Fearless: one of the missing scenes

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by wonk, Oct 24, 2006.

  1. wonk

    wonk Valued Member

    A while back there was word that some footage had been cut from the international release version of Ronny Yu, Yuen Woo Ping and Jet Li's Fearless.

    Screenshots or stills posted on Monkeypeaches.com showed scenes where (1) Michelle Yeoh [playing a present day diplomat] was recounts the story of Hua Yuan Jia [the martial arts fighter Li portrays in film] to the International Olympic Committee, and a (2) late night confrontation between the farmers from the village that Jet Li recovered his will to live, and young men [I assume] from another village, with Jet Li in the middle. Neither scene made it into the international cut of the film.

    I fast forwarded through a VCD edition of the film from Thailand. No Michelle Yeoh, but the second scene, the night time confrontation was in the film.


    Spoiler Warning - a description of the missing scene follows.

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    Jet Li and the other farmers are working the fields on a cloudy day, when a commotion takes place, and everyone runs off. Cut to a torchlit night scene. Young men [from another village, I guess] have bound a child from Jet Li's village to a post. It seems the child did something to offend them. Then someone lights a stick of incense, and they begin to beat the child. The villagers from Jet Li's village arrive and protest, but seemingly unwilling to fight, they watch the young men beat the child.

    Jet Li comes up to the leader of the young men and offers to take the hits for the child for the rest of the time the incense is burning. So they cast the child aside and the leader of the young man proceeds to beat up Jet Li with Thai kickboxing strikes.

    Eventually the villagers from Jet Li's move forward on the young men and it looks as though there's gonna' be a blood bath when Jet Li shakes off the beating breaks the two groups up and invites the other groups leader to keep going, except this time, Li, ducks, dodges and rolls and takes the young man down with a qinna/chinna movement [ a class of chinese wu shu technique resembling the joint and arm locks of jujitsu and aikido ]. Eventually the leader of the men from the other village takes a cheap shot at Li, and they begin trading blows, until it becomes clear Li is much, much better than the other guy, without permanently damaging him, and the fight ends, honor apparently satisfied on both sides.

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    Spoiler Ends.

    We then proceed to the scenes between Jet Li and the blind girl just before he leaves the village.

    The night time confrontation wasn't quite what I expected, but it definitely fit in well with the themes of the film.
     

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