The Ancient Eastern Sages Were Crypto Blackbelts: Chinese Religion in Martial Arts Films

In this thesis, I investigate the relationship between Chinese religious concepts and martial arts films by looking at how Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist concepts appear in six movies Enter the Dragon, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Karate Kid, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, A Touch of Zen and Kung Fu Panda. In the beginning, I outlined that there is a long history between Chinese religions and martial arts dating back to at the very latest 7th century CE. However there is a lot of evidence to indicate that religion and martial arts joined together around 500 BCE. In this thesis, I argue that martial arts films have Chinese religious concepts present in them. To investigate this, I analyzed one religion’s concepts per two martial arts films. Through investigation, I found that wu wei, kong, dao, yin and yang, inner alchemy, ahiṃsā, sudden enlightenment, Buddha nature and mindfulness are just some of the Chinese religious concepts present in martial arts films