Every Ip Man Movie Ranked Worst To Best

In the West, he's known as the guy who taught Bruce Lee how to fight, but in his native China, kung fu grandmaster Ip Man is an icon in his own right. Ip began his training in the Wing Chun style of kung fu at the age of 12. After spending his childhood between his home in Foshan and the island of Hong Kong (he left the mainland for good when the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949), he opened a kung fu school, the first of its kind. Ip would pass on his expert knowledge to Lee and numerous others before succumbing to cancer at the age of 79. His legacy would remain largely unknown in the wider world until 2008, when Donnie Yen portrayed him for the first time.

When Bruce Lee passed, what's become known as the "Bruceploitation" period of Hong Kong cinema began, with filmmakers casting lookalikes in crude movies like (no joke) Enter Another Dragon. When Donnie Yen's Ip Man became a hit at home and abroad, it kick-started what fans of that film refer to as the "Ipsploitation" era. Yen went on to reprise the role in several sequels in the decade that followed, but he wasn't the only actor playing the kung fu veteran — numerous other Ip Man movies were released in that time, and while some have been pure cash-grabs, others are essential viewing for martial arts movie fans. Here's every Ip Man movie, ranked worst to best. Spoilers ahead.

Herman Yau's The Legend is Born: Ip Man is often referred to as Ip Man Zero by fans, who view it as the unofficial prequel to Wilson Yip's Donnie Yen-led films. Martial artist and actor Dennis To takes on the titular role, portraying a younger version of the famous grandmaster. Yau spent way more money than he usually would (he's a veteran genre filmmaker used to working on a shoestring budget), but The Legend is Born: Ip Man is still a relatively contained affair. The director shunned flashy wire work in favor of more grounded, realistic fight scenes — which, truth be told, are few and far between compared to the majority of Ip Man movies.

The Legend is Born: Ip Man leans closer to period piece than all-out kung fu flick, concentrating on Ip's early days in Foshan and his move to Hong Kong for his studies. The film takes a couple of artistic liberties, but there's a general effort to adhere to historical accuracy, something the Wilson Yip series isn't all that concerned with. Unfortunately, accuracy doesn't always equate to entertainment. Ip Man enthusiasts will no doubt get a kick out of seeing him honing his craft, but The Legend is Born: Ip Man doesn't offer much for the casual kung fu fan. The Los Angeles Times poked fun at the whole "Ip Man Zero" thing in its review, calling it "an inadvertent comment on what this particular film has to offer."

It may be the weakest of the Donnie Yen movies, but that doesn't make Ip Man 3 totally undeserving of your time. The threequel covers similar ground to Herman Yau's Ip Man: The Final Fight, chronicling the grandmaster's life as a husband, father, and teacher in postwar Hong Kong. He still has an array of troublesome Triads to deal with, but in Wilson Yip's film, they work for a foreign boxer-turned-shady property investor named Frank, played by none other than Mike Tyson.

According to Yen, the former heavyweight champ was a fan of the first two movies and jumped at the chance to be in the third one. The pair go toe-to-toe after Ip Man learns that Frank has eyes on the local school, a fight that left Tyson with a broken finger. "Accidents do happen on set," Yen told The Hollywood Reporter, adding that his opponent was totally cool about it. "As an actor, Mike Tyson was very professional and very humble."

Yen vs. Tyson (reminiscent of Bruce Lee vs. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Game of Death) is a must-see battle, but the standout fight takes place when Ip Man schools a barefooted goon inside a rickety old elevator. It's the bits that string the understated fight scenes together that sometimes fall flat. Ip Man 3 lacks the on-point humor peppered throughout the previous two installments and just isn't quite as fun as a result, making it the most skippable movie in the franchise.

If Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen took the foot off the gas slightly with Ip Man 3, they put the pedal to the metal with Ip Man 4: The Finale. This slick and satisfying franchise capper takes place in 1964. The grandmaster's wife has already succumbed to cancer, and he has been diagnosed with the same disease. On the advice of his student Bruce Lee (played to perfection by doppelganger Danny Chan), Ip Man flies to San Francisco with his son, hoping to find him a good school in the States before he passes. When he notices a Chinese girl being bullied by a white cheerleader on a campus visit, he steps in to aid her and unwittingly kick-starts a feud with racist Marine Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins).

Donnie Yen's Ip Man movies have always been about the kung fu grandmaster putting anti-Chinese villains in their place, but Barton Geddes is on another level. The karate-obsessed military man despises all things China, especially kung fu, which is only good for folding clothes in his opinion. This makes the moment Ip Man defeats him in the closing stages all the more sweet, but the montage that comes after the showdown is the real cherry on the cake — the film ends with a nostalgic highlights reel of the first three films. For Yen, who was 56 when he made Ip Man 4: The Finale, this was the perfect time to sign off, and he signs off in style.

It's not often that a sequel lives up to the standard set by the original, but 2010's Ip Man 2 made it look easy. The second installment benefits greatly from having the legendary Sammo Hung on board as choreographer and co-star. We can only imagine what the already sensational fight scenes might have looked like had the industry vet been a little younger and in better health — Hung (who plays a Hung Ga master that starts out hating Ip Man but gradually becomes his friend) underwent heart surgery prior to filming and remarkably was still in recovery when he filmed Ip Man 2. "That alone makes the film worth checking out," the Los Angeles Times said in its glowing review. "The fights are not over-edited the way a Hollywood-style action sequence would be, but rather much of the action happens within the frame itself, feet and hands flying about with strong, decisive camera movements often giving the scenes an unexpectedly graceful quality."

The Los Angeles Times wasn't alone in its praise of the film, which ended up scoring a 96 percent rating on the Tomatometer, an incredible feat for a kung fu movie. The film covers Ip Man's exit from Japanese-controlled Foshan with his family and their arrival in Hong Kong, a British colony at the time. It has definite Rocky IV vibes — when Hung is killed in the ring by a British boxer, it's up to Ip Man to defend his kung fu and his culture.