YMMV / Game of Death

• Awesome Music:
  • John Barry's moody score is a lot better than the film deserves.
  • "Will This Be the Song I'll Be Singing Tomorrow?", performed by actress Colleen Camp, which plays over the end credits montage of Bruce moments and serves as a fitting Tear Jerker of a farewell.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The 1978 version only has use for 11 out of the 42 minutes of Bruce Lee's original footage and also does away with the original story and concept. It goes without saying that had Bruce Lee not died, his original vision would have been a real martial arts classic.
• Funny Moments: In the 1972 version, an outmatched Pascal drawing a nunchaku as his secret weapon... And then making an utterly constipated face when Hai Tien does the same.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The crooks try to kill Billy Lo by shooting him with what he believes to be a prop gun during the filming of his latest movie. A number of years later, Bruce's son Brandon Lee would die from a malfunctioning prop gun while filming The Crow (1994).
  • To make matters worse, the same year this movie was released Gig Young would take his own life in a murder-suicide... with a gun.
  • The plot of this movie is eerily similar to what happened on the set of Rust in 2021.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Most fans agree that the film 1978 version is only watchable for the scenes with the real Bruce Lee, although some other scenes (with Sammo Hung and Casanova Wong) are appreciated too.
• Misaimed Fandom: The yellow-and-black tracksuit was specifically intended as a casual and informal outfit, that would not tie Lee's character to any one tradition of martial arts, and present him as an everyman figure. It inevitably became a Stock Shout-Out in other works to indicate that the character wearing it was a supreme martial arts master.
• Narm:
  • Fans of unintentional humor do for the most part agree that the scene with the cardboard cutout superimposed over Billy Lo's face makes for a classical moment in bad cinema.
  • There's also a moment when Lee is holding Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's character in a headlock and he has a strained face that looks like a goofy smirking Troll face.
• One-Scene Wonder: Both Sammo Hung and Casanova Wong have a great fight scene each (Wong only in the HK version), but that's it.
• Special Effect Failure: A cardboard cutout of Bruce Lee's face placed upon a mirror to act as Billy Lo's reflection in one infamous scene, for starters.
• Unexpected Character: A strange case with Ji Han Jae. While he features prominently on the original's cast list, the audience has no reason to assume that he would appear in the 1978 version because before the finale there's not the slightest mention of him within the story, but still gets his fight with Bruce Lee at the end.

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