People are Tired of Nollywood Kung Fu
But I don’t really see the problem
A lot has been said about fight scenes in Nollywood movies and if I’m being honest, most of those critical takes are positions I would have wholeheartedly agreed with at some point in the past.
However, knowing what I know today, I would like to advocate for a kinder, more nuanced view of Nollywood with regard to action scenes and fight choreography.
We need to look, not just at the film as a whole, but also at specific scenes and the characters involved in those fight scenes.
Let’s take Shanty Town as an example.
The fight scenes were generally ‘okay’ but they were still deemed unrealistic because as far as Nigeria is concerned, we nor dey fight kung fu. This is true, in part.
However, who were the characters that largely deployed martial arts in their scenes? Was it out of place for most of them? Looking at Ini Edo’s character for instance, her BBL shouldn’t distract from the fact that she wasn’t the average sex worker, but a law enforcement agent. Even when it comes to physique, for every ripped combat sports athlete like Kamaru Usman or Israel Adesanya, there’s a Derrick Lewis or Tai Tuviasa.
We can say what we want about our police force but by and large, many active field operatives across Nigerian law enforcement are trained in martial arts. Some go ahead to represent the country in sporting events.
Samuel Peters “The Nigeria Nightmare”, was a member of the Nigeria Police and sealed his place as a former World Boxing Council {WBC} heavyweight champion of the world. Going further back in history, Adeleye Samuel, another police officer, was the captain of the Nigeria contingent to the First All-Africa Games in Dakar, Senegal in 1963. He later became the chairman of the Nigeria Boxing Board of Control(NBBC). ASP Olarewaju Duroduola became the African Boxing Union champion in 2020 and was a former World Boxing Council, WBC, Cruiserweight Champion.
And before you say, “Boxing is not a martial art…” I’d have you know that it is one of the oldest martial arts in the world.
So, when you look at most of the characters that really deployed martial arts in productions like Shanty Town and co, you’d find that they were either in law enforcement or private security. The goons, like Scar and his boys mostly fought how thugs fight — anything goes.
All that said, I would like to mention that there’s a pretty strong martial arts culture in Nigeria and it’s growing rapidly. Just go to the National Stadium in Surulere on a Saturday morning and see all kinds of people, from regular street folk to corporate workers like me, training in various categories. Training is also common every Thursday morning at the UBA car park in Marina.
Heck, we had taekwondo sessions all through the time I was in primary school and boxing took over early in my secondary school days but that was as far as it got for me. Back then, it wasn’t strange to see students from schools that were regularly involved in violent inter-school clashes, undergo training sessions in boxing.
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So, again, is the inclusion of martial arts fight scenes totally alien to Nigerian films? No, not really. And even if they were, would filmmakers be wrong to include them if executed right? Again, no.
Why? Because we all grew up watching Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung, etc. Art isn’t done in a vacuum and inspiration seeps in from everything we see. This is why we can’t wake up today and act all brand new when we see martial arts scenes embedded in Nigerian action or crime films in 2023.
If it gradually happened with Hollywood and Bollywood, it is also bound to happen in Nollywood. My position is simply that the scenes have to be couched in the right contexts.
When you look beyond core martial arts films predominantly set in China and other Asian countries, most other films aren’t fully steeped in fight disciplines like Kung Fu, Wing Chun, Tai Chi, Taekwondo or even Jiu Jitsu, everything is a mix, from boxing to kickboxing, Kenpo, karate. Even in his films, Bruce Lee wasn’t using core Kung Fu, but a style he developed called Jeet Kune Do, which blends boxing, Kung Fu, fencing, etc. He is also referred to in many quarters as the father of modern mixed martial arts.
Today, the Jiu-Jitsu we see in Hollywood films is the Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu variant, which largely employs ground-based grappling and wrestling. Across Africa, martial arts is not alien: you’ll see the Hausa participate in dambe while Yoruba people get on with gìdìgbó, and so on.
So, if we’re being honest, what we see in most of our films is a blend of everything.
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All that said, it’s important to note that Nigerian filmmakers are getting better. Films on street violence like Gangs of Lagos are more true to form in their fight choreography because what’s street violence without broken bottles, planks, small axes and machetes? Compared to the films that came before it, it was true to form and more grounded in reality because the thugs behaved like thugs.
In the end, as we critique our films and art, I’d ask that filmmakers truly making an effort should be cut some slack. Making anything worth watching and exciting in Nigeria is extremely hard. We may need to suspend our belief a little more but that’s not too much to ask if we’re people that also love John Wick.
Because If we’re asking for filmmaking variety beyond themes based on love, comedy and the supernatural, movies like Jade Osiberu’s ‘Brotherhood’ and ‘Gangs of Lagos’ are not just films, they are catalysts.
We are not where we were and it will only get better.
