Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a 1993 American biographical drama film directed by Rob Cohen. The film stars Jason Scott Lee, with a supporting cast including Lauren Holly, Nancy Kwan, and Robert Wagner. The film follows the life of actor and martial artist Bruce Lee (Jason) from his relocation to the United States from Hong Kong to his career as a martial arts teacher, and then as a television and film actor. It also focuses on the relationship between Bruce and his wife Linda, and the racism to which Bruce was subjected.
The primary source of the screenplay is Cadwell's 1975 biography Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew. Other sources include Robert Clouse's book Bruce Lee: The Biography and research by Cohen, including interviews with Cadwell and Bruce's son, Brandon Lee. Rather than a traditional biographical film, Cohen decided to include elements of mysticism and to dramatise fight scenes to give it the same tone as the films in which Bruce starred. Dragon was filmed primarily in Hong Kong, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was released by Universal Pictures on May 7, 1993. The film received generally positive reviews, with critics finding it entertaining despite criticisms of its veneration of Bruce. Jason was widely praised for his performance. The film was a commercial success and its revenue exceeded box office averages for biographical films, which was attributed to its romantic themes and its appeal to people outside the traditional kung fu film audience. A video game adaptation of the same name was released the following year. Dragon is dedicated to Brandon, who died several weeks before its release.
Plot
In Hong Kong, Bruce Lee's father Lee Hoi-chuen awakens from a nightmare about a phantom, known as the Demon, haunting his young son. He subsequently enrolls him in Chinese martial arts training with instructor Yip Man. As a young adult, Bruce fights British sailors who are harassing a young Chinese woman. As a result, he must flee Hong Kong. His father insists he go to the US.
In the US, Bruce works as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant until he gets in a brawl with four of the cooks. The restaurant owner Gussie Yang fires him but also lends him money and encourages him to go to college. While studying philosophy in college, Bruce begins to teach martial arts classes, where he meets Linda, a white American. Bruce marries Linda in defiance of her racist mother, Vivian. Linda suggests Bruce establish a martial arts school, but his Chinese peers demand he train only Chinese people. When Bruce refuses, they challenge him to settle the matter in combat. Bruce defeats a challenger named Johnny Sun in a secret, no-holds-barred match but Johnny attacks Bruce after he has admitted defeat, and Bruce sustains a debilitating back injury. While Bruce is temporarily paralyzed, Linda helps him write the martial arts book Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Linda gives birth to their first child, Brandon, and the couple reconcile with her mother.
Some months later, during a martial arts tournament run by Ed Parker, Johnny challenges Bruce to a rematch. Bruce defeats and humiliates Johnny, earning the respect of the audience. Bruce is unaware that Johnny becomes crippled from his injuries in the fight. After the match, Bill Krieger, who later becomes Bruce's manager, offers him the role of Kato in the television series The Green Hornet. Bruce and Krieger also create the idea for the television series Kung Fu, agreeing that Bruce will feature in the lead role. At a cast party, Linda says she is pregnant with their second child, Shannon. Shortly afterwards, the cancellation of The Green Hornet is announced. Kung Fu later makes it to television but much to Bruce's frustration, it stars the white actor David Carradine. Bruce believes Krieger has betrayed him.
Bruce returns to Hong Kong for his father's funeral. Philip Tan, a Hong Kong film producer, hires Bruce to star in the film The Big Boss. During the filming of the final scene, Johnny's brother Luke attacks Bruce in revenge for Johnny's humiliating defeat and subsequent disability; Bruce narrowly wins the fight. The Big Boss is a success and Bruce makes several more films, working as an actor, director, writer and editor. This causes a rift between Bruce and Linda, as Linda wishes to return to the US. Krieger offers Bruce a chance to work on a big-budget Hollywood film, to which Bruce agrees, partly because of Linda's wish to return home.
On the 32nd day of filming Enter the Dragon, during the "room of mirrors" sequence, Bruce has a terrifying vision of the Demon that has haunted his and his father's dreams. This time, after being beaten and then shown his own grave, Bruce sees his son urging Bruce to save him. The Demon pursues Brandon, spurring Bruce to fight back, save Brandon and break the Demon's neck with a pair of Nunchaku. Bruce later films another scene from Enter the Dragon, the film that would make him an international star. In a voice-over, Linda tells the audience Bruce fell into a mysterious coma and died shortly before the film's release and says while many people want to talk about how he died, she prefers to remember how he lived.
Cast
Themes
Writing about pedagogy and political correctness in film, Meaghan Morris includes a six-page analysis of a scene in Dragon, where Bruce and Linda watch Breakfast at Tiffany's at a cinema; Linda suggests they leave when she notices Bruce is upset at Mickey Rooney's yellowface performance of I. Y. Yunioshi. Morris describes the scene as didactic, as it allows Linda, who was originally enjoying the film, to understand and share Bruce's revulsion of racist stereotypes. Noting the film's portrayal of Bruce's life as a "battle against Western prejudice", Morris concludes Dragon is "one of the more powerful treatments of institutionalized racism in a film industry that US cinema possesses".
