Why Was Wu Jing Depicted As Such A Beta Male In This?

Anyone familiar with legendary Wu Jing flicks like Legendary Assassin, Fatal Contact (probably has his best fight scenes), and Wolf Warrior 2 knows that the guy is legit bada$$ and runs complete circles around Jason Statham as far as martial arts abilities are concerned.

But after breaking both his legs, Wu Jing has relegated himself to supporting actor status given that he doesn't have the acting range of his more established peers like Louis Koo, Nick Cheung, or Sean Lau.

Even still, some of his work managed to keep him feeling relevant and important as a character, like his role in The Wandering Earth. But here? Wow... here he's just created as a deuterogonist whose shtick is that he's the bumbling side-kick who might end up getting killed at some point.

Basically his whole gimmick was "He's not the main hero, so watch as he ends up in these ridiculous situations where he's likely to get killed!" leading up to the final scene with Haiqi and the clicker where they tease the audience for the final time that he will truly die this time.

I just didn't get it... why did he sign on to be in this and be made a fool? The guy has had a pretty cool career as a martial arts action star, being in one of China's biggest grossing ever action films of all time, yet he thought it would be cool to play second fiddle to Statham as a death-wish prone bumbling sidekick?

The only cool thing he did was that spinning stab on the octopus tentacle. Everything else was just him being an epic failure.