Jackie Chan thinks that there would be no Jackie Chan if he’d been starting out in the A.I. era.
The actor, 71, arguably Hollywood’s greatest-ever action star, said that he’s “lucky” to have come up before the digital age because he was able to wow the world with his bravery and athletic ability.
“If, today, I was working in this age, I don’t think I would do [stunts] myself,” he told Page Six exclusively at the “Karate Kid: Legends” New York premiere last week. “Why? Because of A.I. special effects, [green screens].”
Plus, he said, studios are far more risk-averse these days.
“You want to do [the stunt work], but the studio, the stunt coordinator, the director, they won’t let you,” he continued “because if anything [went wrong with a stunt and the star were injured] it could shut down the whole shoot; it could cost a lot of money.”
“In the old days,” he explained, “I had to do it myself and so I became ‘Jackie Chan.’ So I was lucky.”
(Meanwhile, he seemed to suggest that today’s actors are lucky in a different way, because the digital aids mean that they don’t have to hurt themselves to make action-packed flicks. Over the years, Chan suffered a litany of injuries while filming, including broken fingers, toes, both cheekbones, hips, ribs, ankles, and a dislocated pelvis.)
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The remarks come at a time when there is fierce debate in Hollywood about the degree to which A.I. should be used to reproduce the work that human would traditionally have done, not just in action movies but in everything from voice-over to animation.