Just ICYMI…In 2015, Swedish martial artist and filmmaker David Sandberg broke the internet with the release of his half hour opus of 80’s-loving, martial arts fueled insanity, “Kung Fury“. With millions of views and widespread audience acclaim under its handband, it did for 80’s cop movies what “Black Dynamite” did for the blaxploitation genre. Following the short’s release on YouTube, a feature project titled “Kung Fury II: The Movie” was announced, with Sandberg set to return, along with David Hasselhoff reprising his cameo. While further news about the project was fairly scant since then, that all changed with the recent announcement of Michael Fassbender and Arnold Schwarzenegger coming aboard for Kung Fury’s next adventure!
“Kung Fury” first came about when David Sandberg, a commercial and video game director in his native Sweden, produced a trailer for the project, and subsequently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the film. After raising $630,019, well beyond the campaign’s $200,000 goal, Sandberg unleashed the legend of “Kung Fury” on YouTube on May 28th, 2015 to widespread acclaim.
In a summer movie season that saw the Norse God Thor in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, time travel in “Terminator: Genisys”, and dinosaurs in “Jurassic World”, “Kung Fury” delivered all three, along with a Nazi menace right out of “Indiana Jones” and a boatload of kung-foolish martial arts action, in the space of just thirty minutes. Not bad for its grand debut.
Michael Fassbender is no stranger to action-heavy roles, having first made his mark on the big screen in Zack Snyder’s “300” in 2007. Since then, he’s gone on to wider recognition for his role as the young Eric Lehnscherr aka Magneto in the “X-Men” film series, and dove right into martial arts action and daredevil stuntwork in 2016’s “Assassin’s Creed“, a rarity among video game adaptations in that it’s actually pretty awesome!
Of course, when it comes to the film’s nostalgic throwback to all things 80’s, few could better match the action hero stereotype of that era than ‘The Governator’ himself. Since leaving the office of California Governor in 2011, Arnold has harkened back to his own 80’s glory days in Sylvester Stallone’s ensemble franchise, “The Expendables”, and later teaming up with Sly once again for 2013’s “Escape Plan”.
As Arnold’s been never one to shy away from a little self-referential humor, the jokes of “Kung Fury II” practically write themselves. One envisions Kung Fury forced to do battle with a towering, muscle-bound Commando codenamed “The Barbarian”, sent back in time to the year 1984 to Terminate a heat-seeking Predator stalking the streets of Los Angeles, whilst keeping himself under cover with the alias of “Howard Langston” – okay, drifting a little bit in the 90’s there, but “Jingle All the Way” is so underrated.
Check out how Mr. Sandberg’s project came to fruition, at the Kung Fury panel from 2015’s San Diego Comic Con:
Stay tuned for more info on “Kung Fury II: The Movie” as it flying kicks its way nearer your screens. What did you think of the first “Kung Fury” short, looking forward to the feature length? Let us know below, join in the conversation on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. (For more fu-fillment, check out these reviews!)
