AI Is Remaking Martial Arts Movies, and It’s Terrible

As artificial intelligence continues to integrate with movies, the art of filmmaking has just taken a substantial blow to the human soul. According to Variety and other news outlets, the China Film Foundation recently announced plans to use AI to enhance up to 100 classic martial arts movies, including many starring Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. The goal is to utilize AI technology to augment picture, sound, and overall production quality in older movies, thereby preserving the legacy of the Chinese film industry.

While using AI to improve sound and image may not be the worst thing in the world, the slippery slope it created has resulted in something far worse for filmmakers and cinephiles: a feature-length animated movie made entirely through AI. Along with restoring hundreds of popular Chinese movies, AI has created A Better Tomorrow: Cyber Border, a cartoon rehash of the classic John Woo action franchise. For the sake of human expression in films moving forward, the disturbing trend of AI-rendered movies needs to stop immediately.

China Film Foundation’s AI Movie Initiative, Explained

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In calculating the cost-benefit of moviemaking into the future as technology costs rise, China has deduced that the human soul and spirit are unworthy of investment. How else can one explain the China Film Foundation’s new initiative to use AI to tinker with older Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movie releases and create, from whole cloth, new feature films?

During the 27th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF), the Foundation announced a partnership with the Kung Fu Film Heritage Project to restore as many as 100 classic martial arts films. The initiative plans to preserve the legacy of Chinese cinema by using AI to enhance nearly every aspect of production, including sound and picture quality. According to the Foundation:

“From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, from ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ to ‘Wolf Warrior,’ these films have shown the world the vitality and spirit of the Chinese people.

They are our cinematic calling cards to the world. Classic kung fu films embody China’s spiritual backbone. We’re inviting global partners to join this cultural and technological reboot.”

Several additional titles were listed as part of the initiative, including Drunken Master, Fists of Fury, Once Upon a Time in China, and other monumental Chinese martial arts movies that continue to hold up well in 2025 without AI enhancement. Yet, with the Chinese Film Foundation and Kung Fu Film Heritage actively seeking more partnerships to create AI movies, the future of cinema is nearing an existential crisis.

‘A Better Tomorrow: Cyber Border’ Was Fully Created By AI

RIM

While using AI to augment preexisting movies is a fairly harmless form of censorship, it’s nowhere as egregious or offensive as allowing AI to replace humans to make a feature film on its own accord. Also announced at SIFF, a company called Quantum Animation employed AI to create a full-length animated film titled A Better Tomorrow: Cyber Border.

The AI cartoon creation doesn’t even attempt to tell a new story as much as it aims to “reinterpret” the classic John Woo franchise actioner A Better Tomorrow. What then is the point?

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As always, the point is money. Everyone in the film business knows that time is money. The more money a production has, the more time it can afford to craft the movie as planned. Yet, for the China Film Foundation chair, Zhang Qilin, AI cuts time and human resources significantly, saying:

“This entire animated feature was made by just 30 people. AI has collapsed the barrier between creativity and execution. The production cycle has gone from years to months.”

If Cyber Border’s proof of concept becomes an industry-wide trend, movies as the world has come to know them are in dire trouble. A dangerous precedent would be set by eliminating the human element and the soul and spirit of a project by reducing the workforce significantly and replacing it with AI.

What Does a Fully-Formed AI Movie Mean for Films?

New World Pictures

Even worse than removing the human workforce in the movie industry is the prospect of AI movies attempting to approximate the human soul. As Qilin adds:

“AI is not a tool—it is a new infrastructure. It’s transforming screenwriting, effects, dubbing, and distribution. In short films and micro-dramas, AI has already become standard.”

The statement is as frightening as it is foolish. The notion that AI is already the standard storytelling infrastructure means there is no longer room, much less a need, for the human condition to directly pierce the mind, body, and soul of moviegoers. Consider what Canxing Media chair Tian Ming said about the partnership with The China Film Fund:

“AI is the brush, but creativity is the soul. Classic kung fu films embody China’s spiritual backbone. We’re inviting global partners to join this cultural and technological reboot.”

If AI is the brush and creativity is the soul, how does Tian or anyone else reconcile Qilin saying that “AI is not a tool – it’s the new infrastructure?” It’s impossible. A brush is a tool, and human creativity will always be the soulful infrastructure on which great movies are built and endure. That these two partners don’t even see eye to eye on what constitutes a cinematic soul is problematic across the board. The human condition will always be more valuable than any cost-saving measure AI affords.

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Although Kung Fu films don’t necessarily register as high art, how long before the all-time great Chinese movies become tinkered with via AI if the trend catches on? Can anyone imagine Farewell My Concubine or YiYi being enhanced with AI? Does anybody want to see AI “enhance” Wong Kar Wai’s brilliant filmography? What about Ang Lee’s non-martial arts movies?

In the race to cut costs and save a buck, this new initiative will set a terrible precedent for the future of film as the last great form of artistic expression. Meddling with older films via AI is unnecessary enough, but the idea of AI taking humans’ place to write, shoot, act, and edit a feature film is akin to the end of cinema as the world has known it for over a century.

People go to the movies to form sympathetic connections in a shared experience that highlights the human condition. Beyond a few business executives protecting their bottom line, who honestly wants to live in a world where movies promote an artificial condition?

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