“The Eagle Lands” captures the era so perfectly that you can almost feel the stretch into box splits!

“The Eagle Lands” – Paul Hertzog ( Kickboxer)īack in the early days of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career he was the king of the training montage.

So without further ado pop-pickers, here are our Top 10 Kung Fu Movie Theme Songs! (in descending order…)

Some kung fu tunes can instantly make a fan recall a particular movie or scene, inspiring them to start training, train with more intensity or set a new personal best when they hear it on their headphones or blasting through their home entertainment system. Modern movies such as John Woo’s “Red Cliff”, Teddy Chen’s “ Bodyguards and Assassins“, Ronny Yu’s “ Fearless” and Zhang Yimou’s “ Hero“, use their film’s orchestral soundtracks to heighten the emotion and drama of events on the screen. “On the General’s Orders” was reworked by Wong Jim and George Lam as the rousing “A Man of Determination” for Jet Li’s successful “Once Upon a Time in China” series of films. In recent years, many martial arts movies have become more sophisticated and the accompanying film scores have followed suit. Indeed, Jackie Chan often sings the themes for his own movies. Jackie Chan has had a very successful music career and his frequent co-star Anita Mui was known as the “Madonna of Asia”. Bits of the soundtrack from the James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me” would turn up in Jackie Chan’s “Drunken Master”, the theme from the sixties television show “Ironside” was used in “King Boxer/Five Fingers of Death” (and subsequently “ Kill Bill“), and who can forget Jackie Chan training to Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene Part 2” in “ Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow“?Īs is common in the Hong Kong entertainment industry, many singers act in films and many film stars release songs. In order to keep budgets down, Hong Kong film makers would often “borrow” music from the West.

From the famous “On the General’s Orders” theme song associated with the popular Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung, to the influence of kung fu styling on hip hop artists such as the Wu Tang Clan, there are not many movie genres that can claim such a widespread impact.ĭuring the kung fu craze of the 1970’s there weren’t actually that many original scores.

There has been a long and interesting relationship between martial arts movies and music.

Kung fu yoga soundtrack