Jackie, Jet, and some white kid.
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‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ — the martial arts movie that brings Jet Li and Jackie Chan together for the first time, cementing kungfu cinema history — has just released a teaser trailer.
The beginning of this trailer looked pretty awesome. Cinematography, costumes, sets — everything looked fantastic! And then… the white boy shows up. And it’s downhill from there… until the final blow at the end when Jackie speaks English, and you realize that everything you’ve just seen is a huge sham.
Here’s yet another story about some white guy becoming the hero of the asian experience. Great. Thanks, Jackie and Jet for facilitating Hollywood’s perception that Asian men can’t be leading men — even in our own Asian stories.
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SamuraiJack
7:21 pm | Nov 17, 2007Apparently, white people are so racist that they won’t watch anything that doesn’t have a white man in the leading role.
nightshade
8:05 pm | Nov 17, 2007I knew shit was going to be bad as soon as I read the first line: “A land between heaven and earth.” WTF. And the editors juxtaposed the shot of the white dude with the hot girl. Motherfuckers. Not to mention the words “A divine weapon” come before the white dude holding a giant bamboo stick while the girl is standing next to him admiring it. For fuck’s sake.
And lol, why does a white man’s “journey of self-discovery” always take place in Asia?
At least Jet Li looks good.
xiouxu
8:28 pm | Nov 17, 2007I’ve been waiting so long to see my two idols in a movie together that I can’t let negative comments like this get to me. I think the movie looks beautiful. I also don’t understand this racist notion that just because there’s a white kid in the movie that automatically makes it suck.
Oh, and I’m a n00b, so sorry for coming in guns blazing. :)
Scowl
1:35 am | Nov 18, 2007I knew something was fishy when I heard that opening music.
xiouxu, do you not see where this movie is headed? Here we have two Chinese movie legends, and they’re going to play second fiddle to some snot-nosed white kid who is “finding himself” or doing something equally asinine in a foreign, mysterious, and dangerous land which he knows shit about but will nevertheless come to master.
Jackie and Jet just got turned into a pair of magic negroes.
Lum
3:27 am | Nov 18, 2007I’m confused. Is this from the people that made “Scary Movie”?
nightshade
4:48 am | Nov 18, 2007Jackie’s been a magic negro ever since he attempted Hollywood.
Kuroyama
11:01 am | Nov 18, 2007Isnt that music from the CTHD soundtrack? As for Jackie speaking English…it made no sense to me. Whos producing this flick? As for the white kid… I wasnt thrilled to see him becoming yet another ninja master in the true Rhas Al Ghul tradition… but doesnt he get killed? Hence the title “Forbidden Kingdom”? Perhaps this cloud has a silver lining?
Synthetic
12:26 pm | Nov 18, 2007yeah, i knew it was gonna be bad once i heard that recycled “zhang ziyi jumping off the mountain” music from crouching tiger; which was then followed immediately by the white guy practicing his bow staff skills in the woods.
my continued attention did not ensue.
maloy
1:19 pm | Nov 18, 2007both jackie and jet li have done interviews here in asia that say that the movie sucks.
it’s a bad sign when those two are in a movie and fucking wire work is involved.
xiouxu, don’t you think it’s retarded that this movie is set in china and features two of the biggest chinese stars but the story centres on a fucking gweilo??? and the gweilo is the hero, the last mohican, the last samurai, the last chinaman who will save us all.
jaehwan
1:39 pm | Nov 18, 2007What a crock.
You would think that Jackie or Jet or BOTH would look at the script and say…you know, something doesn’t look right…
AZN MAN
3:10 pm | Nov 18, 2007It is common for film scripts and content to change dramatically while in Production.
Dialectic
10:49 pm | Nov 18, 2007I usually try to stay pretty open-minded and non-judgmental about this stuff. Lopes and I both enjoyed The Last Samurai, though it was ultimately ridiculous and Cruise was crap, but we understand Hollywood commercial considerations, and the Japanese actors, costumes, and cinematography were great.
But this looks like CRAP. I completely agree with Lopes’ comments above: starts beautiful, and it all goes downhill with the RIDICULOUS inclusion of the white boy. This is fucking JET LI and JACKY CHAN … they don’t need a fucking white boy as the self-discovering martial-arts mastering star!
Kuroyama
11:45 pm | Nov 18, 2007Maloy can you provide a link to the interview(s) from Jet and Jackie?
jaehwan
12:16 am | Nov 19, 2007Azn Man wrote: “It is common for film scripts and content to change dramatically while in Production.”
I agree that scripts change, but that’s a pret-ty darn dramatic change. Can you imagine this Chinese producer saying, “Okay, Jet jumps here, Jackie falls there. Hmm. This movie is okay, but you know, in order to really make this movie work, I really think we need a WHITE BOY???”
