Double the fist

Tag : Mandarin Collar

It's the stuff martial-arts buffs - and studio executives - dreamof: two of the biggest figures in martial-arts films appearing sideby side on the big screen.
Jet Li and Jackie Chan have long been friends off-screen but RobMinkoff's new film, The Forbidden Kingdom , is the first time the giants of kung fu have been in the samemovie.
Working with two such figures involved a degree of diplomacy,Minkoff says, even though the stars get on well. "We had to askourselves, 'How are we going to deal with two very differentactors, given the kind of attention they deserve?"' he says. "Thisis despite the two playing, in essence, supporting roles."
In the film, the two accompany an American martial-arts film fan,Jason (Michael Angarano), who has somehow been transported tomedieval China. The two, plus a vengeance-seeking female fighter(played by Liu Yifei), are entrusted to help him return a fightingstaff found in a Boston junk shop to its rightful owner, the MonkeyKing, who has had the misfortune of being turned to stone by anevil warlord.
Along the way they cross a debilitating desert and ward off a witchraised by wolves and battalions of soldiers who, in fine kung futradition, attack the heroes in orderly queues.
Minkoff awarded some of the film's jokes to the normally seriousLi, rather than giving them all to karate clown Chan, who plays adrunk traveller who befriends Jason. In addition to his sombre roleas a monk accompanying the travellers, Li also plays the moreirreverent Monkey King. Chan also plays two roles, appearing at thefilm's beginning and end as a blind Boston shopkeeper.
Despite Li and Chan's characters taking a journey togetherthroughout the film, Minkoff could not resist getting the two toslug it out at least once, so he wrote in a tussle when thecharacters first meet. However, with two martial-arts superstars inthe cast, Minkoff admits the fight sequences needed to bechoreographed by someone the actors respected, so he began the"very difficult" task of hiring Woo-Ping Yuen.
"We needed someone of his stature the actors could look up to,"Minkoff says. "He and Jackie Chan grew up in the same martial-artsschool in Hong Kong."
Woo-Ping began his showbusiness career as a stuntman beforeco-ordinating fight scenes in early kung fu films such as Mad Killer .
Like many of The Forbidden Kingdom's cast and crew, Woo-Ping has worked in Eastern and Western cinema.He worked with Chan on the groundbreaking The Legend Of Drunken Master , with Li on Fearless and on popular US productions such as the Matrix and Kill Bill films. His pioneering work with wires and ropes had a biginfluence on Eastern fight scenes, with his influences nowregularly seen in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .