Fellowship of the Staff

Also known as Forbidden Kingdom

Jet Li and Jackie Chan's first collaboration is hopefully not their last as this film which follows the classic narrative tale of a child or pre adult's journey into a mystical fantasy world. Filled with people trying to hunt him down for the item in which he possess.

Michael Angarano surprisingly brings a truthful character out of Jason who loves watching Hong Kong action films. It is these classic Hong Kong films from 70s to present, which the general international market has not really been exposed to that the movie borrows a lot from. Such as Jackie's Drunken Master (Wong Fei Hung) as well as Ronny Yu's, Bride with the White Hair.

Crystal Liu, who plays an orphaned girl that kicks as, Legolas style, joins the entourage in their quest to revive the Monkey King. It is this plot which I find very much similar to Tolkein's Lord of the Rings as they need to go to the enemy's lair in order to complete the task. But unlike LotR, this film does not have epic battle sequences with our heroes battling hordes of the opposing force.

Instead, the fighting is mostly 1on1, choreographed by Yueng Woo Ping. Which looked fantastic as usual. But I would've really loved to see the fellowship trapped in some mine, and needing to fight a plethora of Jade soldiers... Though, the comedy of Jackie and Jet saves the lack of epic battles.

Li Bing Bing played a bounty hunter with White hair that looked a bit purplish... Her English, I must say, was really good compared to all the other Chinese actors. Maybe they should've focused on her character more, to explain why she has such good English skills. Maybe she's a planetary bounty hunter that travels the globe?

Most Chinese watchers would cringe at the authenticity of the film's language. As all the main characters speak English in the film, that's set in ancient China. Though, about 30% of the film is in Mandarin. I would've prefered the film to have more Mandarin, as I'd be glad to read subtitles. Especially since Jet, Jackie and even Crystal has major speeches in their heavily accented English. There were actually a few lines that Crystal spoke which I had either no idea, or it sounded like swearing.

Journey to the.... 5 Element Mountain

Directed by Rob Minkoff, this film was made for children. As his resume includes one of my all time favourite, The Lion King. But scrīpted by John Fusco, who is writing the remake of The Seven Samurai, seems to need to hone his craft more. As I pointed out earlier, the film is basically made up of parts from classic Wu Xia films. And maybe due to that, his dialogue writing is a bit out of place. Why some characters speak in third person just puzzles me.

Overall, this is another kids movie, similar to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but set in ancient China with the Monkey King as the backing story. I loved some of the twists in it, but there weren't enough. And with Zhang Yi Mou's epic films, the Forbidden Kingdom just falls short in visual spectacular.

Crystal Liu, Jackie Chan and Li Bing Bing

Most likely I felt that the film was rushed through the writing and filming process. It seems as if Yuen Woo Ping, who is the Executive Producer of the film, finally talked Jet and Jackie to be in a movie together. Once they knew when the two big stars were free, they quickly attempted to write an original film by taking parts of older films. Some people may say the production value is high, with nice costumes, but it's incomparable with all the recent Chinese martial art films at all.

I would've rather they made a strictly Chinese film based on a classic story. Or a crossover of a previous Jackie film and Jet film.... Supercop VS Black Mask anyone? Just joking... but not the classic story part. Actually, what could've worked was if this film was split into two parts. I just felt I wanted more from it....

I'm sad to say, but I am only giving this film an average score.. well, maybe I'll be a bit lenient.

3/5