The dominating monkey of The Forbidden Kingdom
Time-traveling American teenager finds magical weapon of fabled Chinese monkey king, travels back in time, meets Jackie Chan as drunken master and silent monk Jet Li, and attempts to ward off badass Jade warriors and demonesses…sounds like the kind of script that I would write if I were still smoking crack and/or writing, but be that as it may, this film is ready to come out.There’s an article about how Jet Li had to change the script to better suit western audiences. Said the Jet:
“The West can’t accept a traditional interpretation of ‘Journey to the West.’ Westerners can understand Superman, Batman but not this – a monkey that’s so dominating,” the actor was quoted saying. “The Forbidden Kingdom,” scheduled to be released in the United States this spring, follows a U.S. teenager’s fantasy journey to ancient China to rescue a mythological monkey king. Li plays the monkey king and a silent monk, while Chan plays another monk called T’sa-Ho.Li attributed the failure of many Chinese movies to break into the U.S. market to differences in Chinese and U.S. perceptions about Chinese culture.”We like shark’s fin and abalone. We think this is the best food and treat friends to it.”"But Westerners may think that the best Chinese food is fried spring rolls and sweet and sour pork, or hot and sour soup,” Li said.
Gastronomy might not be his speciality, but the Jet’s remarks do beg an interesting question, namely, when will the Western world be able to come to grips, culturally and psychologically, with a dominating monkey? A monkey so badass that he could perpetrate major pwnage not just on Superman or Batman, but both at the same time?
