This will be the highest-grossing martial arts film of all time. This is because it's difficult to look at FK and find a reason why people wouldn't want to just give it all their money for the promise of two hours of Jackie-Chan-and-Jet-Li-beating-up special effects. If the current holder of this honor is Rush Hour 2 (a film which was about as much fun as an intervention with a drug addict, and just as clichéd and futilely repetitive) then this is as sure a bet for box-office success as Quentin Tarantino's World of Warcraft/ A-Team Crossover Movie™.
I mean, let's look at all the boxes FK ticks:
- Jackie Chan- more or less the most iconic living actor of the 20th century, and the adolescent equivalent of Shrek.
- Jet Li- to appeal to both the people who want "real martial arts" as well as to those who like "nu-metal" and therefore associate Jet Li with Linkin Park and Massive Attack in a creepy Pavlovian, jumpy-editing kind of way (after Unleashed and every other American film he has put his name to).
- American teenager- who manages to not only come of age but finds his inner strength, becomes a kung fu master and learns the true meaning of friendship along the way, maybe.
- Special Effects!!!!!
- Monkey King. Half the Asians reading this just had a minor stroke because of name recognition just then. Monkey King! Like your mother used to make.
- Pretty Scenery- It's probably New Zealand. That's all you really need to know, right?
So, it has a couple of cool fight scenes, a sweet opening credits sequence which makes you wish you were watching a proper martial arts film, drunken-boxing- and mantis-style, and proves ancient Chinese can be learned in a minute if you have a fully developed Caucasian brain. In short, The Forbidden Kingdom is probably the best American film either Jackie Chan or Jet Li will ever be in, which is kind of like saying it's the least-lethal form of cancer to get. But that's the best one-line quote I am going to give it. Testicular Cancer.
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