Hacker Cinema
Kung Fury
2015 · Film · short · 32 min
Part of Kung Fury Collection
Directed by David Sandberg
ActionComedyScience FictionFantasy
During an unfortunate series of events, a friend of Kung Fury is assassinated by the most dangerous kung fu master criminal of all time, Adolf Hitler, a.k.a Kung Führer. Kung Fury decides to travel back in time to Nazi Germany in order to kill Hitler and end the Nazi empire once and for all.
9 positive1 negative8 neutralfrom 18 commenters
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19 comments on Hacker News
"I wouldnt watch a WW2 Zombie movie if the nazi zombies were wearing viking armor driving an Abrams tank either."
OK, so you didn't watch Kung Fury?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury
> Kung Fury
Kung Fury is one of my favorite films!
Did you see the "trailer" for the sequel? [1] It looks so good! It's a shame that legal shenanigans are all that are holding it up [2].
You're absolutely right about this. We're going to see so many different kinds of small-studio films. Everything from Yorgos Lanthimos to Charlie Kaufman to Denis Villeneuve and back.
I expect lots of things we've never even seen before.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRuka2aJy4 (warning, it's 10 minutes and full of HUGE spoilers revealing the entire plot and twists.)
[2] https://variety.com/2025/film/global/kung-fury-director-legal-drama-feature-1236401774/
Thanks for sharing. I’m really looking forward to a Cambrian explosion of weird little movies like Kung Fury as the costs of VFX shrink. I’m sure that there will be a ton of garbage, but that also means more gems that would’ve never been made if they had to raise money from bean counters.
Boy I am now, that's for sure. I'll add that, even though a movie might be called "Kung Fury" it can't also have several compelling dinosaur supporting characters who add real heft and emotion to the film.
The best example I can think of is already mentioned up-thread, but just to drill down on that. Kung Fury[1] was initially released on Youtube (and a few other services, mostly in other countries I think) and became a pretty big viral hit. Enough so that the filmmaker eventually signed a deal to make a sequel[2] with distribution by a traditional film company and some big-name stars. Unfortunately the release of the sequel has been held up for "legal reasons" and FSM only knows when or if it will see the light of day. :-(
Anyway, not as big as BWP, but still a decent example of the concept under discussion, I think.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fury_2
If you like synthwave/cheesy movies, he did a song (and video) for Kung Fury
https://youtu.be/ZTidn2dBYbY
If you like cheesy, 80s-style action movies, check out "Kung Fury":
https://youtu.be/bS5P_LAqiVg
Making of Kung Fury, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLKOHJs17rc
Corridor Crew makes a movie in Unreal Engine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K7a_aMGA7Y
Sassy Justice talked to Jared Kushner about Deep Fakes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjmmP1rE_3A
1/3 of the posts on Two Minute Papers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEsYo9L5lOo
I won't be surprised when someone can feed a script into a model and out comes a fully rendered movie.
I ran into this earlier this week when I went to watch Kung Fury, a free movie hosted on YouTube which is now age restricted. I pretty much just couldn't. Luckily the Pirate Bay exists, and now I have a permanent copy which is what I probably should've done anyway.
I guess this means I watch less YouTube, which is probably better for me in the long run. But like hell I'm signing in.
Fits right into Kung Fury [1] - a parody/homage of 80's movies that includes time travel and Hackerman... And a dinosaur, vikings and nazis and David Hasselhoff. It's as bad as it sounds, but in a good way. They fit an impressive amount of 80's movie tropes into 30 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg&t=1306s
>"Indeed - this is especially true of synthwave/vaporwave and other genres that are themselves nostalgic for the days of synth-heavy music sold on cassette."
Yeah, I wouldn't mind a TRONICBOX cassette:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV1N95xZ4es
>"Just as some games put fake film grain on screen, some synthwave videos add a "badly tracked VHS" effect."
Kung Fury is probably a good example of that style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg
The Kung Fury short films have what appears to be a mock head tracking offset effect. Maybe they used an actual VCR, or faked it manually, though.
> Whatever kind of post-scarcity economy that will ultimately put an end to needing things like copyright, which primarily exists to help intellectual creations function in a market economy, is nowhere in site.
There are solutions, but no solutions which will make people into lifetime millionaires for having one hit-single promoted and pushed worldwide by a monolithic music-industry.
I'm sure there will be some people who argue that this is a major problem, but those who still make art for the sake and appreciation of art itself, they can probably cope with that loss.
Movies are different, and certainly more expensive and collaborative projects. So how about them?
Movies have gotten increasingly expensive over the last decades... Maybe that's just a pendulum swing gone too far the wrong way, fuelled by a misguided copyright-regime?
With crowdfunded movies like Kung Fury making due with less than a percent of a regular hollywood flick, maybe maybe it's time Hollywood start looking into what's driving their costs.
Basically: Maybe it's time for the pendulum to swing back?
If you can't read it, here is the message:
Hi everyone!
We apologize for the "Streaming Only" option earlier on the Kung Fury: Official Short Film digital package. We cleared up some details on our end and you are now able to DOWNLOAD your digital movie purchase from VHX. We thank you for your patience and love for the project. It's been an insane few days since the premiere! You have all supported us in a major way and we are thrilled to share the movie with all of you!
