Jet Li
Jackie Chan
Woo Ping doing the fight choreography? I am so there.
Okay, Lindsey and I broke our long-standing movie drought last weekend and went to go see this.
We were not disappointed.
The plot is logically structured, given the obligatory fantasy elements. Most of the kung fu theatre tropes are invoked, but in fairly fresh ways. In fact, there was such a low degree of hokey to this movie that I never really got jarred out of the storie.
The background is well-told through the opening narration and melds nicely into the protagonist’s dreamscape. The parallels between our world and the fantasy china were nicely done and had me thinking both during the movie and after it was over. I didn’t really decide how I wanted to interpret everything until later that afternoon, but when I did it was like watching a puzzle-box hit the proper alignment and everything fell into place.
Even Jet Li’s character peeing on Jackie Chan made sense at the end of the movie.
The fight scenes were well done and never got too fantastic or unbelievable. The protagonists skill curve was appropriately handled and never really threw me.
The ending was… nicely done. It wasn’t a Hollywood ending, really, but it gave you a nice sense of satisfaction and closure.
All in all, I came out of the theatre thinking “this was the best possible execution of a kung fu movie for a western audience”.
If you have any affection at all for the martial arts genres, I strongly urge you to check this one out. It’s like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without all the pretentiousness. 
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sorry, I don’t know why that comment didn’t come out with paragraphs. Try this one, it’s basically the same:
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I’m afraid I have to strongly disagree with you about this movie. I agree that the action was terrific, with Jackie Chan and Jet Li at their best, and the larger plot was good (you can never have too many Monkey King movies) but some parts just left me unsettled, or let down.
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SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE MOVIE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM!!!
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As far as certain morals and plots of the movie are concerned, I hated them.
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The kid Jason in the beginning is so spineless he leads the bullies straight to the old man without warning him, doesn’t even try to help the old man and just stares while the bullies shoot the man, and only then runs away and goes on his great adventure. Just beating up the bullies on the return of his adventure is not enough to be forgiven for getting an old man shot. Does he even apologize in the movie? I can’t remember, but I don’t think so. Good, I guess that means even if we get our friends shot, as long as we learn kung fu in between and look cool while beating up bullies at the end (btw, can we say “Neverending Story”?), that’s just fine. Plus, the friends who are shot won’t actually die, how lucky for us so that we don’t feel bad about it.
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Speaking of the bullies, they were stereotypically Italian. Oh, good, now we know that all Italian kids are mini mafia members.
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Not to mention that the kids dropped the word “Ch*nk” several times in that movie. The usage of that word really pissed me off. This is a *Jackie Chan* film that elementary and middle school kids are going to see and the producers use a racist word like that? (Sure in Rush Hour 1, there were racist words, but I don’t consider that movie a kids’ movie. And it had Chris Rock in it, who waaay balances out Jackie Chan.) Why is it that people think using ch*nk or j*p or g**k is less racist than using the word n*gg*r? Because I can tell you, that if those Italian kids had been referring to a video shop owned by a black guy, n*gg*r wouldn’t have made it into this movie.
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Also, the character of Sparrow was annoying. She referred to herself in the third person until the end, an unbelievably grating trait. Also, though she was a good fighter, especially in that fight scene with the other woman (who probably ended up being my favorite character after Jackie Chan and Jet Li), she couldn’t even fulfill her revenge. She lived for that revenge for nearly her whole life but in the end, she just lay helplessly on the floor while Jason did the deed for her. Jason already had some good fight scenes, couldn’t the writers let Sparrow have her moment without turning her into a pathetic, useless female side-character? They still could have had her die if they wanted, after her success.
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The romance dialogue between Sparrow and Jason sucked. And after all that pitiful dialogue and under-the-lashes looks, Jason wasn’t even man enough to kiss her as she lay dying in his arms. What, teens can’t kiss on screen but they can shoot people and use racist words?
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Sparrow’s reincarnation was a nice touch, (Jackie Chan as the old man was interesting too) but in the end, I don’t feel that Jason was a better person. He was still an arrogant teen that now knew kung fu. He didn’t seem to feel guilty at all for getting a supposed friend shot besides uttering the requisite, “are you ok?” Maybe because his friend was just an old ch*nk who sold him videos.
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All in all, this movie had some nice one-liners (“empty the bowl” and “master of sensitivity”) and the action was absolutely fabulous, so it is still worth seeing, but certain aspects of the plot and dialogue really jarred me. I would have been a lot less harsh on this movie and be willing to let the dialogue go (considering it’s essentially a kung fu film, the dialogue was pretty good), and even the shooting of the old man, if they just hadn’t used that word. Maybe it’s a small detail considering that the rest of the movie isn’t that bad, but it just really bothered me since I totally wasn’t prepared to hear it when I went to see the movie.
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Honestly, I prefer “Fearless” and even “Hero” to this movie.
I think you raise some very interesting points.
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There was a lot of time elapsed between the bullies grabbing Jason and that evening. I assumed there was a lot of coercion involved (and it was kept off-camera to avoid jumping up the rating) and he looked ill when they went into the shop. That said, maybe there should have been a quick montage of this to make his behavior more believable.