Writing in the Asian Journal of Communication in 2013, academic Zheng Zhu listed Dragon alongside Kiss of the Dragon (2001) and The Tuxedo (2002) as films that broke from the Western tradition of portraying Asian men as asexual, stating that while they are often featured as heroes in martial arts films, they are rarely portrayed as romantic or loving. Noting the films each show an Asian martial artist with a white female partner, Zhu states they reverse the conventional portrayal of a "dominant white knight and a submissive Oriental lady". However, he makes critiques of the portrayal of these relationships. For example, each film shows "white women play[ing] the most important role" in helping Chinese men accomplish success, as evidenced by Linda's support for Bruce while he recovers from his back injury. Asian men, Zhu argues, are portrayed as incapable of achieving success in Western society unless they are supported by white femininity.
Production Pre-production
A major source for the film's screenplay, which was written by director Rob Cohen in cooperation with Edward Khmara and John Raffo, was Linda Lee Cadwell's biography Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew. Other sources included Robert Clouse's book Bruce Lee: The Biography, and original research by Khmara and Cohen. Cadwell provided resources for the film's production. Scenes showing hand-written notes and drawings from Bruce's book Tao of Jeet Kune Do are his original works. She also provided access to Bruce's clothing so replicas could be created for the film.
Cohen stated his first problem when writing the screenplay was to condense Bruce's life into under two hours of film. He decided to avoid making a standard biographical film and instead incorporate "mystical and legendary aspects" to dramatise Bruce's life, telling his story "as if it were, in fact, a Bruce Lee movie". Cohen learnt that for the first two years of Bruce's life, his parents had dressed and passed him off as a girl to protect him from a superstitious Chinese belief that demons target first-born sons. Influenced by this tale, Cohen decided to show Bruce being pursued by a supernatural demon, seeing it as a metaphor for an inner demon that may have motivated and influenced Bruce. When Cohen first met Cadwell after giving her the screenplay, she asked how Cohen had learnt about Bruce's demon. Cohen said he had dramatised the plot element after studying his life; Cadwell said Bruce told her he felt as though a demon was trying to drag him away when he collapsed 10 weeks before his death. Cohen spent hours talking to both Cadwell and Brandon in preparation for the film.
Casting
Actors were still being considered for the role of Bruce in April 1991, including Brandon Lee. While Brandon was the right age and had appropriate martial arts training to portray his father, and was perceived by some as a likely choice for the role, producer Raffaella De Laurentiis said he did not look Chinese enough and that she would have refused to work on the project if they had to resort to making Brandon appear more Asian. Brandon independently turned down the role, finding it too strange to play his father, especially when it came to the romantic life of his parents. Jason Scott Lee, who had auditioned for a role in The Last of the Mohicans but was rejected because he did not appear Native American, was recommended for the role of Bruce early in pre-production. The Last of the Mohicans casting director was impressed with him and recommended him to Cohen. Jason said at first he felt intimidated by his role portraying Bruce but he overcame his fear after speaking to Brandon. Jason was a gymnast and athlete, but had no martial arts training. Cohen cast Jason because he believed trying to teach a martial artist to act would be more difficult than training an actor in martial arts. To prepare for their roles, Jason and Lauren Holly trained in Bruce's martial-arts style of Jeet Kune Do for months under Bruce's former student Jerry Poteet. Poteet praised Jason's new martial arts abilities, as did John Cheung, the actor who portrayed Johnny Sun and served as the film's fight and stunt coordinator. Cheung worked as a stuntman on Enter the Dragon. Cohen chose him because he believed it was important for the fight scenes to be choreographed in a Hong Kong style rather than a US one.
Cohen cast Nancy Kwan as Gussie Yang, a restaurant owner and Bruce's employer. Like Bruce, Kwan played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian ancestry in major Hollywood film roles and Cohen wanted audiences to be reminded of her achievement and the struggle of Asian American actors. He cast Michael Learned as Vivian Emery because he loved her portrayal of Olivia in The Waltons and wished to see Bruce's confrontation with the person recognisable as that character. Emery gave filmmakers permission to portray her as initially hostile and racist towards Bruce; Emery said she had treated him that way when they first met.
Van Williams, who played The Green Hornet in the 1960s TV series of the same name, was given a cameo appearance as the director of The Green Hornet. Bruce's daughter, Shannon, has a cameo as a singer in the party scene, at which Linda tells Bruce she is pregnant with Shannon. Sven-Ole Thorsen was cast as the Demon due to his height and physique. Cohen states he did a "remarkable job" during the fight scenes considering he was unable to see out of the costume's headpiece. Cohen gave himself a cameo as the director of Enter the Dragon.
Filming