-The Laser Unicorns and Kung Fury Team
OK, but do you have any numbers to back up the economic side of the argument? I get that it's an ethical issue for you, but you lose me when you talk about 'sick minded publishers,' because different editions with or without DRM are simply what they have available to sell, and they're just allocating to wherever they see the best price.
If Alice will pay $10 for a streaming copy (with DRM), Bob will pay $30 for a DRM-free copy, but Carol will pay $50 for an exclusive DRM-free copy, the rational approach is to sell to Alice and Carol for a total of $60. Bob says that other people would be willing to buy the DRM-free copy later, but from the producer's standpoint the only thing that matters is who's willing to pay money up front because a) there are a lot of costs that have to be paid up front* and b) backend revenue is uncertain.
* Of course you can defray those up-front costs by asking people to work for free or deferred pay, which has been a very popular trend over the last decade. But it's awful to work that way and none of the projects I've ever done that for ever turned a profit.
Unfortunately Kickstarter doesn't provide a way to play the two off against each other, eg setting up 2 projects for DRM advocates vs owners and going with whichever one outraises the others.
Take a look at fiasco with Veronica Mars crowdfunded film which was released with DRM.
I did. I think it was a storm in a teacup, because the intersection between fans of a TV show and people who care passionately about DRM is just not that big. The primary issue seemed to be that people did not care for getting their digital download through Flixster and would rather have redeemed through iTunes or Amazon. As best I can see from the project page, ~22k people were willing to pay a $10 premium over the next reward to get a digital download in addition to a T-shirt, but not another $15 to get a DVD. About 10% of the comments post-release consisted of grumbling about the Flixster download (primarily that it was slow and/or buggy and unreliable; I'm not sure what percentage of them cared about the underlying principle), so it looks like maybe 2500 people who spent about $25,000 were pissed off, or ~4% of the backers contributing 0.5% of the budget.
The basic problem for producers is this: you can estimate the number of people interested in purchasing a restricted version of the film by looking at other projects which offer that and seeing how many of those reward offerings actually sold. I believe you that there are people sitting on the sidelines instead of donating/purchasing because they care about a DRM-free release, but how do I quantify what that demographic is worth?
If I see a project that's interesting to me, I consider supporting it on condition that it doesn't plan to use such unethical garbage as DRM in result. How much would I invest in it? That depends on the project. I don't do it out of having unlimited funds. Not at all - my funds are pretty limited. I do it because I care for those projects and without my support they are less likely to be created.
OK, but your lack of support has to be set against the number of people who are willing to pay for some exclusive right. In the case of Kung Fury that was about $90,000 - ~6000 people were willing to pay $20 for a 1080p download with exclusive content, vs $5 for the DRM-hobbled streaming version you paid for. So what I'm asking is: if you see a film you think you would like, what extra amount are you willing to pay to ensure it is made available DRM-free? It doesn't matter if you'd make a big donation of $1000 once a year to advance the cause, or you'd rather donate and extra $20 to 50 different projects, or even just 5.
But right now I have no idea how much you and other people who care about DRM are holding back. I looked at several different Kickstarter projects that offer DRM-free downloads (including Game Loading - Rise of the Indies, which raised over $60k AUD) doing a similar analysis (trying to ID how much people were willing to contribute for the digital download only, rather than the next reward with additional swag) and the numbers seem to be in the low thousands. Even if I scale budgets the numbers are a good bit lower, eg about $45,000 in DRM-free download purchases if I imagine that other projects had brought in the same overall revenue as Kung Fury and allocate the appropriate amount to download rewards.
This suggests that there's only half as much money on offer up front for DRM-free downloads as for exclusive offerings, and so that it's more rational to use a market segmentation strategy than to offer the same thing at the same price to everyone. From a producer standpoint, cash is the only thing that people are willing to accept as payment for work, and real cash now is much more persuasive than hypothetical cash later.
I mean, maybe you and other anti-DRM people should set up a fund and disburse grants or something, but only to people who commit to DRM-free movie and game releasing. That's how other people promote their causes. Money talks, as they say.
Maybe you are not old enough?
This film is pure concentrated 80's cheekiness and really takes you back. If you were do destroy bad 80's popular culture and keep only 30 minutes of it for reference, this would be it. Of course it does not work alone for many, because everything in it is reference back to the 80's.
It's very well done. I got 80's flashback from just those tracking errors in the beginning of the tape alone (funny how associative memory works).
deeper analysis:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/37mw8y/kung_fury_has_been_released_for_free_on_youtube/cro20li
You're aiming to high when you reference The Naked gun, Beverly Hills Cop and Bill & Ted. This film references the lower budget fare more than the popular big budget films. Don't think of the films you'd see of the cineplex in the 80s, think of the films you'd either see late night on one of the local UHF TV stations or on VHS, often starring Chuck Norris or some no-name mediocre white martial artist. Also emphasis on Action, not the Comedy (or think of Kung Fury as a comedic take on 80s low budget action films).
I was a backer, but also grew up in the late 70s/80s and this film skewers my childhood movie memories to near perfection.
It is a parody on '80s action comedy. That's exactly how I understood it. Given that films like The Naked Gun themselves are a parody, Kung Fury came out pretty much as it did :)
References here are obviously Knight Rider and the like.
"Kung Fury is an over-the-top 80’s action comedy that was crowd funded through Kickstarter. It features Kung Fury, a Kung Fu renegade cop who travels back in time to kill his Nemesis, Hitler. The film features nazis, dinosaurs, vikings and cheesy one-liners. "