They would have to coin a new phrase for such a technique: whitus ex machina….
wuwei
12:29 am | Nov 19, 2007For fuck’s sake, this is crossing the fucking line. Sun Wukong is THE archetypal hero in Classical Chinese Literature, flawed and human, but ultimately overcomes. To let a white guy play him is a slap in the face to Chinese everywhere.
Wu Cheng En (author of Journey to the West) rolls in his grave.
Fuck this shit.
maloy
12:39 am | Nov 19, 2007http://www.alivenotdead.com/26/spacelist_type_blog_selection_all_page_2.html
jet li’s blog where he very kindly disses the movie in the may 4th entry. otherwise, i can’t help you with links because i saw it in the papers here.
nightshade
3:36 am | Nov 19, 2007OMG, wuwei, you mean the white dude is supposed to be a Chinese hero? Hahaha.
AZN MAN
4:02 am | Nov 19, 2007J,
I presented a common occurrence only, I don’t know how the situation was handled during the early stages of Pre-Production.
However, consider this scenario: Both Jackie and Jet are informed by the Studio, the Production Company, the Producers, the Director, the Writer, their Agents, and everyone else involved that the White Male role is merely a coattail rider - a narrator of sorts.
The Production requires 12 weeks of shooting, and 6 weeks into the shooting schedule Jackie and Jet report to the set and are told that changes had to be made in order to make the film more marketable.
Again, I don’t know if this actually occurred, however this scenario is very common.
Lum
10:40 am | Nov 19, 2007“For fuck’s sake, this is crossing the fucking line. Sun Wukong is THE archetypal hero in Classical Chinese Literature, flawed and human, but ultimately overcomes. To let a white guy play him is a slap in the face to Chinese everywhere.
Wu Cheng En (author of Journey to the West) rolls in his grave.
Fuck this shit.”
Is THAT what this movie is based on?? Oh god, I am suddenly in serious pain. Wukong is my childhood hero. I was trying to keep an open mind, but now I feel ill.
Ike
12:08 pm | Nov 19, 2007From the Wikipedia page about the movie:
China’s official Xinhua News Agency has quoted Chan’s own criticism of the film: “The movie I just shot with Jet Li, The Forbidden Kingdom, actually isn’t that great… The Forbidden Kingdom is a movie made for Americans… Chinese viewers may not like it. If I say it’s a good movie now, then many people will be filled with overly high expectations and be disappointed when they see the movie.”
Hahahahahaha.
jaehwan
2:13 pm | Nov 19, 2007Azn Man:
I just find it funny that a white guy is in this to begin with. They put him on the wrong side of the camera. Holding the camera, maybe, but acting? He shouldn’t even be in a supporting role. It’s a period drama, right?
One good thing that has come of this is that I’m now interested in learning more about the classical Chinese literature on which this movie is based.
Xian
8:25 pm | Nov 19, 2007Thank God Spike Lee made Malcolm X. Otherwise it would have been starring Elijah Wood as White Leader of the Black Panthers.
It’s funny how pathologically self-absorbed white America is. My mom talked to this amazing African American writer who wrote a book about Emmett Till. I’m not fucking making this up. When he was in talks with a studio about the book–about the catalyst who triggered the entire civil rights movement in the U.S., they told him that “The story would be more interesting if it was told from the point of view of the white girl whom he whistled at before he was lynched.”
It makes you angry, but more than that it makes you feel bad for white people. Obviously, as the first response stated, every white person in America should be insulted that studios assume that they are so racist that they couldn’t watch a film starring two of the top action stars in the history of the world or a film about the catalyst who triggered the civil rights movement.
nskripchun
10:36 pm | Nov 19, 2007Aiyah. Leave it to Hollywood to mis-cast the Monkey King as some fresh-faced white kid.
What’s next? Casting Leonard Dicaprio as “Anansi” in a collection of re-envision Western African fairytales? >=)
Scowl
11:22 pm | Nov 19, 2007I know he’s not an actor, but Yao Ming would make an awesome Abe Lincoln. Dead serious.
Kuroyama
12:13 am | Nov 20, 2007What a waste of opportunity.
How many years have fans been waiting for Jet and Jackie to work together?
Of those fans, how many are Asian?
Of those Asian fans, how many have always kept a wary eye on both of them because theyve done either blatantly or marginally sellout work?
Of those how many will only have their worst white worship fears confirmed by the two of them working together for the first time in a film where of the two of them, a white guy is the hero (in a Chinese period piece film)?
Cant these two guys afford to bankroll their OWN film where this sort of thing doesnt happen?
Senkeh
4:19 pm | Nov 20, 2007“What’s next? Casting Leonard Dicaprio as “Anansi” in a collection of re-envision Western African fairytales? >=)”
–nskripchun
That reminds me; have you seen Blood Diamond? Leo plays a white South African who apparently has a deeper connection to the continent than all the Negroes gettin’ capped/enslaved/amputated over diamonds.
