The Forbidden Kingdom

While The Forbidden Kingdom is no where near the calibre of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" in terms of story telling, the movie is still a must watch for several reasons. For one, it stars both Jackie Chan and Jet Lee in their native Martial Arts genre. This only means one thing, superb fight sequences that have been sorely missing from both Eastern and Western cinema screens for many years. After a long drought, it is refreshing to once again see good old martial art fights that do not use quick film cuts and special effects to disguise the fact that none of the young and famous actors/actresses have any physical proficiency, much less any background in Martial Arts. And like Crouching Tiger, the fight sequences are spectacular indeed.

Another reason to watch The Forbidden Kingdom is the mythology. For Eastern audience, especially us Chinese, the story is bizarre mix of several familiar, centuries old stories mixed in with modern elements. To a Western audience, the movie serves as an introduction to centuries old classic Chinese myths and folklore such as the Monkey God, Sun Wukong (Jet Lee).

The Forbidden Kingdom is a fusion of Eastern and Western elements. In terms of story, the movie reminds me of two old TV series Hercules and Xena, which uses mythical characters in a heavily adapted version of the original story. The adapted story in this case is an early tale in Journey to the West (西游记). Specifically it is the story of 孙悟空大闹天宫, where Sun Wukong the Monkey God (Jet Lee) wrecked havoc the Heavenly Kingdom (or as the movie calls it, The Forbidden Kingdom). The Forbidden Kingdom, for those who do not know, is home of the Gods and Immortals. It is largely analogous to Mount Olympus of Greek mythology. In the original story, the Monkey God could not be subdued by heavenly troops led by Heavenly Marshal Erlang Shen (二郎神). It took The Buddah himself to finally subdue the naughty Monkey God and thus Sun Wukong the Monkey God was imprisoned for centuries under the Five Finger Mountains (五指山).

The difference in The Forbidden Kingdom is that instead of winning the fight against the heavenly troops, the Monkey God was tricked by the "Jade Warlord" (an evil version of the Heavenly Marshal Erlang?) and is turned into stone. Just before that happens, Wukong manages to cast his magical staff out into The Middle Kingdom (China) where it awaits a mysterious traveller who would eventually return the magical staff back to the Monkey God. If you have seen the trailer, you would know that the traveller is a young American called Jason Tripitaka (Michael Angarano) who acquires Wukong's magical staff in 2008 and travels back to medieval China, where he meets the Drunken Scholar Lu Yan (Jackie Chan) and Little Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei). Thus begins the adventures of an American boy in medieval China, learning kungfu whilst trying to return a magical staff to a stone monkey statue.

It is a classic tale of good vs evil, but then again the plot doesn't really matter. The Forbidden Kingdom is enjoyable simply because it a mish mash of classics such as The Karate Kid, The Drunken Master (醉拳), Warriors from Mount Zu (蜀山劍俠) and more.