Forbidden Kingdom

[meganbmoore]

I just want to mention that i feel like I was forced to pay penance to get to see this.  First, there were the commercials, two of which were of the "if you use this cleaning/hygiene product, women will rip their clothes off and then try to rip yours off" variety.  Then there were the previews.  The first preview was, as near as I can tell, about how black cops are evil and if they're your neighbors, they will criminally harass you and flaunt their power when you object.  The only redeeming value to the previews after that was the second Hellboy movie, which actually just reminded me that I never did see the first.

Anyway, the movie.

It's Jet Li and Jackie Chan fighting and that's all you need to know.

Ok, fine, there's a plot.  Of sorts.

Essentially, some modern kid named Jason in what I believe is Boston(I don't know...the accents were almost incomprehensible.  It's bad when I can understand the people who's first language isn't English better than I can those whose first language is English.  Supposedly.  Accents are not things to be abused, Hollywood!) is a Kung Fu movie nut who buys  bootleg DVDs from a pawnshop.  When local bullies force him to trick the pawn shop owner into letting them in so they can steal his money, he ends up with a staff that transports him to a world that resembles medieval China.  There, he's saved from the evil Jade Warlord's troops by a drunken kung fu master named Lu(Jackie Chan)  who tells him that the staff belongs to the legendary trickster, monkey, who was tricked by the Jade Warlord 500 years ago, and that Jason is the destined seeker who has to return the staff to Monkey.  Soon, they're joined by a monk(Jet Li) who has been looking for the Seeker, and Golden Sparrow(Liu Yi Fei) and orphan whose family was killed by Jade Warlord.

Pretend nothing of the movie exists between the opening fight scene with Monkey, and when Jackie Chan shows up and saves Jason.  You'll be happier that way.

Short version:  Jet Li and Jackie Chan are awesome.  Liu Yi Fei and Li Bing Bing are exceptionally pretty.  Thanks no doubt to their wuxia serials, they were able to churn out fight scenes that didn't make then look like complete amateurs as compared to Li and Chan.  Jason was no where near as annoying or intrusive as he could have been.  The fights were awesome.  He was obviously a complete amateur as compared to the others, but they didn't try to show him as anything else.  If you try to line anything up with Journey to the West, you'll just get a headache, but I liked the twist on the Monkey and Monk roles(Monk being one of Monkey's duplicates who has been trying to find the staff and free Monkey for 500 years)  And if whatever manhua it was that I read a few years ago was fairly accurate about the personas of the Eight Immortals, that's a fun twist, too.  (In the manhua, Master Lu was, IIRC, the extremely serious, honorable and noble leader of the immortals.)  

There are exactly two female characters of note.  There are exactly three characters of note who die.  One is the main villain.  The other two are the two female characters.

(I don't count Monk's death, as he was reabsorbed into Monkey, and Monkey's behavior at the end seemed very different from his behavior before being turned into stone, making me think that Monk's experiences are now a part of Monkey and his personality.

In all honesty, it is a rather fun movie, as long as you turn off your brain.  Lu and Monk were a blast, both when they were fighting, and when they weren't.  Jason was blatantly shoehorned in because it's Hollywood and there has to be an American.  In the end, though, he is more sidekick than lead, and the movie is more Monkey/Monk's movie than his.  The movie also realizes that many of us will just wish for him to go away, so it has Jackie Chan and Jet Li and the bad guys beat him up a lot.  Golden Sparrow actually had the potential to be a much strong character than Jason, but she was relegated to being the nominal love interest/heroine fighter chick.  In my ideal version of the movie, there is no Jason and Golden Sparrow is the Seeker, and her travels with Lu and Monk teach her to value friendship over revenge.

And speaking of Golden Sparrow, how much of a more facepalm-y death could she have had, anyway?  Sequence of events:  Golden Sparrow and White Haired Witch fight.  Golden Sparrow loses, but is saved by Lu.  Since she really is a kid way out of her league as compared to Lu and Monk(something that had been brought up before, for both her and Jason) I can live with that.  Just like I can be ok with Monk telling her she should go home but not Jason, because not only did he not know her story then, but not only is Jason the Seeker who they can't succeed without, but they can't send Jason home until they save Monkey.  But then she gets her chance to get her revenge against Jade Warlord.  When the men in the movie attack someone, they just up and attack, no dillydallying.  Their attacks work.  Golden Sparrow deliberately draws Jade Warlord's attention to herself, announces her intentions, then telegraphs her attack by pulling her poisoned hairpin out.  She fails.  He kills her.  Jason gets revenge for her...by sneaking up behind Jade Warlord and not saying anything, then stabbing him when Monkey knocks Jade Warlord in range.

See the problem, here?

As a side note, I really hope Liu Yi Fei doesn't weigh that much, given how often her male costars have to carry her around.

So, anyway, just go to admire the pretty and enjoy the Jet Li and the Jackie Chan.  A lot of the humor is pretty decent, too.  Well, just the parts with Li and Chan, but was anyone paying attention to Jason when they weren't around, anyway?  But large chunks of plot should be ignored.

Also: smillaraaq, based on what I remember of you've told me about it, I suspect White Haired Witch(I think that really is her name) is an homage to Bride With White Hair.  In addition to the prehensile white hair, she was raised by wolves, and she made a comment that made me think she hated men, both of which I think you mentioned in relation to that movie.

Also, out of curiosity, are personal pronouns difficult to learn for chinese speakers?  I ask because Golden Sparrow always refers to herself as "her," as in "her name is Golden Sparrow," and never says "I" or "me."  I'm wondering if it was supposed to be an affectation of the character's, or if it was just a language barrier Liu Yi Fei had problems with.  (Mind you, as I don't think they dubbed the actors, and I'm pretty sure she didn't speak english before the movie, so I'm not exactly complaining.)

ETA:  Have been discussing the movie with kingcrankycatand now seem to remember Liu Yi Fei using "I" in the modern epilogue.  Since what we heard the characters saying in the Forbidden Kingdom was somehow translated for Jason, I'm wondering if it's another way of saying "I"(indicating humility, maybe?) that translated differently, and they just didn't bother to explain it.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

In my ideal version of the movie, there is no Jason and Golden Sparrow is the Seeker, and her travels with Lu and Monk teach her to value friendship over revenge.

I would totally watch that movie.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I would LOVE that movie. Seriously, GS had loads of potential as a character, and they wasted it to make her the nominal love interest for a far less interesting character. I do think they were trying to indicate something along those lines by not having her notice she'd dropped the hairpin until Jason picked it up after she saved him in the desert, and by having her focus on getting the elixir for Lu instead of revenge when she and Monk invaded the palace, but since she played backseat to Jason in almost all of her scenes, it just emphasized the wasted potential.