Jackie Chan wants to be the next Bruce Lee. He has the looks. He has the style. He even has the self-deprecating humor, the fists of fury and the fabulous stunts.
What he doesn`t have is a mass American audience. And even though Chan may be the biggest movie star in Asia, that doesn`t mean anything at the United States box office.
''Martial arts is a discredited film genre,'' said Dave Cater, editor of Inside Kung-Fu Magazine, the second-largest (circulation 80,000) of the dozen or so monthly martial arts magazines published in America.
''It has never received the respect it deserves. Most people don`t understand martial arts and the philosophy behind it; they don`t take it seriously.
''The studios in Hong Kong (source of most martial arts films) are partially to blame because they produce so many cheap martial arts films,''
Cater said.
''It (the martial arts genre) has become pretty corrupt,'' said Chicago Tribune film critic Dave Kehr, who as a member of the selection committee for the 1987 New York Film Festival was instrumental in slotting ''Police Force,'' Jackie Chan`s latest release, into the festival.
''After Bruce Lee, so many bad things came out, people felt ripped off,'' Kehr said. ''It`s a cult thing now. I can`t see it conquering the popular imagination as it did in the 1970s.''
Ah, yes, the 1970s, the era of ''chop socky'' and Bruce Lee. America`s first and so far only Asian-American superstar helped to popularize action-adventure films that featured martial arts combat.
Lee was a lean, mean fighting machine who combined humor, charisma and a distinct philosophy into a potent box-office force. At the time of his death in 1973 he ruled the martial arts field like a colossus.
Fifteen years later, Lee remains the genre`s greatest star. A biography of his life has sold more than four million copies, and ''Enter the Dragon,'' made in 1973 for $500,000, has grossed in excess of $150 million worldwide. The video version is by far the biggest hit in martial arts history.
There is even a Celebration of Bruce Lee Eve each July 18 in Columbus, Ohio, on the anniversary of Lee`s death. Usually 800 or 900 of the faithful get together, screen Lee films and talk bout their love for their idol.
But Chan, 33, a native of Hong Kong, is determined to break Lee`s stranglehold on the martial arts field. And ''Police Force,'' to be released this month on home video by Cinema Group Entertainment, may start the ball rolling.
The picture, a hit throughout Asia, is a ''kung fu comedy'' in which Chan, as a police detective out to bust a dope pusher, engages in some of the most spectacular action sequences ever seen.
In one, the Chinese superstar, who performs his own stunts, practically destroys a shopping mall as he fights bad guys. In another, he hangs by an umbrella from a careening double-deck bus while thugs attempt to push him into the street.
''Police Force'' is fast and furious and has a certain intellectual cachet because it has played the New York and Toronto Film Festivals.
It provides a good introduction to Chan`s engaging style and the new genre of martial arts films out of Hong Kong. But Chan`s very strengths also may be, in the American market, his biggest weaknesses.
''The problem with the martial arts pictures of old,'' said S.C. Dacy, who reviews martial arts films for Inside Kung-Fu Magazine, ''is they were the violent equivalent of pornography. They were `Hi, how are ya, let`s beat each other up for a half an hour.` The new films have actual plots, and when they have to get down to hand-to-hand, that`s the way they fight.
''(But) you don`t replace Bruce Lee; you come up with something different and better. Jackie Chan`s movies are halfway between Buster Keaton and Burt Reynolds (Chan has appeared in both of Reynolds` ''Cannonball Run'' films). They don`t take themselves too seriously.
''In this country the audience for action-adventure is blue-collar, which means they take those (types) of films as documentaries. Jackie Chan`s attitude will limit him.''
''Our problem with Chan in this country is that we`ve been relegated to showing our movies in action houses,'' said Tom Gray, senior vice president in charge of production for the Golden Harvest Group, the Hong Kong company that distributes Chan`s pictures.
''Exhibitors don`t want them (martial arts films) in the suburban malls because they don`t want the `element` (inner-city males who constitute the core of the martial arts audience) there,'' Gray said.
''The stigma attached is American because in the foreign lands, all over Asia and throughout most of Europe, these are accepted as ballet. They`re commercial, not just action-adventure. They play in the same houses as pictures like `Lethal Weapon.` ''
Some martial arts-related films have played mainstream theaters in this country, but neither ''Karate Kid'' pictures and the action-comedy ''Big Trouble in Little China'' have converted mass audiences to the martial arts cause.
Even though the ''Karate Kid'' films were enormous commercial hits, they were mainly teen-oriented, not geared toward the hardcore action crowd. And
''Big Trouble,'' which was director John Carpenter`s homage to the martial arts film, was a distinct critical and commercial failure.
''I think Carpenter hurt martial arts movies because `Big Trouble` didn`t do well,'' said Irv Slifkin, associate editor of Home Viewer, a consumer video magazine. ''It`s fun, but it`s junky.
''This was the movie that could have broken through, but they Americanized it too much: It`s a little `Ghostbusters` mixed with a little Bruce Lee, with a little `Indiana Jones.` It`s too much of a mishmash. If it had been a straight action movie, it might have done better and hit that core audience as well,'' Slifkin said.
'' `Big Trouble` was the martial arts` real chance for mass acceptance,'' said Cater, ''but the fight scenes weren`t filmed well. For $20 million you would have hoped they could have put together a better package. That hurt. Studios won`t touch a martial arts film now.''
Maybe, maybe not. According to Gray, of Golden Harvest: ''We`re working on a major motion picture with a major director, with an American star to play opposite Jackie. What we have to do to showcase (him) is put him with a recognizable American star, and then he`ll have a following.''
That at least is the conventional wisdom among those who follow the martial arts field: The only way to break the Bruce Lee stranglehold is to develop homegrown martial artists or to pair an established foreign star such as Chan with an American movie hero.
One other aspect to the martial arts story may doom the genre to cult status forever: the racial angle. Most martial arts extravaganzas feature Asian film stars playing to an audience composed primarily of racial minorities.
As Kehr said, ''I thought it was almost a social fluke that these films caught on then (in the 1970s). It was an inner-city phenomenon. . . . I don`t think the mass American audience is ready to deal with films with that racial makeup.''
So the martial arts movie still is at the cult level. But there is the gut-level appeal of action and of heroes fighting insurmountable odds that keeps the films in the video stores and movie theaters. Someday, its proponents maintain, the mass audience will catch on. And Jackie Chan may be the man to make it all happen.