Filling the Well

The short review: This is my favorite movie in a very long time. It was gorgeous.

The commentary: This got me thinking about how a cliched story that we’ve all seen a million times can still be really good and make me so very happy, like this one did. Because The Forbidden Kingdom is a really cliched story. White kid loves kung fu movies, gets in trouble, gets sucked into Chinese kung fu fantasy world, meets analogs of his favorite kung fu characters, goes on quest, learns kung fu, saves the world, lives happily ever after. This may be the most cliched fanboy fantasy story there is. But I still loved it, and rather than being predictable (because it was) the outcome was satisfying. It fulfilled expectations rather than boring or frustrating me. So what’s the key? How does it work?

A couple of things make it work, I think. First, great production values. This is a great looking film, very beautiful, all the pieces fit together. I was in Chinese kung fu fantasy world and not on a sound stage. Second, it was sincere, and it was true. Sure, Jason gets sucked into the fantasy world and learns kung fu. But learning kung fu is really really hard for him. He struggles mightily. He bleeds. He screws up a lot. He’ll never be as good as Jackie Chan and Jet Li. (Duh. But the movie never tries to convince us that just because the kid’s destined to save the world that he can fight better than those two.) In fact, for about a third of the movie, Jason has this look on his face like, “Holy crap. I’m stuck on this fantasy quest adventure and I don’t think I can hack it. I don’t have what it takes. I’m going to fail.” It’s the same expression Luke Skywalker has after his hand’s been cut off in Empire. And I think, “Yeah, that’s about how I’d look in this situation.” It’s true. The film treats this world and this story sincerely, and with respect.

I think a lot of times, films and books tell a cliched story like this and it feels like paint by numbers, like they’re just checking plot points off a list. When that happens, it never feels true or right, and the whole thing is boring and predictable. In The Forbidden Kingdom, I believed. The emotions were true, the characters were likable, the magic was seriously cool. And the Monkey King — wow. I have a new favorite archetype. Jet Li is amazing.

And the Jet Li/Jackie Chan fight? For just a second my internal editor snapped on and thought, “This fight’s going on too long.” But that thought was immediately quashed by my fangirl side, which said, “Dude, this is Jackie Chan and Jet Li. This is the fight martial arts fans have been waiting for for twenty years. Let it go for as long as it wants.”