Fearless' Deleted Scenes Make The Jet Li Movie Even Better
The director's cut of Jet Li's 2006 movie Fearless includes two key deleted scenes that add greatly to the martial arts film. Directed by Ronny Yu and marketed as Jet Li's final martial arts epic, Fearless tells the story of Huo Yuanjia, a famed exponent of Mizongyi kung fu and founder of the Chin Woo Athletic Association. Though Fearless tells a largely fictionalized version of Huo's life, Li's performance as the kung fu master was praised as a fantastic final portrayal of a real-life Chinese kung fu legend by Li.
Yu's director's cut adds some 35 minutes back into the film, and includes two key scenes that add more layers to Huo's arc of understanding life and the meaning of martial arts. The first is in the film's intro in contemporary times, with Ms. Yang, played by Everything Everywhere All At Once star Michelle Yeoh, making the case before the Olympic committee for the inclusion of modern Wushu as an Olympic event. Yang makes her argument by presenting the literal translation of Wushu from Mandarin Chinese as "The way to avert conflict". This plays directly into Huo's story within the context of the movie of learning that martial arts is not ultimately about victory over others, but victory over one's self.
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Fearless shows Huo early on as a man determined to prove the might of the Huo family fist and its superiority over all other martial arts. However, this ends in tragedy for him and his family, sending Huo to a depressed exile in a distant village. This leads into the second deleted scene, in which a child from his village steals an ox from another. Rather than allow the child to be punished, Huo intervenes and agrees to absorb a beating from a
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