The first time I finished watching Ip Man 2, I noticed that in the widely praised “round-table showdown” between Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, Donnie Yen used an unusually large number of stand-ins. When I watched it carefully again, I found that it wasn’t just the “round-table showdown”: in quite a few action scenes (apart from the final fight against the British boxing champion), stand-ins were used in ways that were far from routine.
Normally, there’s nothing wrong with using stand-ins when stars are filming high-difficulty action scenes. Most action stars’ strengths and selling points don’t lie in pulling off a handful of dangerous stunts—unlike Jackie Chan in his younger days, when doing every high-risk move himself was a rare exception. But in Ip Man 2, stand-ins weren’t limited to high-difficulty action. Quite a few routine moves in the hand-to-hand fight choreography used stand-ins too, and that feels a little hard to justify.
To put it another way, even if you’re going to use that many stand-ins, couldn’t you at least conceal it a little more carefully? One basic rule for stand-in shots is that the stand-in’s face should not be visible. But in Ip Man 2, the stand-ins aren’t merely showing their faces—some shots are practically close-ups of them. This also means that, in the original action-scene designs, these shots were supposed to be completed by the actors themselves.
Later, a friend pointed out that Donnie Yen may have been injured during the filming of Ip Man 2, so using stand-ins may have been unavoidable. Fair enough—that explanation could indeed be valid. But in the publicity before Ip Man 2 premiered, the sole focus was—watch Ip Man 2 to see Donnie Yen’s “Yen-style kung fu”. Doesn’t that make it seem a little like the audience was being misled?
The shots below include a few where I can’t be certain whether stand-ins were used. They’re just for reference—let’s investigate together.
Action scene: Ip Man takes on the challengers
Stand-in:
Action scene: Ip Man vs. the Fishmonger
Stand-in:
Action scene: Ip Man vs. the “Electric-Eye Man”
This shot isn’t certain, but the hairstyle and face shape are highly suspicious:
Stand-in:
Stand-in:
Stand-in:
Stand-in:
Stand-in:
Action scene: Ip Man vs. the “Spinning Man”
Stand-in:
Questionable:
Stand-in:
This is the most outrageous scene of all—an absolute train wreck! Every stand-in actor got a close-up!
Stand-in:
Action scene: Ip Man vs. Hung
Stand-in (notice the face at the edge of the frame on the left):
Stand-in:
Stand-in:
Stand-in (Sammo Hung’s hanging stunt in the WWF action scene used no stand-in; the person standing still and being hung was Hung himself):
Stand-in:
Stand-in:
Stand-in (this is a high-difficulty action sequence. Both Hung and Donnie Yen used stand-ins, which is perfectly normal):
In the final scene where Ip Man fights the boxing champion, I didn’t spot any shots using stand-ins. That entire fight was basically Donnie Yen putting himself in the ring.
That’s all.
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