THANK YOU JACKIE CHAN

Jackie Chan movies aren't macho power fantasies. Chan never presented himself as a domineering, muscle master. In his early kung fu flicks, his characters tended to triumph through hard work and a pathological reluctance to lose. Even when he did eventually win his body was often ruined, sometimes even his mind.

Sacrifice and self-denial featured heavily in his action films, themes that seemed to arise from a childhood spent endlessly drilling at the Peking Opera School. His filmography reads like an endless strive for perfection, the same basic cinematic models, tweaked and remade over and over, until he was satisfied he could take them no further. Every film tempered with the same comedic streak that allowed them to pinball back and forth between extreme danger and yuck-yuck pratfalling, sometimes even in the same sequence. I'm going to miss seeing new versions of that. I'm going to miss seeing him dance around props, and fall from extreme heights. Above all though, I'm going to miss seeing him punch people as hard as he can, and then screw his face up in mock agony. Happy retirement Mr Jackie Chan.

UPDATE: Jackie Chan isn't retiring after all. Still watch that Miracles clip!