CraveOnline: Did you and Keanu talk about this movie when you were working on The Matrix Reloaded together?
Tiger Chen: Yes, we did. Not officially. It was like when we stretched, we were talking. “One day we’ll make a real Kung Fu movie” because he’s always talking about Kung Fu movies. I said, “Yeah, of course I want to” because we talked about Kung Fu all the time, traditional Kung Fu, how my master taught me, how good was my master. He was interested. He said, “Oh yeah, that could be a movie. Maybe we can make a Kung Fu movie later” was a joke, not a signed contract.
Do you ever struggle with your Chi and temptations like Tiger in the movie?
Yeah, I think so but not specifically for my Tai Chi. It’s more for my life. Should I go out and do something to make money, or should I stay in the temple? It’s not the temple. It’s my master’s place to keep training. I struggle. Even now, I’m still struggling.
Whose idea was it to name the character Tiger Chen?
I think they got so used to my name as Tiger Chen, so they’d been calling me Tiger all the time. So he said, “Oh, just use your real name. We can call you Tiger. He’s Tiger Chen.” The Chinese character’s name is Chen Lin-Hu which is Tiger Chan too. Pretty much the same.
What were the most difficult fight scenes in the movie?
Maybe against the MMA guy, the UFC guy, the first underground fight because it’s the first fight and I’m not very used to UFC style, ground style. So it was kind of hard for me, and the guy is pretty good, Jeremy [Marinas]. I got hurt a lot.
You fight a lot of these guys wearing a suit. Did you get used to that in The Matrix fighting in a suit?
No, never. This is the first time fighting in a suit, but I always imagined I’d fight in a suit because I saw a lot of pictures of Bruce Lee. He was fighting in a suit. He was demonstrating in a suit. He went on some auditions like that. He was dressed in a suit and he’d do some performance. I said that’s cool, that looks great. It’s like a modern and traditional put together and it looks great. I always imagined I’d do that one day.
So was it hard?
The coat was okay but the shoes killed me.
Speaking of Bruce Lee, Man of Tai Chi reminded me of his idea for Game of Death. Did you feel you had that in common?
Seven levels? No, it just came up when we were doing the script. Yeah, we should have all different kinds of styles from around the world to come against you. It’s underground fighting, so we have different styles. We also have lots of different ideas of different styles that aren’t shown in the movie, but they were in the script. The original idea, we wanted to use the monk, the real Shaolin monk.
Keanu Reeves is a very good fighter, but he’s a movie fighter. How did you make it look like he was stronger than you?
Well, for real, he is stronger than me. He’s bigger than me and has arms longer than me, especially legs much longer than me. Yes, he’s more powerful than me. Master Woo-ping tried to make him like hard style, very strong, stiff but lots of power.
Are you excited by any of the other martial arts in the world, like Thailand and Indonesia?
Yeah, of course. The Indonesian guy is very good. Tony Jaa is great. He’s awesome.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
