MovieChat Forums > Bulletproof Monk (2003) Discussion > GO BACK TO WHERE YOU COME FROM!

GO BACK TO WHERE YOU COME FROM!

posted 22 years ago by malamal
6 replies | jump to latest

I mean that in the nicest possible way, I know Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan , Jet Li and the others have come to Hollywood to get paid 'Big Time', but at the cost of degrading themselves and their talent by making such rubbish?

All three of the Actors that I mentioned are legends across asia I mean mega superstars, albeit not as well paid as Hollywood but legend none the less.
For me I feel that they are degrading themselves by making such movies since they have arrived in Hollywood, what they should do is get the Hollywood studios to pay up and let them carry on making films in Hong Kong but backed by a Hollywood studio financially , much as the Bollywood film industry does today,
by doing so all will be happy the stars get paid, the good films get made and maybe I'll stop moaning and go and get laid!

[–] illeatyourdog 22 years ago

Why dont you just get laid regardless of what movies they make and make a girl moan?

[–] bananaman2000 22 years ago

In fact, what you are saying has already happened with films like HERO, THE MEDALLION and CROUCHING TIGER. They are doing that. They aren't degrading themselves. Sometimes they made bad movies in Hong Kong as well. Black Mask wasn't very good, Fantasy Mission force was godawful. But I loved Shanghai Knights, and Kiss of the Dragon was much better than Black Mask. And besides, Crouching Tiger was basically an American movie, only filmed in Chinese. It was written in English and then translated, by Americans. It was produced by an American. The director, although born in Taiwan, is American. It was a Westernized Wuxia film. It didn't do very well in China because of that reason.

[–] malamal 22 years ago

The fact that movies such as Hero , CTHD have done so well and are so good only adds testament to what I am saying. I say more of these and less of these Americanised Kung Fu meets cowboy meets Gangsta Rap etc nonsense.

If somebody is capable of making classs films such as those mentioned and many more why make such Hollywood trash?
You may have loved Shanghai Knights but to me it is precisely the Americanised trash I am speaking against, it was a total rip off of the superior HK flick Once upon a Time in China and America , helmed by maestro Sammo Hung and starring Jet Li. Kiss of the Dragon again was average at best perhaps one of the better movies of Jet Li venturing outside HK but this was due to it being of a European flavour and glamourised style much what we have come to expect from Luc Besson and his cohorts.
Now on to CTHD, yes Ang Lee made this film with a western audience in mind, so that they may appreciate and give respect due to Wuxia genre but other than financially in no whatsoever is it '' an American movie''. If anything it stands against the type of movies I am slagging off.

Yes HK sometimes churns out trashy movies as do all film industrys but at least their trashy movies do not have someone like say Harrison Ford! degrading himself making a movie that is so bad and so ridiculous, I suppose this sounds more ridiculous than the scenario but if you could imagine with the roles reversed in Hollywood. Jackie Chan himself admits that he is not happy working in these Hollywood productions where he says he has not as much creative freedom to do as he desires.

At the end of the day you know as well as I do these guys could'nt care less all they want is to get paid , lets face it they all getting over the hill. I dont think they would dispute what they are making is trash (Hey there's a market for it) so why are you?
All I am saying is to me in my opinion it is beneath them.

[–] bananaman2000 22 years ago

I see you point, but it is a neccessary evil. They want to expand their fan base. Plus, they can use the comparitavely huge amounts of money they recieve from Hollywood films to make more personal projects. I did realize when watching the Shanghai films that they are obviously inspired by Once Upon A Time in China and America, but it is not only Jackie Chan that makes me love those films, it is Owen Wilson. They are exceptions. And yes, it is the European flavor added to Kiss of the Dragon by Mr. Besson that makes it better. But I think it needs to be done. Even the recent trend of Hollywood buying up the remake rights to every Asian movie that was or is remotely popular is being accepted in Asia, because they money they get for the purchase of the remake rights usually equals the budget of the film. I think they see Hollywood as a source of vast amounts of money to make what they want, eventually. I remember reading an interview with Tsui Hark and he said how for John Woo, the next step had to be Hollywood, because after Hard Boiled, Hong Kong cinema could not foot the bill for his movies. In the end, it is all about the money. Plus, I think a lot of them were worried about the Chinese take over of Hong Kong, so that added fuel to the fire.

[–] XOXOgrI44 22 years ago

you can't say that crouching tiger did badly (or any movie really) in the East, b/c in China EVERYTHING is bootlegged beyond belief. My friend and i would joke that in Hong Kong, if you were to watch a movie in the theaters, you could walk down the block and pick up a bootleg copy of it. And plus, the time period and theme of Crouching tiger, as well as the martial arts (when i say martial arts, i mean wire-fu) has been done to DEATH in China. In China, and Taiwan you could literally watch EVERYDAY on tv different tv shows that are in the exact same time period as crouching tiger, and still see people fly through the air.

Also we can't always blame actors when movies go bad. There have been plenty of times when an actor has talked about how a movie they did turned out completely different from what they had in mind. And with all the special effects, CGI, in movies these days, actors have said that they had no idea what the movie would look like.

Even JOHN WOO, a director himself, has expressed that his movies don't always go they way he wants them, b/c he doesn't always have creative control--he's said that hard target was a completely different movie from what he intended it for it to be. I think that American movie studios don't allow john woo to be as creative as he was in his HK movies. (maybe too violent)

it's really sad b/c as an actor u don't always have creative control (if @ all) of the movies you're in, but they're the ones that take all the credit when movies do go well.

[–] bananaman2000 22 years ago

Actually I can say Crouching Tiger did bad in China because it did. I know how bad the pirating problem is and I know about the Wuxia TV shows, I have been there, I have seen it first hand, and I live in Korea right now and I get Chinese TV channels. Neither of those are the reason it did bad. It did bad because of two main reasons. One, Ang Lee chose to film the movie in Mandarin, which Chow Yun-Fat does not speak and Michelle Yeoh speaks very little. So, although we were oblivious to this fact, they had terrible accents and their acting seem forced. Chow Yun-Fat had to phonetically memorize his lines. Second, people couldn't accept it is a proper Wuxia movies because the story was "Westernized" so to speak, so that it would be a success all over the world, as it was. But, in doing this, people in China didn't accept it as a true Wuxia film. They are not sick of Wuxia in China. Take a look at Hero. It smashed all box office records. It is a part of their life. They take it very seriously. Crouching Tiger tried to Westernize the genre, and they didn't like it.