What is “wire fu”/”computer fu” and when did it start?
“Wire fu” refers to martial arts movies that use wires and other tricks like trampolines to exaggerate the movements of fighters so much that it looks as if they have superhuman powers. Wires had been used during the “golden age” of kung fu movies, but it was not until the early 1980’s with films like Ching Siu-Tung’s 1983 epic “Duel to the Death” (widely cited as the beginning of the genre) where they had been used extensively for an entire movie. “Computer fu” could be thought of as a more modern version of wire fu (in fact, it uses many of the same techniques) where computer effects are used heavily in fight sequences. Probably the first computer fu movie would be 1998’s “The Storm Riders”, directed by Andrew Lau. As the cost of computer effects goes down, more and more movies are falling into this genre, especially since the computers can mask (at least somewhat) the actor’s lack of fighting skills.
