9 The Legend Grows

Chapter 8 The Legend Grows The line in front of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood went around the corner. It was seven-thirty in the evening, and Enter the Dragon was scheduled to start in half an hour. But the line wasn't for that show. It was for the ten o'clock show! The 8:00 p.m. screening already was sold out, and people were waiting in line two-and-a-half hours early for the next one. Enter the Dragon was billed as the "first American-produced martial-arts spectacular!" It

opened in Hollywood on August 24, 1973, just five weeks after Bruce died. Not all the critics loved it, but the public sure did. It seemed like everyone wanted to see it. A movie that cost less than one million dollars to make went on to take in more than 200 million dollars—making it one of the greatest financial blockbusters of all time. In Enter the Dragon, Bruce plays a Shaolin

monk named Lee, who is invited to compete in a martial arts tournament held on the remote island of the mysterious and evil Han. Han is a disgraced former Shaolin student who is now running an empire of crime. He is well protected by the martial-arts talent he has recruited over the years during his tournaments, and his left hand is an iron weapon. But he is no match for Lee, who eventually frees the prisoners on the island and, in one of the movie's most famous scenes, kills Han with one of his own swords in a room of mirrored walls.

Bruce had become an action-movie legend by the time Enter the Dragon was in theaters. But that doesn't explain why, four decades after his death, he is more popular than ever. There are dozens of websites devoted to him, and Bruce Lee conventions have been held around the world. He is so popular that in 2012, the San Francisco Giants baseball team held a Bruce Lee Tribute Night. After all, the city was Lee's birthplace. Linda Lee threw out the first pitch, and Shannon Lee sang the national anthem.

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Bruce made a lasting impact on the martial arts by bringing kung fu to Westerners and by developing jeet kune do. His reach still extends to popular culture. In action films, many martial- arts stars have tried to follow in Bruce's footsteps. In comic books, characters practice jeet kune do. In video games, several characters are patterned after Bruce. In the rapidly growing sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), Bruce's influence is so strong that some people call him the "Father of MMA." That includes Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)