Donnie Yen: In fact, Ip Man is a Chinese superhero

Ip Man 4 was officially released on December 20, and the box office exceeded 300 million in three days. Last weekend, neither Star Wars 9 nor Feng Xiaogang's Only Yun Knows was its rival. On the eve of the film's release, the undefeated "Master Ip" Donnie Yen accepted an exclusive interview with Time.com, sharing his experience of playing Ip Man for more than ten years. In Donnie Yen's eyes, Ip Man is China's superhero, but compared to those Marvel movies, Ip Man is more humane.

Q: The Ip Man you created is not only a martial arts master, he is also a national hero, because in every episode he has to fight foreigners and win face for the Chinese. What do you think of this side of Ip Man as a national hero?

Donnie Yen: Isn't it good to have national heroes? We must have some national heroes to create this kind of martial arts film. Why do people like to read Jin Yong's martial arts novels? Because heroes must be those who help the weak and fight against the strong, and speak for justice. Conversely, Hollywood films are also like this, isn't Marvel's? It's completely like this. It's just that we are used to watching their films, and we don't discuss them. In fact, their superheroes are their equation, which is a movie equation for creating heroes. It's very common.

In the war movies they made for decades, the Germans were always bad guys, and the Indians were also portrayed as bad guys in western cowboy movies. On the contrary, I think our series really used some of the bitterness of our Chinese history in them.

In the first episode, we were indeed bullied by the Japanese, right? This episode talks about the sadness of Chinese people in Chinatown when we were in the United States. I lived in the United States for a while, and the movie was just a small thing. We just used some directions as a framework for our storytelling.

Q: You mentioned Marvel just now. Marvel's superhero movies are probably the most popular form of action movies. After finishing the "Ip Man" series, are you interested in trying some superhero movies?

Donnie Yen: I have filmed Star Wars. Actually, Ip Man is a superhero . What is a superhero? What are his elements? In addition to being suspenseful and full of science fiction, he is very capable and he saves the earth. Why can't we have a superhero in China? We just set the story background in that era.

Foreigners think that I am a superhero in these four episodes of Ip Man, because they call me Yip Man, or IP Man. They think this is very fresh and different from their superheroes. This person is more human. He has ability, but he is more human than them.

Q: You starred in Disney’s live-action version of Mulan. How was the filming experience?

Donnie Yen: It's a good experience. I've filmed several big Hollywood movies, and I think we Chinese are treated better now than before.