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The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)


Guest GwaiLoMoFo

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Just realized this movie is now over ten years old.

 

Has anyone opinion changed in that time span?I loved it first time I saw it and still love it today.

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Yeah, I still like it.  In fact I probably appreciate it more now than I did in 2008.  Jackie and Jet did a great job together.  Good homages, good chemistry, great cinematography and enjoyable fights.  This is definitely one to revisit.

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Cognoscente

It would have been less corny if there was more Chinese dialogue. Many moons ago, Ang Lee said that making a martial arts movie in English is like John Wayne speaking Chinese in a Western, but that was certainly the case here.

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starschwar

I think it has a lot less to do with the dialogue language so much as the creative forces behind the camera in general.  The direction, writing and so on.  The audience proxy character.  It's still probably one of Chan's better Hollywood endeavors.  If they didn't get Woo-Ping for the choreography, it might have wound up as a disaster.  But for the first (and unfortunately, probably the last) big team-up of Jackie and Jet, it really, really, really should have been a Hong Kong production from the ground up.  They didn't need to inject an American kid's perspective into it, they didn't need to film it in English to make it more marketable.  Having the two most well known martial arts actors alive costarring for the first time would have put people in seats in and of itself.  All efforts to make it more appealing only alienated the core demographic - that is to say, fans of martial arts movies. 

Edited by starschwar
Ellaboration.
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Cognoscente

They could easily have gone for another top-notch choreographer like Tony Leung Siu-Hung or Sammo Hung, it's just that Yuen Woo-Ping is more bankable as a choreographer in terms of securing investment from financiers.

I had more fun watching Stallone and Schwarzenegger team up in Escape Plan.

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starschwar
16 hours ago, Cognoscente said:

They could easily have gone for another top-notch choreographer like Tony Leung Siu-Hung or Sammo Hung, it's just that Yuen Woo-Ping

 

True.  I should have probably phrased that as, "If they didn't get a talented choreographer with a history with both of the leads..." instead.

 

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