Billionaire's Vanity Project Is 'The Room' Of Martial Arts Movies

You might have heard of rich people using their money to hang out with celebs. Most of those rich folk have nothing on Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of China’s Alibaba Group. In 2017, Ma got a bunch of celebs to appear with him in a short film—so he could fight and defeat each of them, one by one. 

These celebs were martial arts superstars. In the film, Gong Shou Dao, they each play masters of their individual fighting styles, and they each fall at the hands of a far greater fighter, Jack Ma. 

At the start of the 20-minute film, Ma sees a sign labeled “Mount Hua.” This must be the entrance to a combat sanctum, he thinks to himself. We then flash to this sanctum, which turns out to be a dojo and an arcade where people play basketball. Ma slams his hand *through* the ball. Which makes him kind of a spoilsport and also means he has to fight Tony Jaa, famous for Ong-Bak, Furious 7, and meeting fellow fighter Seanbaby that one time. Jaa is no match for Ma:

The 53-year-old businessman wins his next two fights as well. Then when he faces someone stylized after Streetfighter’s Chun-Li (Natasha Liu, from The Greatest Showman and Netflix’s The Society), he says he doesn’t hit women, so he merely dodges her attacks, and fights her husband, Wu Jing.

Ma next finds himself in some kind of cat girl mall, where all the underwear-clad ladies swoon over him. 

He defeats a sumo wrestler (top-ranked Sumo dude Asashōryū Akinori) who outweighs him significantly. Then the scene switches to a sacred pool, where he fights Donnie Yen—whom, even if you missed his decades in Hong Kong cinema, you might know from Rogue One and Mulan. After befouling the pool with his dirty feet, Ma must next fight Yen’s servant, who just so happens to be an aging Jet Li. 

Then we flash back to Ma in front of that Mount Hua sign. Turns out it’s the sign for the Mount Hua police station. Ha, ha! Everything else was just his fantasy, and police officers (played by famous Chinese celebs) chase him off. In case this leaves you thinking Ma isn’t supercool after all, he does tai chi moves over the credits.

According to Jet Li, who also produced the film, all these martial artists appeared in the film for free, solely to promote China to the world; Ma did not use his money to get any of them to participate. And if you believe that, well, maybe it's because Chinese propaganda has already reduced your mind to a gullible mess. 

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For more on those martial arts stars, check out:

The Most Batshit Insane Martial Arts Movie Ever

During Movie Fights, Opponents Patiently Wait Their Turn to Attack

Jet Li Only Owns One Pair of Sunglasses

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