The Forbidden Kingdom
Apr. 27th, 2008 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eisoj5Er. Many a spoiler follows. Also a little ranty in bits. Ahem. Shorter and not a very thorough analysis of the issues involved; more of a instinctive response.
Going in I had pretty low expectations. I mean, I <3 Sidekicks (RIP, Jonathan Brandis) and I know the Karate Kid has quite the following (I have never seen it) so I understand there is a longstanding tradition of kung fu and white boys. But for the love of crap, there was absolutely no need for the framing device. Trust me. Millions of people would have gone to see a Jackie Chan/Jet Li movie without the kid. In fact, the movie was even advertised on TV without mentioning the kid at all; it's only in the theater trailer that the plot gets laid out, white kid included. So WHY, HOLLYWOOD, WHY?!?!?!?
Moving on. The fighting scenes were great, if shot in a terribly conventional-for-Hollywood style. The Monkey King mythology? AWESOME. I tell a Monkey King story for evening program and that part was a lot of fun for me. The witch was cool (if not very scary), and Sparrow was extraordinarily beautiful and I appreciated giving the woman the Vengeance!plotline (She was, however, somewhat unconvincing as a love interest for THE WHITE KID except by virtue of being the only non-villainous woman of appropriate age.) And that's probably the first time in a very, very long time that I've heard Chinese in Cortez, so I definitely appreciated that (tried hard not to read the subtitles, which were lacking in, ah, descriptive power, anyway.)
But then...there was the little fact that they dropped the "chink" bomb in there TWICE in the first twenty minutes.
I was already cringing slightly since they'd already said "shit" a couple of times, too, and I was sitting next to my friend's four-year-old son, but then they said THAT and I was instantly a great deal more uncomfortable. Yeesh. Yes, it was very clear that it was the villains saying it, and that it probably wasn't a good thing to say. But for me, going into a movie with two major Chinese action stars is supposed to be a comfort zone, not a place where I'm going to feel like my identity is under assault, twenty minutes in.
So...yeah. It ended up being about what I expected; much, much prettier than Sidekicks, loved the Monkey King stuff, great to see Jet Li and Jackie Chan together onscreen, but the casual racism and the WTF, WHITE KID were pretty damn irritating.
Going in I had pretty low expectations. I mean, I <3 Sidekicks (RIP, Jonathan Brandis) and I know the Karate Kid has quite the following (I have never seen it) so I understand there is a longstanding tradition of kung fu and white boys. But for the love of crap, there was absolutely no need for the framing device. Trust me. Millions of people would have gone to see a Jackie Chan/Jet Li movie without the kid. In fact, the movie was even advertised on TV without mentioning the kid at all; it's only in the theater trailer that the plot gets laid out, white kid included. So WHY, HOLLYWOOD, WHY?!?!?!?
Moving on. The fighting scenes were great, if shot in a terribly conventional-for-Hollywood style. The Monkey King mythology? AWESOME. I tell a Monkey King story for evening program and that part was a lot of fun for me. The witch was cool (if not very scary), and Sparrow was extraordinarily beautiful and I appreciated giving the woman the Vengeance!plotline (She was, however, somewhat unconvincing as a love interest for THE WHITE KID except by virtue of being the only non-villainous woman of appropriate age.) And that's probably the first time in a very, very long time that I've heard Chinese in Cortez, so I definitely appreciated that (tried hard not to read the subtitles, which were lacking in, ah, descriptive power, anyway.)
But then...there was the little fact that they dropped the "chink" bomb in there TWICE in the first twenty minutes.
I was already cringing slightly since they'd already said "shit" a couple of times, too, and I was sitting next to my friend's four-year-old son, but then they said THAT and I was instantly a great deal more uncomfortable. Yeesh. Yes, it was very clear that it was the villains saying it, and that it probably wasn't a good thing to say. But for me, going into a movie with two major Chinese action stars is supposed to be a comfort zone, not a place where I'm going to feel like my identity is under assault, twenty minutes in.
So...yeah. It ended up being about what I expected; much, much prettier than Sidekicks, loved the Monkey King stuff, great to see Jet Li and Jackie Chan together onscreen, but the casual racism and the WTF, WHITE KID were pretty damn irritating.