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Yeah, Jason was a wimp at first. There was a lot of room for improvement there, and character development. But he was almost “Thomas Covenant” bad at first…
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The old man didn’t die because he was the Immortal. Even if the bullet ‘missed his heart’, it still punched through a lung – he should have bled out almost immediately. (And surely not been able to talk to Jason on the stretcher.) And even if he wasn’t, fulfilling the family debt means a lot. It took me a while to get it, but after I did a lot of things fell into place about this movie.
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I don’t think all of the bullies were Italian. In fact, I had to think back a bit to remember if the leader was Italian or Hispanic. In my mind they were just generic punks. That being the case, I don’t think they were playing the stereotype card too heavily. YMMV, of course.
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I felt that the use of racist words by the gangers emphasized that they were, in fact, jerks. The same guys who shot an old man in the course of a robbery. Not exactly role models. The message this sends to me is “people that use racist epithets deserve a good ass-kicking”.
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Do you really think Chan or Li would have agreed to do the movie if they thought the movie promoted a racism? They can read a script.
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I think killing children is bad. But I didn’t hate Episode 3 because Vader and the Stormtroopers killed “the younglings” at the temple.
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Villains are supposed to engage in heinous behavior – that’s part of what makes them villains. Is Schindler’s List a pro-Holocaust movie? No, because the atrocities were being committed by the BAD GUYS. = )
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I think Sparrow’s character was supposed to represent the futility of living for nothing but revenge. IIRC, Jet Li even warned her about it, but she spurned his words. If she hadn’t been so eager to kill the Warlord and gone after him solo, she wouldn’t have died (Jason was a worse fighter, but he attacked while the warlord was fighting Jet Li – and thus satsified the propehcy). As it is, her jade dart did end the life of the Immortal that killed her parents, so she was at least partially satisfied. (If it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t have been able to permanently kill him.) The third person dialogue was weird, but an interesting quirk. It made me pay attention when she shifted to first person at the end.
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I don’t think Jason and Sparrow’s relationship had really passed beyond the friends stage in the course of this movie. (And that lack of progress can be attributed to both his shyness and her obsesssion with revenge.) I think it’s refreshing that they broke the cliche a little by not having things progress so quickly or having a deathbed romantic epiphany. And it also hammers home the point about what her revenge obsession cost her in terms of normal human emotions.
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Hero was okay… but the ending was sort of blah, and plot structure meant that the re-watch value was almost nil for me.
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Now if Jason had used the word “Chink”, I would whole-heartedly agree with you. But I also don’t see Chan or Li signing on if that was the case.
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Thank you for some thought-provoking commentary. It definitely got me thinking some more about the symbolism, especially with Sparrow.
Sparrow’s third person/first person was a good idea in theory, as it communicated her state of being to the audience, but I personally still find the execution of that idea annoying. However, it doesn’t really detract that much from the whole movie, and each to their own.
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Sparrow’s revenge being her downfall is a good point. Before taking that into consideration, it just didn’t make sense to me that a girl who demonstrated her sneakiness as well as Sparrow did (in the restaurant when she was disguised as a musician) would just jump out at the end and basically shout at the Warlord, “Hey, I’m going to attack you now, ok? Get your defense ready! Here I come!” but if you take her revenge obsession into consideration, her action at the end makes more sense. She is so desperate for the Warlord to acknowledge that *she* is the one who is going to kill him that she fails in killing him.
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The reason I wanted the kiss at the death scene is because when Jason is holding Sparrow in his arms, he starts leaning in really close to her face and breathing on her and opening his mouth, all of which looks creepy if it doesn’t end up leading to a kiss. I actually wish they had just cut out the whole cliche romance part of the story, it wasn’t really necessary. But since they did include it, I’m glad that Jason and Sparrow get a second chance at the end so that they can know each other as normal teenagers, without the war-torn background. They have a better chance at healthy relationship and have more in common, especially since in the past, Jason would have had to leave for home anyway.
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When one goes to see a movie like Schindler’s List, one expects and attempts to mentally prepare oneself for the atrocities they will likely see. Of course Jackie Chan and Jet Li wouldn’t support a racist movie, and I don’t even think this movie *is* racist. I just wish that the bullies could have had their “badness” formed in a different way. I suppose the usage of that word is just that one small detail that will always stick in my craw, though it doesn’t take away from the cinematic effect of the movie as a whole.
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That’s a good point about fulfilling the family debt, I hadn’t thought about repayment that way. Paying back a debt for a debt of betrayal does mean a lot. Also, now I wonder if Jason’s loyalty to his teacher comes out of guilt and/or sentiment for his friend, the old man. Considering how far Jason goes to save his teacher, that would be a big expression of care for the old man. Plus, since the old man *is* the teacher/Immortal, I guess it’s all paid in advance since the teacher is immortal because of Jason in the first place. …oh, time-space twists, how you make my life more interesting.
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Thanks for your serious replies, I can like Sparrow more after them, and not be so hard on Jason. ^_^
I believe that the movie was not all that great due to the beginning scene, I thought that the “monkey guy” was a little too chearful and not at all serious. I think they should have been a better sensei or master instead of the monkey