Bruce Lee's Legacy Has Involved Controversies for Years

It has been over 52 years since the legendary action star Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong. Lee’s posthumous legacy is still being felt today — the acclaimed television series Warrior, which debuted in 2019, was based on an idea he had pitched during his lifetime. The documentary Enter the Clones of Bruce explored the ways in which producers capitalized on Lee’s name in the years following his death.

Discussions around Lee’s career have taken a controversial turn — especially in cases when a fictionalized portrayal of Lee turns up on screen. To recap: after the release of writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, the film’s depiction of Bruce Lee drew criticism from a number of figures, including Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee. Tarantino’s comments in a 2021 interview with Joe Rogan — which included telling people who weren’t members of Lee’s family to “Go suck a dick” if they didn’t like how Lee was portrayed in the film — brought the controvery back into the spotlight.

Controversies around Lee are nothing new, though. In a recent article for JSTOR Daily, H.M.A. Leow revisited the way Lee’s widow Linda Lee and paramour Betty Ting Pei each sought to shape posthumous perceptions of Lee following his death. Both wrote books about their time with the actor and martial artist, each of which offered a very different portrayal of the man — and reckoned with larger debates over race and gender.

Bruce Lee’s Daughter Calls Out Quentin Tarantino’s “Continued Attacks” on Her Father

Shannon Lee penned an open letter addressing Tarantino’s portrayal of her father in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and the director’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast

Another facet of the aftermath of Lee’s death came up in comments that Jackie Chan made at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. As The Hollywood Reporter‘s Georg Szalai writes, Chan shared some anecdotes from his career — including working with Lee as a young man. Chan also mentioned that Lee’s death affected how producers wanted to shape his career, including casting him in a sequel to Fist of Fury.

“The director wanted me [to do] everything like Bruce Lee,” Chan recalled. “I am not Bruce Lee.”

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…