How does Jet Li's celebrated Shaolin Temple movie series rank from worst to best? Already a bonafide action star in Hong Kong before breaking into English language Hollywood movies, Jet Li began his martial arts training aged eight as a student of modern Wushu. The Beijing-born Li would go on to represent China in Wushu competitions around the world, even performing a demonstration for American President Richard Nixon on the White House lawn.
Li’s vast skills in Wushu attracted the film industry's attention, with 1982’s The Shaolin Temple marking Li’s feature film debut. Not only was The Shaolin Temple a huge hit in China, but it also had a very tangible real-world impact. The movie’s success spawned a resurgence in interest in China’s legendary Shaolin Monastery, known as the epicenter of Bruce Lee's kung fu. The Shaolin Temple itself would become the basis for countless martial arts films and grow into one of China’s biggest landmarks - all thanks to The Shaolin Temple's influence.
Off the back of The Shaolin Temple's success, Li returned for two sequels, Shaolin Temple 2: Kids From Shaolin in 1984 and Martial Arts of Shaolin in 1986. While he’s gone on to become a martial arts movie legend with later hits like Fist of Legend and the Once Upon A Time In China series, Li’s work on the Shaolin Temple movies kickstarted his career and remain important entries in his filmography. Here’s the ranking of Jet Li’s Shaolin Temple movies from worst to best.
3. Shaolin Temple 2: Kids From Shaolin (1984)
The second film in the Shaolin Temple trilogy is certainly the most lackluster, in part for its much more tangential relationship to the actual Shaolin Monastery. Martial arts master Jet Li plays Sanlong, the adoptive son of former Shaolin monk Tianlong (Yu Hai). Tialong and his brother Yilong (Hu Jianqiang) raise Sanlong and seven other orphans, training them in kung fu and teaming up with the Wudang kung fu-practicing Bao family to face a gang of vengeful bandits. Kids from Shaolin was a major hit in China in 1984, but it's frequently looked back upon as the least of the series, and rightly so. Kids of Shaolin is by far the campiest movie of the three, with plenty of comedy and even musical numbers woven into its story - but, unfortunately, these elements largely fall flat.
While very graceful and coordinated, Kids from Shaolin's martial arts sequences fall into the trap of being excessively flowery and dance-like. With an uneven tone and more ballet-Esque martial arts set pieces akin to Marvel's Shang-Chi, Jet Li’s sophomore role as Sanlong sadly was a step down from The Shaolin Temple, and the film is more generally regarded as one of the lesser action roles of Li's career. While Kids From Shaolin is by no means an awful movie, it really only exists in Jet Li's filmography for those wanting to see the whole Shaolin Temple trilogy.
2. The Shaolin Temple (1982)
At just 19 years old, Jet Li made his film debut in The Shaolin Temple as the vengeful Jue Yuan. After a local warlord kills his father, Jue is taken in by the monks of the Shaolin Monastery, becoming skilled in kung fu and determined to stop the warlord’s conquest. While full of great martial arts fighting styles and training scenes, The Shaolin Temple is most remembered for its famed Four Seasons montage. With Li training in various unarmed and weapons forms over the course of a year, the montage showed Jet Li right out of the gate as an incredible Wushu athlete and strong screen presence.
Shot over a three-year period and the first movie to use the actual Shaolin Monastery as a location, The Shaolin Temple launched Jet Li’s career and made the lore of the Shaolin Temple and Shaolin martial arts the new kung fu movie craze. Li's own career would be sent into the stratosphere with The Shaolin Temple's success - a fact that's very easy to forget today with the sheer number of timeless, fan-favorite kung fu movie classics he's been involved in. Nevertheless, The Shaolin Temple holds up splendidly as a historical ‘80s kung fu relic and a genuine cultural touchstone of the Shaolin Temple's long history.
1. Martial Arts of Shaolin (1986)
Shaolin Temple 3: Martial Arts of Shaolin, also known as simply Martial Arts of Shaolin, stands as both Jet Li’s only Shaw Brothers movie as well as his only collaboration with legendary kung fu movie director Liu Chia-liang (or Lau Kar-leung, as he's officially credited). On both counts, it’s an outstanding martial arts film. Li plays monk Ling Zhi-ming, a promising student of the Northern Shaolin Temple who embarks on a revenge mission against magistrate He Suo (Yu Chenghui). Along the way, Zhi-ming teams up with a monk from the Southern Shaolin Temple, Chao Wei (Hu Jianqiang), and the niece of the temple’s Abbot, Si-ma Yan (Huang Qiuyan), to whom Zhi-ming has a hidden connection.
Containing easily the best action scenes of the whole trilogy, Martial Arts of Shaolin is true to its title in bringing a wide collection of Northern and Southern fist and weapons forms into its practically non-stop martial arts fight scenes. The movie also shows great creativity with its training sequences, including a calligraphy competition between monks with kung fu combat thrown into the mix. Martial Arts of Shaolin is also the most sweeping entry in the Shaolin Temple movie series, capturing China’s scenic beauty in locations like the Forbidden City. Best of all, the final battle of the movie is a raucous spectacle, with an army of Northern and Southern monks joining forces against He Suo’s forces with both weapons and empty-handed combat. As a result, Martial Arts of Shaolin lays claim to the distinction of the best of the Jet Li Shaolin Temple trilogy in awe-inspiring fashion, with Jet Li's third-ever movie appearance reminiscent of Bruce Lee's early success in The Big Boss.