Enter The Dragon at 50: 11 movies influenced by Bruce Lee's classic

Brett Ratner’s hit sequel to Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker’s buddy cop comedy carries whiffs of Enter The Dragon, from its immersive opening montage of Hong Kong to the majestic score from Lalo Schifrin, who also scored Enter The Dragon. And let’s not forget an aging-like-milk gag where like he’s in a “buffet line,” in an homage to .

While the duology is marinated in Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse influences, there’s almost an overabundance of Bruce Lee iconography throughout the two pictures. Between Uma Thurman’s motorcycle fit that echoes Lee’s jumpsuit from (his last unfinished movie) to more than one explicit nod to The Green Hornet, it’s clear Tarantino loves the man even if he made Brad Pitt powerbomb him onto a car in .  by the YouTube channel Nerdstalgic, Dave Baker argues that the Kill Bill movies are an elaborate metaphor for revenge by Tarantino on behalf of Bruce Lee; its antagonist Bill is played by David Carradine, who famously starred in the wildly popular TV series . While Bruce Lee’s actual connections to that show are fiercely debated today, the fact remains that Carradine played a part that would have fit Bruce Lee like a tailored suit. Kill Bill exists as a testament to Lee’s influence over even cinema’s most ardent apostles.

For a brief but unforgettable moment in Enter The Dragon, Bruce Lee steamrolls some goons using just two sticks, one in each hand. Audiences didn’t know it in 1973, but they were witness to the beauty and brutality of Filipino Martial Arts, also called arnis or escrima. Practiced by native Filipinos for centuries, Lee was introduced to the discipline by his student, Dan Inosanto. Lee showed it off in Enter The Dragon, and Hollywood has been in love with it ever since. So many action movies of the last 40 years have choreographed fight scenes around FMA, including and definitely not limited to: (1985), (2002), (2006), (2010), (2014), (2015), (2021), and the Bourne films (2002-2016). But few movies used FMA like Zack Snyder’s , its fight scenes designed by Inosanto’s student Damon Caro. Caro said he relied on FMA to approximate the hand-to-hand combat of the ancient Greeks due to the lack of surviving scholarship around their actual martial styles.

The beginning of Enter The Dragon has a pre-fame Sammo Hung getting twisted into submission by Lee, a portent to the rise of mixed martial arts and the UFC. In fact, Enter The Dragon is often hailed as  In 2011’s , Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton played brothers whose beef spills into the cages of an MMA tournament. While most MMA movies feel like second-rate boxing dramas, Warrior stands out for its visceral and realistic depiction of the sport and its emotionally charged story, which elevate the film above a rudimentary macho drama. In many ways Warrior is the movie Bruce Lee would have wanted to make, being a martial arts showcase that isn’t just a spectacle.

It’s not simply that the longtime director of the John Wick films, Chad Stahelski, was a student of Dan Inosanto, himself a former student of Bruce Lee’s. It’s the John Wick series’ specific flavor of choreography and its approach to capturing that on camera, with long cuts, clear framing, and no superhuman feats beyond what the actors can physically pull off—all a testament to the influence of Enter The Dragon. contains yet another homage to the scene from Enter The Dragon featuring two combatants in a room with multiple mirrors.

that the climax of his 2018 movie —with its big room of mirrors, yet again—was inspired by Enter The Dragon. When one of the biggest movie star’s in the world references Enter The Dragon, you know its reach is undeniable.