Ip Man 4: The Finale

Ip Man 4: The Finale (葉問4：完結篇) is a Hong Kong film directed by Wilson Yip, made in 2019 and released in Hong Kong on 20 December. It is set in 1964, when Ip Man travels to San Francisco, where his student Bruce Lee teaches. The film was produced by Mandarin Motion Pictures and Tin Tin Film Production. It was shot from April to July 2018 in China and Great Britain, including in Preston, Lancashire; nothing was filmed in San Francisco. Ip Man's opponents this time are the karate practitioner Colin Frater, whom Ip Man fights at a Mid-Autumn Festival celebration, and the marine instructor Barton Geddes, played by Scott Adkins. The taijiquan master Wan Zonghua is played by Wu Yue, and Bruce Lee once again by Danny Chan Kwok-kwan. Yuen Woo-ping, who already led the action in the third film, won the award for action choreography at the 39th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2020. Donnie Yen described the film as the last instalment of the series in September 2019; nevertheless, on 18 May 2023, Mandarin Motion Pictures announced Ip Man 5 at the Cannes festival.

Martial arts in this work

Fight choreography

Action direction was led by Yuen Woo-ping, who also choreographed the third film and the spin-off Master Z: Ip Man Legacy. Scott Adkins, who plays Barton Geddes, is a British actor trained in taekwondo, Jeet Kune Do and wushu; he plays karate as a character. Wu Yue has a background in wushu and bajiquan and performs taijiquan in the film as an actor. Danny Chan Kwok-kwan, the film's Bruce Lee, trains in Jeet Kune Do. In the climax of the film, Ip Man faces Geddes; the fight pits Wing Chun against karate and shows blocking and strikes from the shortest distance. Before that, Geddes also fights Wan Zonghua.

Fact and fiction

We have not been able to document Ip Man's journey to the United States in reliable sources; his biographies mention no such journey, and popular overviews call it fictional. What is documented is that Bruce Lee left university at the beginning of 1964, moved to Oakland, where he founded a second Jun Fan school with James Yimm Lee, and at the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships demonstrated a strike from minimal distance and criticised the classical styles. We did not find Ip Man's participation in this event in the sources. Ip Man died on 2 December 1972 of throat cancer, seven months before Bruce Lee. We have not been able to verify independently the closing caption about Chinese kung-fu being included in US Marine Corps training since 2001; the characters of Geddes and Frater are fictional.

People and martial arts

• Ip Manthe real person the work is about· Wing Chun (real practitioner)
• Wilson YipDirector
• Yuen Woo-pingAction director· Wing Chun
• Donnie YenActor — as Ip Man· Wing Chun (portrays the art on screen)
• Scott AdkinsActor — as Barton Geddes· Karate (portrays the art on screen)
• Wu YueActor — as Wan Zonghua· Tai Chi (portrays the art on screen)
• Danny Chan Kwok-kwanActor — as Bruce Lee· Jeet Kune Do (real practitioner)

Awards

• Won · Hong Kong Film Awards, Best Action Choreography (2020) — Yuen Woo-ping

Series