In many walks of life, the combination of recency bias and genuine progress makes it easy to think that the latest thing is also the greatest thing. However, this thought process does not apply to the martial arts movie genre, where the man who died in 1973 continues to be the yardstick by which all other stars are measured - and generally fail.

Bruce Lee's death at the age of 32 cut his life short, but not his legend. It can be easy to forget that his "Bruce Lee era" was just the last star-making phase of his career. Before breaking through with his English name on The Green Hornet, Lee appeared in 20 Hong Kong films, often using his Chinese name Lee Jun Fan and stage names such as Lee Siu Lung ("Lee the Little Dragon"). This means that the true Lee fan has a lot of relatively obscure material to wade through - from the 1941 film Golden Gate Girl, where he appears as a baby, to his drama in The Thunderstorm (a.k.a. Lei yu 1957) and The Orphan (aka Ren Hai Gu Hong, 1960).

Even so, when we think of Bruce Lee, we generally think of a very specific period in his career where he used the name to make a series of instant martial arts classics. Because he died so young, he only had time to act in a few of these sound films, but luckily for viewers, many of them are very good. But which of Bruce Lee's five movies is the best? Let's find out.

There's no getting around it: Bruce Lee's latest movie, Game of Death, is a mess. The five years between Lee's death in 1973 and the film's release in 1978 created a strange difficulty around the skeletonized remnant of what the film was originally meant to be. The footage Lee shot before he died was filled with additional scenes featuring patchwork methods ranging from semi-competent body doubles to actual cardboard cutouts of the deceased star.

Lee shot selected scenes for Game of Death in 1972 before leaving to make Enter the Dragon (1973). The original plot involved a heist, and Lee's character spent much of the film growing through a large pagoda, facing a series of increasingly difficult opponents. In a truly historic and time-consuming act of Bruceploitation, Golden Harvest Studios and "Enter the Dragon" director Robert Close combined available footage of Lee with a reimagined revenge tale that's 100 minutes long and features about 12 minutes of Bruce Lee. .. depending on whether you count the footage of Lee's actual funeral that the film chose to include.

"Game of Death" has its moments. On the rare occasion that you actually see Lee, he sure is awesome. The film is also known for the unveiling of his famous yellow jumpsuit, an iconic look inspired the appearance of Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) in Kill Bill: Volume 1. However, if the overwhelm factor of the film's many flaws and awkward origin story is too much — as it very well is — you might want to check out the 2019 cut Game of Death Redux, a 40-minute version that is included in the Criterion Collection Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits (2020) and focuses on Lee's original recording.

"Big Boss" — sometimes known as "Fists of Fury" — may not match "Game of Death" when it comes to its importance in pop culture, but it surpasses the 1978 film and earns its place among Bruce Lee's Greatest Hits by virtue of being a complete film. It doesn't hurt that Big Boss is a lot of fun. It unleashes the Bruce Lee of legend upon an unwary world - or at least Thailand, where the film takes place.

"Big Boss" does a bit of bait and switch with its protagonists, first focusing on brave martial artist Hsu Chien (James Tien), while Lee plays humble ice factory worker Cheng Chao-an, who has made a solemn vow to stay away from physical combat. This goes about as well as one might expect, and as Tien's character exits stage left, Lee steps forward and center to unleash his full fury.

This makes for a slow burn experience where you can only watch a Bruce Lee movie after sitting through a significantly worse non-Bruce Lee martial arts movie, which doesn't do The Big Boss any favors. Combine this with production values ​​that compare poorly to Lee's later fare, and the film is effectively a demo from an artist on the verge of a breakthrough. The intro is too long, the comedic beats and fights are rougher around the edges than you'd expect, and the plot is weak even by the genre's standards. However, the film by directorial duo Wei Lo and Chia-Hsiang Wu is still a fun watch and essential viewing for any Lee fan.

What Big Boss started, Fist of Fury perfected. Director Wei Lo's streamlined tale of kung fu student Chen Zhen (Li)'s quest for revenge against an antagonistic Japanese dojo features thrills, masks, some extremely sharp commentary on forged history between China and Japan - and, above all, Lee in full swing. , whining, raging, nunchuck invincibility mode.

If the image of Bruce Lee you have in your head is that of the quintessential Hong Kong Kung Fu hero, this is the ultimate Lee movie for you. For all intents and purposes, Chen Zhen is presented as a borderline superhero who is completely incapable of losing a fair fight and who is more than willing to fight dirty to the odds. The film's invariably intense martial arts sequences do their best to hint at its nature as a cheat code.

Aside from Chen Zhen's ability to make his way through a fully equipped dojo, what sets Fist of Fury apart from Lee's other martial arts films is its relatively serious tone. If Lee smiles here, it's before or after a killer blow. No triumphant walks into the sunset for him either. As powerful as Zhen is, at the end of the day he is just a man who is the victim of political forces he is utterly powerless to stop. Of course, things are still as bad as you'd expect from a 1970s martial arts movie, but the themes of discrimination and the obsessive, unrelenting nature of Zhen's rampage make sure you won't mistake this for a Jackie Chan movie in a hurry.

Thanks to the various Brucesploitation films entirely without Bruce Lee that flooded the market after his death, diving into the star's filmography can be surprisingly challenging for the casual fan. It doesn't help that some of his actual films carry multiple titles—for example, the 1972 film Way of the Dragon is sometimes billed as a 1974 film called Return of the Dragon.

However, whatever its title card says, Way of the Dragon remains an essential piece of martial arts cinema. Her unlikely assumption—a battle over the fate of a Chinese restaurant in Rome—works in her favor, as Lee's rural martial arts master Tang Lung expertly breaks down both prejudice and a host of opponents. "Way of the Dragon" is a real showcase for Lee, as he not only plays the lead but also wrote and directed the film. Among the many moments that follow, one stands out above the rest. Indeed, the tense, tactical showdown at the Coliseum between Lee and fellow martial arts legend Chuck Norris (playing fist-for-hire Colt) is easily one of the most legendary movie fights of all time—even with the otherwise lackluster Norris eats a lot of cheeseburgers before becoming significantly larger than Lee.

That being said, the rest of the film is worth watching, too. From the humble and even negative first impression the protagonist makes on the other characters to the laundry list of different martial artists he mows down after discovering his true talents, Way of the Dragon is a master lesson in making an effective martial arts film. . .

If you've ever seen a martial arts movie where the main character competes in a mysterious tournament, there's a decent chance it owes its name to Bruce Lee's most famous movie, Enter the Dragon. It distills every aspect of Lee's previous films—such as spy antics, revenge missions, memorable antagonists, and great fight scenes—into one goofy yet extremely impressive and entertaining package that is rightly revered as one of the best kung fu movies in history. Even if nothing else in Lee's catalog interests you, be sure to check it out Mind Bending Mirror Scene in Enter the Dragon where his character - also named Lee - faces Han (Kien Shih), a badass villain who wouldn't look out of place in a James Bond film.

Lee died just days before Enter the Dragon hit theaters in Hong Kong, so he never got to see how his biggest film affected the world. However, he put in a lot of work to ensure that the film adheres to his vision. Lee did not show up on the first day of filming due to a creative dispute with Warner Bros., which the studio perceived as Lee getting on his nerves. Apart from this, Enter the Dragon faced a host of challenges which could potentially derail the film or even kick Lee out of production. Fortunately, Lee prevailed and managed to make a Hollywood film that didn't rely on traditional Western-style action tropes, but stayed true to its Hong Kong action roots. At the very least, it paid off for Lee to do what he did best.