The adventures of Kwai Chang Caine, a half-white/half-Chinese Shaolin monk wandering throughout the Wild West, helping people along the way with sage wisdom for the good people and devastating expertise in martial arts for the bad ones.
When it premiered, it was a unique
Western series with an Asian lead character (
albeit played by an actor with no Asian ancestry) who refused to use a gun and looked out for the innocent, especially the minority groups that the genre typically ignored. The emphasis of the series was very much on philosophy, particularly Eastern philosophy, rather than gunplay.
While it has elements of a
Stern Chase (given that he is wanted for killing the Chinese Emperor's nephew after he fatally shot his beloved master in cold blood), it was usually not a pressing matter for the character outside the occasional bounty hunter. Caine is also a stern chaser, looking for his half brother. He often enters a town only a few days
after his brother has left it.
It has since become seen as the archetypical
Walking the Earth show with a wandering adventurer who has higher spiritual aspirations, but is still ready to get tough when called for. Some of its dialogue became cliches in their own right (calling students "Grasshopper", and "
When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave" are two of the best known of these).
A
Sequel Series,
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, featured Caine's
Identical Grandson and his own estranged son, a modern day cop. It lasted longer than its namesake, though it failed to gain nearly so much attention.
Kung Fu 3D was a series of 12
Webisodes hosted on the Warner Brothers website in 1999; while it featured a character named Kwai Chang Caine voiced by David Carradine, it deviated from the show's canon. Caine is
left on the temple's steps by his mother as a baby, and he is in search of his father instead of his brother. The web series had
No Ending.
Either invented or introduced the concept of a kung-fu Western to...well,
Western audiences.
If you're looking for martial arts tropes, see
This Index Knows Kung-Fu.
This show provides examples of:
0 reviews