Donnie Yen's Ip Man 2 Has A Secret Jet Li Connection (& It's Genius)
Donnie Yen's Ip Man 2 carried over a fighting arena from Jet Li's Fearless, albeit in a modified form. In Ip Man 2's continuation of the Ip Man martial arts movie series, Yen returned as Wing Chun master Ip Man, renown for his role in mentoring the young Bruce Lee. One fight sequence in Ip Man 2 sees the heroic sifu having to prove himself against other Hong Kong kung fu masters, including Master Hung, played by Sammo Hung, with Ip Man facing Hung and several other opponents on a large, turned over table-top.
This is actually a modified version of a Chinese fighting platform that dates back ages known as a «lei tai.» This platform has been featured in numerous kung fu movies over the years, but it was arguably made the most famous in the West in Jet Li's 2006 movie Fearless. Though Fearless depicted the lei tai in a much more traditional context, Ip Man 2's version functions in the same way.
RELATED: Fearless' Deleted Scenes Make The Jet Li Movie Even Better
As seen in several of Jet Li's fight scenes in the darker first half of Fearless, when engaged in combat on a lei tai, the two fighters can achieve victory through a number of different means, including knocking their opponent out, getting them to submit, or forcing them from the platform. That last method of victory makes fighting on a lei tai very different from a contemporary boxing ring or MMA cage, with both fighters having to maintain full awareness of their place on the platform at all times. Lei tai stages remain in use to this day in modern kung fu sanda fights, and both Fearless and Ip Man 2 make great use of them in distinct ways.
In Fearless, the movie's use of the lei tai is very straightforward, due to its early 20th century setting, with most lei tai
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