Check out this video from Nerdstalgic that tries to figure out why there are fewer martial arts superstar actors than ever before.
The action genre has become slightly homogenous in the modern era. Over the last few decades, action films- barring a few notable exceptions within the superhero genre- all adhere to a cookie-cutter, paint-by-numbers checklist of action sequences and conventions. However, in the 90s and early 2000s, film studios typically offered a diverse array of genres for adrenaline junkies, one of which was the martial arts movie, typically anchored by a, you guessed it, martial arts superstar.
After the success of Enter the Dragon and the subsequent martial arts boom of the 70s, Hollywood became obsessed with finding a new martial arts superstar to replace the charismatic Little Dragon. And after a few hilarious failures, the American studio system found a way to import a procession of legitimate kung-fu badasses from China to satiate the demands of a bloodthirsty viewership.
However, since the early 2010s, we've yet to see a new martial arts superstar emerge and capture the zeitgeist in a manner equivalent to Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and many other talented stars. The YouTube channel Nerdstalgic investigates what happened to the martial arts superstar in the video linked above.
