Back to the basics. It’s funny to say because when this film came out, it was likely far from “the basics” of martial arts, and I’m not being blasphemous in calling Bruce Lee’s mastery of martial arts “basic”. That is far from the truth… I’m saying that Enter the Dragon is real, cool, martial arts. It’s not wire rigged, or over the top (which I have no problem with, I love the spectacle of crazy circus kung fu). It’s just cool. It’s enjoyable action and although choreographed, has an authentic feel.
So, I heard a podcast recently that touted the 3 pillars of film sound design. Those pillars being dialogue, music, and sound effects. The sound in this movie left an impact on me, as much as the action, so I’m going to dive into those 3 pillars.
Dialogue:
Initially, I was a little distracted by the dialogue. That is, the dubbing of the dialogue. I got over this quickly, but it seemed odd that the sound didn’t match the mouths exactly. Not like a foreign language dub, the actor’s mouths in Enter the Dragon were clearly saying the English words that were audibly spoken, they just didn’t always match up 100%. After some googling I discovered that Enter the Dragon was filmed without sound. ALL of the sounds were added in post-production. This was so interesting to me. It’s worth reading about, in my opinion. Apparently the guy who played Han, did not speak English, he just learned to make the right mouth movements so his dialogue would be believable. This, to me, was a little mind blowing. Kind of like when you realize that on film sets, even if the scene is a crazy loud club, on set it’s virtually silent. The only sound is the dialogue of the main characters.
Music:
So seventies. The music and the Williams character gave this movie the same seventies feel. It all fit together like your dad used to fit into his leisure suit. So good.
Sound Effects:
A little over the top, but again, it gives the movie a certain feel. You can’t have Bruce Lee screaming and making HEEEEE OOOOOO-WHAAAAAAA fighting noises without some exaggerated punch, kick, break, snap, thud, wham sounds. Those all go together much like the aforementioned leisure suit… but I’ve used that already so let’s say these sound effects go together like jive turkey and stove-top jive stuffing. Very entertaining sounds for fighting. This is one of the tropes people love that define martial arts films. Especially Bruce Lee martial arts films. I love it, even though sometimes it’s ridiculous enough that you just have to laugh, I still love it.
I’ve never seem this film before, either. So, in watching it, I had a terrible flashback to the 90s. Riding around in the bed of a buddy’s truck while he blasted the soundtrack to Mortal Combat, cruising for that “clear” Pepsi (I’m actually a Coca-Cola fan, but that’s teenage peer pressure for you) in anticipation of watching a Steven Segal film later on in someone’s basement. The plot of Enter the Dragon reminded me of the movie Mortal Combat (the tournament element especially, but the excessive luggage thing was more than a Hat Tip, certainly). Notice that I referred to Mortal Combat as a movie, and Enter the Dragon as a film. That’s what film bloggers do. Right? Anyway, there are countless analyses of this very thing (the Mortal Combat plot rip-off thing, not the movie/film blogger thing) on the YouTube. Actually, I hope that having a film-ish blog doesn’t make someone a film snob. I hope I’m far from that. Mostly I want to enjoy what I watch, over analysis and looking for plot holes can sometimes just ruin the experience. Enter the Dragon is just enjoyable. So is most of the Marvel franchise.
There were elements of James Bond in Enter the Dragon as well. Bruce Lee’s purpose was espionage. Han would fit so well into the Bond world as a villain. Ruthless, evil, replaces his wooden hand with razor claws for fighting, and he is clearly cat-sitting for Blofeld. Even the music at one point felt Bond-ish. Maybe if Ian Fleming was born in Hong Kong after WW2, he would have had a credit on this film. I can see why this movie did very well… you know the reasons mentions, plus all of the stereotypes.
One final note: Jackie Chan is in Enter the Dragon… more googling.
So,
Did I like Enter the Dragon? Yes
Would I watch it again? Yes.
Would I recommend it to others? Yes.
Journey to the Centre of the Classic Film Vault 