Shaolin Temple (1982)
- kinetic
- extreme
Neutral, breathless, extreme action / martial-arts, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →The Tang emperor is betrayed by one of his generals, who installs himself as emperor in the East Capital. The son of one of his slave workers escapes to the Shaolin Temple, learns kung fu, and sets out to kill the traitor who killed his father.
Our read · Shaolin Temple (1982) (1982) reads as a neutral, breathless, grounded action · martial-arts entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
Availability in the US · via JustWatch
More info & search links
The shape of Shaolin Temple
What watching it is actually like.
“You want classic Jet Li kung fu with monastery training and revenge.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if subtitled martial arts or revenge stories feel dated.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself