Martial Arts Movie List

Martial arts movies have been around for a long time, the first movie that introduced martial arts was a movie called The True Story of Wong Fei Hung.  The movie was released in 1949, although there is not much information on the movie or who starred in it.  The movie was one of the first to have fight sequences in it using martial arts.  Since then dozens of movies have come out showing all kinds of different types of martial arts.  With the popularity of martial arts movies popping up all the time, many new faces have come to the movie acting screen with martial arts skills. 

There have been many movies that have been released in the United States with Asian born actors that practice martial arts.  Before this time many of the movies about martial arts had either captions, or horrible voice overs.  That has all changed and the martial arts movies that are coming out now are outstanding.  The video quality has not only changed but other enhancements in filming, and computer enhancement has made martial arts movies remarkable in the past decade.

That doesn't mean the movies of old were bad, because they were really good considering the infancy of the movie industry back in those days.  Everything about those movies were great, a lot of them had great plots, and if you could look past the sub titles and the voice overs they were really good movies.  Tons of true action that you really do not see anymore.  The movies are great that come out now but they are filled with so much computer enhancing that you can't really tell if the actors are actually doing that or the computer did it. 

Another reason the movies have gotten so much better besides the fact of computers, and higher resolution movies is the fact that the actors are a lot better.  The older movie actors were great at their form of martial arts, but they were not really actors.  So that made the movies a little harder to watch then the ones that are coming out now.  The actors today have more to work with then what the earllier actors did.  This makes a huge impact on the quality, and watchability of movies.  Many of the actors that specialize in martial arts have been doing it for a really long time, and have used that time to better their acting skills and improve on their martial arts. 

The movies that we are going to list are all the martial arts movies from 1949 on.  They are all in order by year with the last one coming out in 2009.  These are all movies that people have watched and when going through this list you will see movies that you have forgotten about and it will take you back to when you first watched it.  These are all great movies, and should be seen.  Here is the list of martial arts movies starting in 1949.

• The True Story of Wong Fei Hung released in 1949.
• Come Drink With Me in 1966.
• The Twelve Gold Medallions out in 1970, starring the Shaw Brothers.
• The Big Boss came out in 1971, and starred Bruce Lee.
  
• Fist of Fury released in 1972, starring Bruce Lee.
• Enter the Dragon released in 1973, also starring Bruce Lee.
• When Taekwondo Strikes also released in 1973, starring Jhoon Goo Rhee.
• The Street Fighter in 1974, starred Sonny Chiba.
• Master of the Flying Guillotine came out in 1975, and starred Jimmy Wang Yu.
• Hand of Death was released in 1976, and starred Jackie Chan.
• Shaolin Temple came out in 1976, and starred the Shaw Brothers.
• The Game of Death was released in 1978, and starred Bruce Lee.
  
• Shaolin Temple released in 1982, starring Jet Li.
• The Karate Kid came out in 1984, and starred Noriyuki Morita.
• American Ninja was out in 1985.
• Kung Fu: The Movie was released in 1986.
• The Karate Kid II in 1986, starred Noriyuki Morita
  
• Bloodsport came out in 1988, and starred Jean-Claude Van Damme.
• Kickboxer was released in 1989, and also starred Jean-Claude Van Damme.
• Best of the Best came out in 1989.
• The Karate Kid III was released in 1989, and starred Noriyuki Morita
  
• American Kickboxer was released in 1992.
• Only the Strong came out in 1993, and starreed Mark Dacascos.
• Iron Monkey was released in 1993, and starred Yuen Woo-Ping.
• Fist of Legend came out in 1994, and starred Jet Li.
• The Next Karate Kid was released in 1994, and starred Noriyuki Morita
  
• Drunken Master II was released in 1994, and starred Jackie Chan.
• Mortal Combat came out in 1995
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out in 2000.
• The One released in 2001, and starred Jet Li.
  
• Kill Bill was released in 2003
• Bulletproof Monk came out in 2003, and starred Chow Yun-Fat.
• Fatal Contact was released in 2006, and starred Wu Jing.
• Fearless came out in 2006, and starred Jet Li.
• Flash point was released in 2007, and starred Donnie Yen.
• Never Back Down came out in 2008.

There are so many martial arts movies that have been release, and they are still just as popular today as when they first came out.  On many occasions I have pulled out the old Bruce Lee movies and watched them.  My daughter has commented to be about watch the old fuzzy movies, and I tell her that these are some of the best movies that have been made.  She laughs at me and then goes back to listening to her iPod, and Playing on her PSP.