Jackie Chan's Body Through the Year's: Chronicling 50 Year's of Broken Bones and Physical Feats
While skull fractures and broken limbs grab headlines, spinal compression and cartilage loss create the most persistent daily pain for veteran stunt artists. During the climax of 1985's Police Story, Chan leapt from an upper-level mall balcony, grabbed a pole wrapped in high-voltage holiday bulbs, and sheared through them before crashing through a glass canopy onto display counters.
The friction stripped the skin off both palms, but the landing produced severe thoracic and lumbar subluxations. Landing flat on hard surfaces compresses the intervertebral discs, causing microfractures within the vertebral endplates. Chan has sustained several severe dislocations of the pelvis and sacrum over his career, shifting his biomechanics and altering his gait.
By the time Chan broke into the mainstream North American box office with Rush Hour in 1998, both knee joints had suffered extensive meniscus degradation. Decades of high falls onto cardboard boxes, Hong Kong cinema's traditional cushion instead of hydraulic deceleration rigs, forced his hips and knees to absorb shock waves that modern stunt coordinators would deem unacceptable.
