I think the appeal of martial arts films is the appeal of Westerns and all the other fantasy stuff we like. The good guys win and the bad guys get walloped. In real life violence is always ugly and sickening - even on the very rare occasions when the bad guy loses. In films it looks both justified and expedient.
Perhaps the most honest film of recent years which I have seen is "The Constant Gardener", about a diplomat who discovers that a drug company (which has also murdered his wife) has been conducting illegal drug trials in an impoverished African country. In that film the Quixotic hero is defeated and crushed without trace - as he probably would be in real life. The film is closer to the real world than anything I have watched for a long time, but you do not want to watch a film like that for entertainment every week!