It’s time to see all the Ip Man movies

You know what’s better than streaming a good martial arts movie over the weekend? Streaming six good martial arts movies over the weekend. There are a few nice things like killing a whole day to see dudes get hurt with expert choreography and exactly enough emotional motivation, things de Ip Man movies are excellent at. Better yet? You can stream them all directly on Netflix.

De Ip Man films are a quadrilogy of martial arts films by director Wilson Yip of Hong Kong, starring Donnie Yen as the nickname Ip Man. They are actually historical fiction: superhero movies about a real, extraordinary person who does a lot of things he never did (and a few things he did). They rock, probably because they are extremely fast and loose with history.

At first glance, it does not seem like something a franchise would deliver. The first Ip Man film is a sweeping-yet-succinct epic that accomplishes everything it sets out to do. It houses the thriving martial arts schools in the Chinese city of Foshan in the 1930s, where Ip Man is mostly hidden in plain sight. He is cultured and rich, and has no need of income, does not feel he has to open a school. Instead, he prefers to perfect the private of his then-obscure and ridiculous Wing Chun style of fighting and spending time with his family. He is silent about his skill, but for those who are persistent, he will commit the casual duel.

In an hour and 45 minutes, Ip Man then quickly spans a decade of history. The Second Sino-Japanese War begins and the Japanese army introduces Foshan in 1937; Ip Man loses everything and is forced into hard labor; the oppression of the occupiers causes lawlessness. On all sides, Ip Man eventually inspired his comrades by training them both in Wing Chun to fight bandits and also by participating in attacks hosted by General Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi). Eventually, he challenges Miura himself, and inspires an uprising that allows Ip Man to escape with his family and start over in Hong Kong.

Ip Man is popcorn cinema at its finest, full of raging well-choreographed fights and historical drama. But the reason it works so well all comes back to Donnie Yen. Yen’s achievements portray Ip Man as part Mr. Rogers and share Captain America, a friendly neighbor who can wreck your shit, but is only really moved if there is a bully that needs to be checked. But once he did that? See the man move is incredible – thanks in no small part to the work of renowned choreographer Sammo Hung, who worked on the first two films.

The three sequels that follow are a testament to Donnie Yen’s achievements. They are even less interested in biography than the original; mostly they are suddenly constructed to give Ip Man another reason to fight. But instead of making them repetitive – and they are apparently formulaic – they are comforted in their rhythms. Together, they say more than one film does on its own.

While the movies are all named after one man, the stories are always about a community. After the blueprint set in the first movie, Ip Man films always begin with the growing threat of a colonizing force. In the second film, a British boxer claims his superiority by murdering a Chinese man in the ring, claiming it was the victim, and challenging others to arrest him and prove him wrong. The plot of the third film is inspired by an American developer of real estate (played by Mike Tyson) with designs to buy the land on which a school sits. The fourth takes place in San Francisco, as Ip becomes acquainted with the racism that Chinatown residents face.

In the midst of all these conflicts, Ip Man is an anchor: always fair, always the best fighter, always friendly. In battles he is a miracle, taking his opponents apart with blindingly quick blows, but also mercy. He seldom draws blood or lets enemies cripple, where the villains are relatively violent. The most effective threats to Ip Man are from men who practice harsh, brutal styles. Colonizers and livers draw blood, not Chinese masters, unless they have to prove a point. The movies are, effectively, propaganda, just like American action movies are.

De Ip Man movies are politics in the way Disney sports romps Think of the Titans are political, flattering the real life and belief of the subjects in favor of soft nationalism and calling blunt time racism against them. Like Steve Rogers, Ip is a man who seems unstuck at the time, an idealized version of a bygone era that is called upon to confront the evils of modern times. We are not meant to focus on the inequalities of that lost age, but instead to concentrate on this superhero who represents it. And just like in a superhero movie, it’s appealing to see complex evil reduced to bad men we can beat, when we’re patient and zealous and stubborn enough to come up again every time we hit our ass.

A fascinating wrinkle around Ip ManSuccess is the way in which the Ip Man effectively transforms the person into a popular character, as many other movies follow in the wake of the blockbuster of Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip. There is the award-winning director Wong Kar-wai’s The grandmaster, a lyrical, beautiful film that uses the life of Ip Man to mourn the end of an era. Another movie, The Legend Is Born – Ip Man is another attempt by the studio to dispel a corner of the Ip Man myths through an action-packed return to the early days of Ip. Master Z: Ip Man Legacy is a direct spinoff of Ip Man 3, a crime story about Cheung Tin-Chi, who challenged Ip for the title of Grandma-Master Wing Chun. (Of these, The grandmaster en Master Z are also on Netflix and worth watching.)

One of the central tensions of the Ip Man row is the desire that Ip must have to be a dedicated family man and also a martial arts master. Mostly, an external force forces him to repent as a skilled martial artist, and the dream of his return to full-time domestication is postponed. The best example of this is in Ip Man 3, when he is challenged for the title of Grandma Monster Wing Chun by the rebellious Cheung Tin-Chi (Zhang Jin). Instead of reacting, he chooses to stay home and dance with his sick wife, forgetting his title. It is this, and not the beautiful fight scenes, that the Ip Man movies such awful watching: there’s a whole world out there that demands your time, your attention, your skill. Taking on this world can be rewarding and gratifying and hard to run away from – but it’s also heroic to stay home and dance for as long as you can.