Like this time last year. Once again, I take a look back at some of the releases of 2019. I finally got to see Triple Threat and Invincible Dragon which I thought would nail it but were kind of a let-down. I was pleasantly surprised by Furie which one of the best martial arts releases I saw. The first season of Warrior was particularly awesome. Now it’s time to look forward again to 2020 and some of the most anticipated martial arts movies of 2020.
Mulan
Once again in the top spot, we have a no brainer. With the huge success of other live actions remakes of Disney classics, Mulan is going to be huge. Yifei Liu (Forbidden Kingdom) takes the lead role as Mulan. It tells the story of Mulan who disguises herself as a male warrior to fight for her country in place of her ailing father. Featuring alongside Yifei Liu is Donnie Yen as Commander Tung and Jet Li as The Emperor. This is not the first live-action version of Mulan. Mulan: Legendary Warrior was released back in 2009 which as a way more serious affair, no singing and quite brutal.
Raging Fire
Donnie Yen is back in action with Raging Fire. Also starring Chris Collins (Paradox, Ip Man 4) and Nicholas Tse (New Police Story). Shan (Donnie Yen) is a fair and just cop admired by his peers for the numerous cases he has solved. His past comes back to haunt him in the form of his former protégé Ngo (Nicholas Tse) who was once a talented cop. After a terrible accident and being sent down for 3 years he is now out for revenge against everyone that wronged him including his former mentor. No trailer for this one yet and only a low quality first looks on YouTube.
Vanguard
This one is looking particularly awesome. Jackie Chan is back to his best as Tang Hauting the head of a covert security company hired to protect an accountant who has been targeted by a deadly mercenary organization. All looking very James Bond. I don’t know how Jackie Chan still does it.
Jiu Jitsu
Based on the comic of the same name. This one I think I’m looking forward to the most. Written and directed by Dimitri Logothetis, the director/producer of the Kickboxer remakes so naturally it stars Alain Moussi with Nicolas Cage, Tony Jaa and JuJu Chan. There’s no movie synopsis on IMBD yet but I did find this on martial arts entertainment
In Jiu Jitsu, every six years, an ancient order of expert Jiu Jitsu fighters faces a vicious alien in a battle to protect Earth. For thousands of years, the fighters that protect Earth have played by the rules . . . until now. When celebrated war hero Jake Barnes (Alain Moussi) is defeated by Brax, the Alien invader, the future of humanity hangs in the balance. Injured and suffering from amnesia, Jake is rescued by Wylie (Nicholas Cage), Keung (Tony Jaa), Harrigan (Frank Grillo) and his team of fellow Jiu Jitsu fighters. They must help Jake to regain his strength to band together and defeat Brax in an epic battle that will once again determine the fate of mankind.
Now that all sounds nuts, almost like a Mortal Kombat plot. No movie trailer yet but there a bunch of behind the scenes video floating about.
Snake Eyes
G.I Joe spin-off Snake eyes will serve as the original story for the character Snake Eyes. While on the hunt to find who killed his father. Snake Eyes travel to Japan and trains with a ninja clan. Henry Golding takes the lead role. In G.I Joe Retaliation, Snake Eyes was originally played by Ray Park (Darth Maul)
Andrew Koji (Warrior) is playing the part of Storm Shadow and Iko Uwais (The Raid, Wu Assassin) is playing someone called hard master according to IMDB. Maybe that’s supposed to be headmaster?
There’s not much info about at the moment, no trailer or even sneak peek, just the movie and cast announcements.
Kickboxer Armageddon
Kickboxer Armageddon is not guaranteed to be released this year as there really hardly any info at all but I thought I’d include in the hopes it is.
The previous to movies I found something a little off-key about. Don’t know why, they had plenty of fights, training and cool movies just something seemed not right with them. Either way, I can’t wait for the third instalment just for the way returning character Kurt Sloan (Alain Moussi) is looking. He looks bad arse. Sporting long braided, scars and tattoos. He looks like Tong Po from the first movie.
In an interview taken from https://action-flix.com, Alain Moussi talks about what we can expect.
Now in terms of action, we know the things that our audience loves so we just want to deliver more and better versions of it and that is what we are working on now. In terms of a oner like we talked about earlier, you are going to see a crazy, amped-up oner in this movie. In terms of the end fight and the stakes, we are going totally bonkers with that and it is going to be great. As you know in a trilogy when you get to the third film, you often revisit things about the first and that definitely happens in this film in a great way. I think story-wise; Kurt is going full circle and it’s going to please the audience. Our goal like I said was to top the last film and to top ourselves and that is what we are doing again with the third film. We want to top what we did in Vengeance and Retaliation but not with making the mistake of just putting everything on steroids. We want to make a cooler and newer version of what we did in the second film.
Seized
No upcoming martial arts movie list would be complete without martial arts movie making machine Scott Adkins on it. There’s also The Debt Collector 2 but there’s pretty much zero info on that at the moment apart from the name and stars on IMDB, so we have Seized. Starring Scott Adkins as Nero and Mario Van Peebles as Mzamo. A former special forces agent’s son is kidnapped and must now wipe out three dangerous crime syndicates if he wants to see his son alive again. Once again there’s not much info on this but no doubt Scott Adkins will be back to perform his signature flashy moves and fight scenes
