71-year-old kung fu superstar Jackie Chan was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. During a panel appearance, he criticized the lack of quality in today’s Hollywood movies, saying that one reason is film companies' overemphasis on profit, claiming that producers are not filmmakers, but merely businessmen.
In an exclusive interview with DEADLINE, Jackie Chan expressed his belief that older films were better than today’s, citing how nowadays, major studios will often invest over $40 million USD (approximately RM170 million), but their primary concern is always “how to make the money back without overspending.” He bluntly stated that it’s truly difficult to make a good movie nowadays.
Since the start of his career, Jackie Chan has worked hard to learn all kinds of roles on set, from martial arts choreography and acting to sound recording, all of which he has mastered. Half-jokingly, he said that in the Asian film industry, only “Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung” can do all these things. He then bragged a little, saying: “I’m even better because I can sing.” Before the 2000s, Jackie Chan released several albums, and he revealed that he deliberately learned to sing back then because he didn’t want to be an action star for life: “In the early days when I went on American late-night talk shows, I was always asked to punch and kick.” Later, he prioritized his future development, hoping to become “Asia’s Robert De Niro.”
Jackie Chan also candidly admitted that in the early 2000s, he gave up making films in Hollywood because it was difficult to connect with American audiences, and he was dissatisfied with the quality of scripts offered to him. 1998’s 'Rush Hour' was his last attempt at making a film in America before leaving, and although the budget was limited, at least it was a start.
News Source: Liberty Times Entertainment