n. A cinematic technique in which actors perform kung-fu moves while attached to wires and pulleys that make them appear to fly, run up walls, and so on.
2001
Cinematographer Peter Pau and fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping use the technique of 'wire-fu,' or kung-fu aided by wires and pulleys to give the characters on screen superhuman techniques.
1997 (earliest)
If you need to take a kid in that difficult post-Disney-but-pre-teen demographic to the movies you could do significantly worse than Warriors of Virtue, which stitches together kid-pic bits and pieces from The Neverending Story to The Karate Kid, all the while giving it a wire-fu spin.
Not that actor Stan Shaw, 25, a second-degree black belt in karate, was having trouble getting work. He got to play bone-crushers on TV cop shows, a martial arts maestro in a chopsocky melodrama called 'TNT Jackson,' a Jackie Robinson character in 'The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings.'