Casting Call 4.30.08: Issue 52 - The Forbidden Kingdom
Posted by Jason Chamberlain on 04.30.2008
411's Jason Chamberlain follows his passion for martial arts and Chinese culture and finds himself lost in The Forbidden Kingdom!
Welcome to Casting Call!
And welcome to The Forbidden Kingdom!
One of my most dearly loved genres is the martial arts film. I love a good chop socky flick! Aside from an appreciation for the combative arts, I've always been fascinated with Chinese and Oriental history and culture. It's something I've inherited from my dad, and it's still there today. I watch pretty much every high kicking action movie I can get my hands on, I trained in karate for five years and earned a black belt, and I even listen to oriental classical music when I want to chill out.
In short, I'm a nerd! And when two of my favourite martial arts masters combine forces to make a movie together, I'm first in line.
Which, aside from a name, is something I share with the protagonist of ‘The Forbidden Kingdom'; Jason!
Jason is a kid from Boston who is even more obsessed with the kung fu flicks than I am. He's got posters of countless films and movie stars on his wall, and his only real friend is a very old Chinese man named Hop who runs a pawn shop, where Jason spends a great deal of his time looking for hidden gems of the kung fu genre.
One day, Jason finds a mysterious staff in the back of the shop, and when he is bullied into helping tough guys rob the store and Hop is shot, the store owner gives him the staff and tells him to return it to its rightful owner. Soon enough, the magical powers of the staff transport Jason to the Forbidden Kingdom (basically a melting pot of every wushu movie ever) where he must return the staff to its rightful owner, the imprisoned Monkey King.
Jackie Chan plays Lu, a drunken master who befriends and trains Jason; Jet Li is the imprisoned Monkey King as well as a monk who is eventually revealed to be another incarnation of the King. There is also Sparrow, a revenge seeking orphan. Opposing them are the evil Jade Warlord who long ago imprisoned the Monkey King, and his witch servant.
The quest to free the Monkey King is a long and entertaining journey for the travellers. But the freedom of the Monkey King is not the only freedom at stake in the film. Far from it. In fact, each character is pursuing freedom in there own way.
For Jason, he is obviously seeking freedom from the Forbidden Kingdom and to return to the land he calls home. But he also must free himself. In Boston he was weak willed and cowardly, as evidenced by his run ins with street tough guys and his failure to defend himself. He has a great appreciation for martial arts (obviously) but it takes his trip to the kingdom and his meeting with the drunken master to truly explore his own potential with the art and within himself. The hardships of their quest and extensive training from his two masters shape Jason into a fledgling warrior, and gives him the confidence he has lacked for so long. After he succeeds in his quest and returns to his world, he is a changed man.
Lu is also looking to free himself from a lie he's been living; he tells people he's a daoist immortal when actually he failed his immortality test. Really he's just a drunken lout, albeit one highly skilled in the martial arts. He also has lived a life where he has not allowed himself to get close to anybody, which comes back to haunt him when he is mortally wounded by the witch and teeters on the brink of death. In a touching scene, Lu tells his student the truth of his mortality and that he's glad he was able to care about someone before he died. Of course, Jason uses his new found skill and courage to charge into certain danger in the keep of the warlord to obtain the elixir of immortality that will save Lu, which he does, and his teacher truly becomes an immortal.
Jet's monk character is searching for freedom from his failures to find the seeker of the staff and revive the Monkey King. At the end of the film it is revealed the monk was actually an incarnation of the King himself, and so the monk is searching for his own freedom, both in restoring the King and returning himself to his true state of being.
As for Sparrow, she was orphaned because of the Jade Warlord's tyranny, and ever since has carried hate and vengeance in her heart. She seeks the death of the warlord, but on a deeper level she seeks freedom from these negative emotions and the way they have impacted her life. Through her dealings with her companions, it's clear she's compassionate and caring at heart, but her life long quest for revenge has darkened her life. The monk sagely points out that vengeance has a way of rebounding upon oneself, and sure enough, Sparrow is slain in her attempt to kill the warlord. But she lives long enough to see him die as well, and to give thanks to Jason, a stranger she came to care about even as she longed for nothing but vengeance.
And of course, the Monkey King is freed from his 500 year imprisonment in a jade statue, defeats his enemy the warlord and frees the land from his reign of tyranny.
While The Forbidden Kingdom is an excellent story about a quest in a beautiful land, it's really a story about freedom, and how each of us have to step out and attain it for ourselves. Even those of us who aren't imprisoned in jade statues.
