This was an unassisted free fall down a skyscraper. In 1997, there were any number of safety harnesses or camera tricks that could have been used to create the effect of a man sliding off a building. Well, safety harnesses and camera tricks are how cowards applicate their tampons. That being said, would it really have been cheating if someone had put a crash pad or two in the place Jackie was very, very likely to tumble off to his doom? And speaking of tumbling, he spent the entire fall doing unneeded somersaults and twists. He even stood up and scampered on his feet for a bit. Maybe he thought a semi-controlled slide down a skyscraper was too dull? Maybe he saw the Grim Reaper on the way down and had to dodge him? I honestly don't know, but it must take a team of groundskeepers three days to shave the entire surface area of Jackie Chan's balls.
You crazy, crazy fucker.
Rolling Over a Circular Saw from Mr. Nice Guy
In Mr. Nice Guy, Jackie Chan plays a martial artist named Jackie, because at this point in his career, he figures you're not paying attention to the parts between the fights and the stunts. Plus with all the drugs, kicking, and sassy female reporting in Mr. Nice Guy, a main character named Jackie helps remind viewers that it's not a Jean-Claude Van Damme film.
Are you positive? I sure feel like I'm in a Jean-Claude Van Damme film.
The grand finale of the movie involves Jackie driving over a drug dealer's house in a 120-ton dump truck, but the most memorable stunt takes place on a 24-inch table saw.
Jackie is fighting a construction site full of men and finds himself being fed crotch-first into a real, whirring circular saw -- and that's not even the unnecessary part. That comes moments later with this:
This.
Why Was It Unnecessary?
He barrel rolled over a fucking sawing table saw. By now you know enough about Jackie Chan to know that turning it off or replacing it with a fake blade was not an option, but why roll in that direction in the first place? Let's examine the scenario:
Try to make the decision from Jackie Chan's perspective. On your right are three already defeated enemies and one tiny man who has proven to be no match for you over the course of many unanswered face punches. On your left is the spinning saw blade that was recently screaming against your nuts. OK, it looks like you're about to go left, so let me remind you that if you choose that direction, you'll at best land in a splintery pile of debris and at worst be chewed into liquid. You're still doing it!? Fine, but at this point, it feels like you're mocking Death for the sheer sport of it.
I talk about Jackie Chan's balls, but you have to admire the henchman who still charges in after all his co-workers have been kicked to sleep.
Hot Pepper Fistfight from Project A Part II
Why Was It Unnecessary?
Judging by this, it looks like it might be easier for an actor to pretend he's been hit in the eye with hot peppers when he hasn't actually been hit in the eye with hot peppers.
For more of his articles on martial arts masters, see 7 Superpowers That Steven Seagal Actually Believes He Has or 5 Self-Defense Books for Women (Who Want to Lose a Fight).
