How Jet Li's The One Used Martial Arts To Create A Perfect Multiverse Fight
Jet Li's 2001 sci-fi movie The One pit him against a version of himself from another universe, and used different Chinese martial arts forms to capture the hero and villain's personalities. The One debuted during Jet Li's early rise to fame in Hollywood. Already one of the biggest stars in Hong Kong action movies, Li's appearance as the villainous Wah Sing-ku in 1998's Lethal Weapon 4 kickstarted his stateside career.
Li subsequently led the action films Romeo Must Die and Kiss of the Dragon, with The One being his first PG-13 Hollywood movie. In The One, Li plays Gabriel Yulaw, a former cop for the Multiverse Agency on a mission to assassinate his parallel selves across the Multiverse in order to absorb their energy. In doing so, Yulaw seeks to become an all-powerful being known as «The One.» Having eliminating 123 out of 124 of his alternate selves throughout the vast Multiverse, Yulaw's final target is LAPD cop Gabe Law, both of them possessing superhuman strength and speed as a result of Yulaw's killing spree.
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While both Gabe and Yulaw are very skilled martial artists, each practices a distinctly different form of kung fu. Gabe is an opponent of Baquazhang («Eight-Trigram Palm»), while Yulaw is a practitioner of Xingyiquan («Shape-Intent Fist»). This was a very specific choice on the part of the makers of The One, including Li's longtime collaborator Corey Yuen, who served as fight choreographer. In having Gabe and Yulaw utilize their respective martial arts, this was intended to reflect their individual mindsets as people.
Baquazhang is characterized by elusive, circular footwork and open-palm strikes, with the practitioner evading and
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