Kung Fu The Legend Continues

[Superman]

So lately I have been staying up late and I happened across some reruns of this show. Is it just me, or is this show utter CRAP?

Is David Carradine even CHINESE? He is supposed to be a Chinese Shaolin Monk but he doesn't even appear to be Asian! Is "Carradine" remotely Chinese at all? Maybe if his name was David Wu or David Chai it would sound more reasonable, but Carradine? He lives in Chinatown, goes through Chinese rituals, speaks with a sort of accent, is unbeatable in combat but has no Asian features at all. Even his dumb ass son in the show is white. What the hell is going on?

It's funnier than hell to watch this old man do his basic Kung Fu movements. He's unbeatable in combat but can't do much...

Anyone else seen this show?

[BoredShirtless]

Well the story is, they orginally cast Bruce Lee for the role, but some big shot moron in power thought he was too Asian looking. Enter David Carradine.

[Montcalm]

Well a chinese would not look chinese on tv,so they chose a white guy.

[Tsyroc]

Well the story is, they orginally cast Bruce Lee for the role, but some big shot moron in power thought he was too Asian looking. Enter David Carradine.

According to the movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story the whole concept for Kung Fu was Bruce Lee's idea. He proposed it and it basically got swiped out from under him. But that's according to the movie.


Anyway, I thought David Caradine's character was supposed to be half white or something? It's been a long time since I saw the origial series.

By the way, did anyone see the first revival movie where Cain met his son, played by Brandon Lee? It was on in the 80s sometime.

[salm]

well Winnetou was french...

[TrailerParkJawa]

You have to remember when this movie was made. The amount of blatant racism was still pretty high. Many Asians at that time still lived in the Chinatowns around the country. The 60's and 70's are when many minorities started moving to the suburbs. It was not till the 80's that we see the staggering diversity some of us are used to today. Heck, even now there are large parts of America where Chinese are tiny part of the culture.

As for the show, it sucks. As for casting a white man to be a chinese kung fu master, that sucks.

[Slartibartfast]

So lately I have been staying up late and I happened across some reruns of this show. Is it just me, or is this show utter CRAP?

Is David Carradine even CHINESE? He is supposed to be a Chinese Shaolin Monk but he doesn't even appear to be Asian! Is "Carradine" remotely Chinese at all? Maybe if his name was David Wu or David Chai it would sound more reasonable, but Carradine? He lives in Chinatown, goes through Chinese rituals, speaks with a sort of accent, is unbeatable in combat but has no Asian features at all. Even his dumb ass son in the show is white. What the hell is going on?

It's funnier than hell to watch this old man do his basic Kung Fu movements. He's unbeatable in combat but can't do much...

Anyone else seen this show?

To be fair, his grandaddy (Kwai Chang, the one played by Carradine in the original show) was HALF-chinese, half-usamerican (I guess. Maybe half-english). He married a woman named Lillie Montgomery and had a son called Matthew, who married a woman named Su Lin and had two kids, one of them is Kwai Chang II (Peter's dad).

(no, I don't know this from memory, I just found a family tree on Google)

So you could say that Carradine was half-chinese in the first series, and 62.5% chinese in the second

Peter's mother is not chinese, her name was Laura Catherine. That would make Peter only 31.25% chinese

Trivia: the actor who plays Peter also provides the voice of Gambit in the old X-Men cartoon.

[Slartibartfast]

So lately I have been staying up late and I happened across some reruns of this show. Is it just me, or is this show utter CRAP?

Forgot to address this part of the post. Yep, KF-TLC is crap. There aren't even any Kung-Fu moves, just an old fart doing "magicky" stuff like touching a wall with his palm and knocking out all the baddies on the other side.

The first show was good most of the time. There was one episode with Jose Feliciano and another one where Harrison Ford played a minor part.