“Can’t these two guys afford to bankroll their OWN film where this sort of thing doesnt happen?”
Uh, yeah…I was wondering the same thing. ARe tehy trying to tell us that with Jackie-and-Jet type of money, not to mention ties to Yuen Wo-Ping and Zhang Yimou, these two can’t get together and properly represent? Was the paycheck for this film that good?
badwill
12:18 am | Nov 21, 2007Who is this white boy in the movie? Does he even have the name recognition as Jackie and Jet? Truly sad that Chinese people tolerate this shit know full well Hollywood would never represent them in a non stereotypical light.
Kuroyama
10:41 am | Nov 21, 2007The Forbidden Kingdom is the long-awaited collaboration between martial arts masters Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Mike plays a troubled 17-year-old wannabe kung fu warrior who, after a humiliating defeat at the hands of a street gang, is sent back in time to ancient China on an impossible mission to set free the imprisoned Monkey King and return to him his all-powerful staff. Rob Minkoff directs from a John Fusco script. Casey Silver produces. “The Forbidden Kingdom” is being released in the US jointly by Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company on April 18, 2008.
The Forbidden Kingdom in theaters April 18, 2008
“The Forbidden Kingdom” will open on April 18, 2008 in over 1750 theaters. Mike spent over 5 months in China shooting the film, directed by Rob Minkoff from a John Fusco script. Casy Silver produced. The highly anticipated pairing of Jet Li and Jackie Chan is sure to be a hit. Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company are distributing.
http://www.michaelangarano.net/
Kuroyama
11:19 am | Nov 21, 2007I just watched the trailer again… I still dont understand how writing a white kid into ancient China makes this a more marketable movie. Is The Dominant Culture THAT sad and insecure??? Even CTHD didnt resort to writing euro faces into an ancient Chinese story…
How did the producers of this thing say to themselves…
“Let make a period piece Chinese movie!”
“Yeah!”
“Lets get Jackie Chan!”
“Yeah, yeah…!”
“AND we get Jet Li!”
“Keep going!”
“Theyll fight each other!!!!”
“meh…yer losing me!”
“Huh? Jackie CHAN and JET LI….fighting! with the whole costume kung fu thing!! The music!! Great sets…!!”
“Im just not quite… it needs something!”
“It needs… I dont know!”
“OK… try this on. Jackie…?”
“Yeh…”
“Jet…”
“OK…”
“And,…A fresh young ALL AMERICAN!!! HE will be the CHOSEN ONE!!!”
“OH YES!!! YESSSS!!!! Oh My GAWD!!!!! I can FEEL the ticket sales!!!”
….I betting the actual pitch made even LESS sense than the scenario I just wrote.
Xian
1:14 pm | Nov 21, 2007[b]Does he even have the name recognition as Jackie and Jet?[/b]
No one does.
[b]Is The Dominant Culture THAT sad and insecure??? [/b]
Yes.
CJF
12:04 am | Nov 22, 2007I’m not watching this crap.
Warlords is going to be good though, with T.K., Lau and Jet
timmyhos
10:23 pm | Nov 23, 2007Did anyone catch who the girl was? It’s Liu yi Fei from Return of the Condor Heroes.
Zenkazi
3:52 pm | Nov 30, 2007heeehehahahah!
t-tocs
5:03 pm | Jan 02, 2008As usual, the white kid gets to make out with the Asian girl.
[img]http://pic.people.com.cn/mediafile/200712/25/F200712250808242727413557.jpg[/img]
RAGE
8:37 pm | Jan 02, 2008yep , wow what a let down , kinda like the fast and the furious 3 , it took place in Japan , yet the lead Asian character dies and the bad guy gets his love interest stole from him by the white guy … wow …
TheMac
6:57 am | Apr 18, 2008“have you seen Blood Diamond? Leo plays a white South African who apparently has a deeper connection to the continent than all the Negroes gettin’ capped/enslaved/amputated over diamonds.”
He played a native South African, and a major part of the story was that he WAS a white African, and therefore he was, in many ways, in the cultural middle of the British-African trade. It may be playing to ‘familiarizing’ white audiences with African issues without freaking them out, but it certainly wasn’t as ridiculous as, say, “Last Samurai” where Cruise just became the great Asian leader in three months of something.
I’m going to reserve my opinion on “Forbidden Kingdom” for when I see it on DVD, and because I don’t necessarily think the a). English and b). ‘Americanization’, so the speak, are the worst things in the world. The inclusion of a possible ‘awesome white guy who must be taught all the secrets of your culture to be a hero’…that’s the breaker for me.
jaehwan
5:16 pm | Apr 22, 2008The Oregonian had a good review re: the white boy thing.