Despite being a lesser-known entry in Jackie Chan’s filmography, The Young Master was a crucial building block in terms of the career the actor built as a martial arts star. Drunken Master is commonly credited as the movie that launched Jackie Chan to stardom, but it was not alone in morphing the kung fu legend’s image.

Multiple movies contributed to that, helping to define Jackie Chan’s career, not the least of which was The Young Master. Released two years after Jackie Chan’s breakout performances in back-to-back martial arts classics Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, The Young Master is a 1980 Hong Kong martial arts movie that pairs the actor with Yuen Biao and also features Enter the Dragon villain actor Shih Kien in a memorable role.

An old-school kung fu movie, The Young Master combines action with comedy in a way that most Jackie Chan movies tend to do, and while that may make it seem like a run-of-the-mill film for the actor, it was far from typical; rather, it was the important beginning to a major chapter in Jackie Chan’s legendary career.

The Young Master Served As A “Marker” For Jackie Chan

By the time Jackie Chan appeared as the lead in The Young Master, he was already a major star in Hong Kong, thanks in large part to his roles in Drunken Master, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, and Fearless Hyena. Through these films and their heavy use of humor, he had broken away from previous attempts to turn him into the new Bruce Lee.

However, this didn’t exactly make him a unique fixture of the industry. After all, several other films had found success in mixing kung fu with comedy.

So even with Chan’s evolved approach, his movies were still very much in line with what other films of its time – such as the ones being made by Shaw Brothers – were doing, in that they were old-school kung fu movies where the hero has to go get training from a martial arts master to take on a much stronger nemesis or get revenge on an enemy.

According to Never Grow Up, Jackie Chan’s autobiography, the actor expressed his desire for a “new direction” after signing a contract with Golden Harvest. He wanted his next film to be a departure from that formula, and via The Young Master, he virtually got what he wanted.

In The Young Master, Jackie Chan isn’t looking for revenge or having to go through some sort of grueling training sequence where he learns a new kung fu style. Instead, Chan plays a slacker booted out of his home by his wealthy father, who then goes looking for his exiled brother.

In the process, he gets caught up in a conflict with a police chief and his son, and winds up in pursuit of an escaped criminal, who, in turn, operates as the movie’s final boss. The story contains few of the trappings found in most martial arts movies and feels very different from what was normally being offered.

In Jackie Chan’s words, The Young Master was a “marker.” In Never Grow Up, he calls it an “end point,” as it ended the phase of his career characterized by his performances in movies like Drunken Master. Chan wrote, “I was saying goodbye to the past and moving on to a new stage in my career.” This was made possible by the film being – as Jackie Chan called it – “a great success.”

The Young Master Was The Beginning Of Multiple Jackie Chan Movie Trends

In addition to moving away from the standard formulas employed by old-school kung fu movies, The Young Master set in motion a handful of trends relevant to the next several years of Jackie Chan’s career. Firstly, it was the beginning of a fairly long, onscreen partnership between Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao.

The two had worked together as stuntmen before and knew each other while growing up, with The Young Master acting as the next step in their working relationship. Several more collaborations followed, including two of Jackie Chan’s greatest kung fu movies, Project A and Wheels on Meals.

Another element familiar to longtime Jackie Chan fans that got its start with The Young Master was the blooper reels. After the credits, The Young Master featured a blooper reel that showed certain scenes and stunts that didn’t go as planned. As Chan notes in Never Grow Up, this was the first of his films to do this, and a long list of movies he’s made since have followed suit.

The Young Master Was The First Of Several Movies Jackie Chan Made With Golden Harvest

The Young Master was also a step-up for Chan in terms of overall film quality. As great as Drunken Master was, it’s important to note that it was made with an independent studio, as opposed to one of the bigger, more established names in the industry.

That phase ended with The Young Master, the first of several films that Jackie Chan made with Golden Harvest, the studio known for producing Bruce Lee’s kung fu movies. Chan explained in Never Grow Up that when he made The Young Master, he was able to call for “production values comparable to mainstream films.”

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Jackie Chan’s time with Golden Harvest is what paved the way for the international success that he achieved later in his career. After The Young Master, Jackie Chan’s style of filmmaking changed once more with Project A, the movie where he started insisting on doing his own stunts, no matter how dangerous they looked.

Project A elevated his status further, and was followed by several more successful movies, including Wheels on Meals, Armour of God, and, of course, Police Story, which was such a hit that it spawned a franchise of its own.