The Five Elements was the
fighting style practiced by the character
Ghost Faced Killer (inspirer of the
Wu-Tang Clan moniker,
Ghostface Killah) in the movie
The Mystery of Chess Boxing.
A
trope of the film is that each time Ghost Faced Killer shows up to take
revenge on one of the gang leaders who in the past tried to have the killer killed, he (Ghost Faced Killer) throws a medallion on the ground, by which his victim immediately recognizes who his about-to-be-attacker is, prompting the victim to exclaim, "Ghost Faced Killer"!! Clearly a
motif stolen from the earlier horror film,
Bag of Crushed Child, but I digress. The other thing each victim has in common is their immediate recognition of Ghost Faced Killer's fighting style -- The Five Elements.
But The Five Elements is not a
contrivance for the film. It is a genuine
Xing Yi Quan fighting style,
built around five key strikes, each evoking a different traditional Chinese element (and to be clear in this style,
The Fifth Element is
not Love). In the actual tradition, the five elements are
Fire,
Water,
Earth,
Metal, and
Wood. In actuality, though, the style of fighting ultimately engaged in in the film is more like
Gymkata (for how
acrobatic it is, with flips 'n shit) meets
Dance Dance Revolution (for how clearly
choreographed it is between the combatants). And here is
an awesome supercut of all Ghost Faced Killer's fight scenes.