For the record, George Nolfi’s Birth of the Dragon was never going to be a big hit. The BH Tilt release earned just $2.7 million from 1,618 theaters this weekend, which is actually the studio’s fourth-biggest debut weekend. The distribution arm, which debuted in late 2015 with The Green Inferno is a part of Blumhouse which has been experimenting with targeted semi-wide releases for genre films with minimal marketing and carefully selected theaters as a way to find a middle ground between 2,500-4,000 screen releases and VOD for non-arthouse fare. But what’s interesting, especially in light of this week’s Hellboy controversy, is how BH Tilt sold the film versus what the film actually is. It is, in fact, a classic example of Hollywood (or related international investors) telling what is technically a minority’s life through the lens of a white guy.
The film is not a Bruce Lee biopic, but rather a heavily fictionalized look at the infamous martial arts showdown that took place between Lee (before he became a movie star) and Wong Jack Man in San Francisco in 1964, allegedly over Man’s displeasure over Lee’s teaching martial arts to white students. And while Philip Ng is terrific as Lee and Xia Yu is solid as Man, the movie is told from the point-of-view of a fictional white guy (Steve McKee, who is not Steve McQueen) played by Billy Magnussen. Despite an opening reel that puts Lee squarely at the center of the story, we quickly realize that it’s actually McKee who will control the narrative, complete with a Chinese love interest who is imperiled for the sake of both the main event and the absurd (but admittedly entertaining) climax.
It’s another example of historical drama told through the p.o.v. of a (sometimes fictionalized) white male protagonist, something that will be familiar to those who have seen everything from Cry Freedom to Stonewall. The movie will probably be gone from theaters in a week or two, and it will soon live forever as the kind of movie you watch on cable while doing the dishes on a Sunday afternoon. But here’s the weird thing: While the movie is “problematic” or “whitewashed” or whatever term you want to use, BH Tilt’s marketing campaign went out of their way to hide that. The theatrical trailers, the TV spots, the clips and the featurettes offer barely a hint at Magnussen’s prime role in the narrative. The studio really wanted folks to think it was a straight Lee vs. Man action drama.
All of BH Tilt’s many online videos, at least the ones on their official site, are entirely focused on Bruce Lee and his conflict with Wong Jack Man in the winter of 1964. While Magnussen is essentially the only white person in the movie, he is still hidden from view as much as possible in the video materials, and in most of the posters. Yes, there is a longer international trailer (which also includes scenes cut from the longer 103-minute version of the film), which hints at the story’s true focus, but the emphasis in the pre-release materials is entirely on Bruce Lee and his self-defining journey. Now that makes sense, since Lee as a historical figure is more valuable as a marketing tool than a random white guy, but then why make this version of this story in the first place?
The film and its would-be controversy first popped up on the grid at last year’s Toronto Film Festival (which is when BH Tilt acquired the film). After showing off an extended trailer, producer Michael London candidly exclaimed that said artistic choice was made so that the movie, which otherwise features a mostly Asian cast, would not be construed as a “foreign” film to would-be overseas buyers. Whether or not that makes mercenary sense (it’s no secret that black leads often get Hispanic love interests so that the film won’t be considered a “black” movie), this makes it all the more ironic that BH Tilt, which did not make the film but merely procured it for domestic distribution, hid the film’s core narrative thrust in all of its official marketing. It’s a good example of the push-pull currently existing in the independent film industry.
So you fashion a Bruce Lee story around a white guy (complete with a helpless damsel-in-distress Asian female love interest), because it’s more marketable and more appealing to overseas buyers. After all, that’s where the money comes from and that’s how a small movie like Birth of the Dragon has any shot in hell of making any money for its investors. But telling minority-driven stories from the point-of-view of white men is bad mojo in North America, so BH Tilt, which is trying to expand beyond horror movies, grabs the film but does everything in its power to hide that it’s a whitewashed historical fiction almost guaranteed to piss off the very folks who would see a Bruce Lee movie in theaters. You can see the unusual contradiction in this situation. And I’d argue it almost counts as progress.
Putting aside the “Don’t buy the film” argument, BH Tilt’s strategy suggests that whitewashing route isn’t the best way to make your movie look appealing to general audiences and to the targeted demographics in question. We’ve heard so many times that foreign investors and/or markets dictate that movies be male-centric and/or white male-centric as a matter of course. Yet, in this instance, an allegedly whitewashed movie (that, for the record, was never intended as a non-fiction biopic) was deemed less commercial in North America than one absent any token white male leads. Over the last 72 hours, we’ve had an actor drop out of a major movie due to race-bending complaints and we’ve had a much smaller movie whose marketing did everything in its power to hide its white male-focused narrative in an effort to appeal to North American moviegoers.
Maybe the conversation really is making a difference. But it caught my attention last weekend, especially as the Lee-focused marketing made me curious enough to check out the picture this past Friday. And come what may, Philip Ng can be a movie star if afforded the opportunity.
