Kung fu star Jet Li's latest film, Fearless, is a box office hit on the mainland.
But Huo Zizheng, Huo Yuanjia's greatgrandson, wants an apology from Jet Li and the studio. He insists that parts of the film went too far from the truth.
Fearless tells the story of martial arts master Huo Yuanjia (1869-1910), the founder and spiritual leader of the Jing Wu Federation, a non-government kung fu organization in the early 1900s in China.
Huo Zizheng became angry talking about Huo Yuanjia's family members being killed in the film. He said: "I couldn't believe they would make up stories like that. According to their story, Huo's sons were all killed and he left no offspring. Actually, Huo Yuanjia has seven grandsons and 11 greatgrandsons including me. We're a big family."
Huo requested that Jet Li and the studio clear up the mistakes.
Huo said he only learned from newspaper coverage that Li was planning to make the movie about his great-grandfather. "But no one asked for any opinions from us. Maybe the film producers were afraid their production would be restricted in some way. Anyway, they should have told us about the movie production, at least for the sake of politeness," Huo said.
"There have been a lot of films and TV plays about my great-grandfather. My family can understand and accept the fiction part in these works for the sake of art. But that is under the premise that these works respect the true spirit of my great-grandfather and are at least 70 percent true to history. But some plots in this movie were too inconsistent with the facts. We need an apology from Jet Li and the studio."
(CRI February 16, 2006)