Why Did Bruce Lee’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Fight Scene Spark An Outrage? (Photo Credit – Prime Video)
Advertisement
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gave fans plenty to discuss, but one scene nearly derailed the conversation. The flashback fight between Brad Pitt’s stuntman Cliff Booth and Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh, stirred major controversy. According to HuffPost, an early version of the scene would have humiliated Lee even further, showing him losing the fight outright.
The film became Tarantino’s biggest opening weekend hit and took liberties with Hollywood history. But while real-life figures like Sharon Tate and Steve McQueen got respectful portrayals, Lee – one of the most influential martial artists ever – was turned into a “bloviating a**,” as some critics put it. In the scene, Lee bragged that he could “cripple” Muhammad Ali, prompting Booth to mock him. The two squared off, and Booth tossed Lee into a car after trading blows. The fight ended unresolved, but an earlier script had Lee losing in round three flat-out.
Lee’s daughter, Shannon, wasn’t consulted on his portrayal. Watching audiences laugh at her father’s depiction was “really uncomfortable,” she told The Wrap. Bruce Lee biographer Matthew Polly also slammed the scene, saying Lee “revered” Ali and wouldn’t have made such a claim. While Lee did spar with stuntmen in Hong Kong, Polly said he never started fights—and always won them in seconds.
Tarantino, however, doubled down on his take. In a 2021 appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, he dismissed most criticism with: “Anybody else? Go suck a d**k.” He argued that Booth, as a “killer” who had fought in a war, would have defeated Bruce Lee in a real fight. But even Tarantino admitted that “Cliff wouldn’t stand a chance” in a martial arts tournament.
Moh, who idolized Lee, felt conflicted about the role. “Bruce, in my mind, was literally a God,” he told Birth.Movies.Death. Still, he defended the portrayal as more humanizing than humiliating: “You give me five more seconds, and Bruce would have won.”
Some saw the scene as a shot at Hollywood’s old-school stuntmen, who struggled to adapt as Lee revolutionized fight choreography. Others viewed it as a deeper problem — one that propped up a fictional white hero at Lee’s expense. “In a movie where Tarantino changes history to fit his violent wish fulfillment,” filmmaker Joseph Kahn tweeted, “it’s odd that his revisionist fantasy of Bruce Lee is that he is a fraud.”
Ultimately, Quentin Tarantino made a choice: Cliff Booth had to look tough. But in doing so, he turned Bruce Lee into the butt of the joke — something fans, and Lee’s family, weren’t laughing about.
The controversy surrounding Bruce Lee’s portrayal also reignited a broader conversation about Asian representation in Hollywood. Critics argued that reducing a trailblazing cultural icon to a caricature reinforced outdated stereotypes that Hollywood has long profited from, namely, the arrogant, overconfident martial artist trope. Many Asian-American actors and filmmakers voiced frustration that Lee, who fought hard to bring authentic Asian characters to the screen, was being diminished in a story about preserving old-school Hollywood masculinity.
