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Jackie Chan considers how different his renowned career may have been if he had begun in today's era of artificial intelligence and special effects.
The 71-year-old action star, who is well-known throughout the world for doing his own risky stunts, said he considers himself lucky to have made his career before computer technologies began to replace live physical performances.
Speaking to Page Six at the Karate Kid: Legends premiere in New York, Chan acknowledged, "If I were working today at this age, I don't think I would perform [stunts]. Why? Because of artificial intelligence amazing effects, [green screens]."
He said that in modern filmmaking, it's not simply about what the actor wants to do; there's a lot more caution from those behind the camera.
"You want to do [the stunt work], but the studio, the stunt coordinator, the director, they won't let you," he told me. "Because if anything [went wrong with a stunt and the star were injured] it could shut down the whole shoot; it could cost a lot of money."
Looking back on his early career, he attributed his success to his hands-on attitude. "In the old days," he shared, "I had to do it myself and so I became 'Jackie Chan.' So I was lucky."
Nonetheless, he admitted that performers working today may be fortunate in their own ways, since technology allows them to escape the physical toll he took during his career.
Chan notoriously suffered a slew of injuries while filming, including broken fingers, toes, cheeks, hips, ribs, ankles, and even a dislocated pelvis, all in order to create the real-life action scenes that propelled him to international stardom.
His views come amid continuous debate in Hollywood over how far artificial intelligence (AI) should go in replacing traditionally human contributions, not just in action sequences, but also in voiceovers, animation, and other aspects of film production.
