Hollywood’s Forbidden, Regressive Kingdom

I felt quite American this weekend while I was in Los Angeles, where it was 100 degrees and there was a wildfire in Arcadia. Instead of being concerned by the signs of hell on earth: smoke darkening the sky and the swathe of orange tracing the hill, I did what we Americans are known to do: we went to the mall to see the #1 movie in America. In this case, the #1 movie in America was The Forbidden Kingdom - the long-awaited first-time martial arts mashup of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. While Chan and Li elevate what at times might qualify as a tepid homage to classic Chinese kung-fu films (not like an homage is necessary considering a new one is made every year), the movie was generally abysmal and full of poorly developed Tolkien cliches.

But this is not a review of The Forbidden Kingdom . This is a commentary on the unfortunate Hollywood practice of casting bad white actors at the center of a film about Asian-Americans. It’s the yellow version of the white woman inner-city teacher film cliche (Dangerous Minds , Freedom Writers ). Let’s list a few:

- 21: Jeff Ma, the subject of the book "Burning Down the House," the true story of an MIT Blackjack Club which counted cards in Vegas on the way to winning millions, was played by Jim Sturgess

- Balls of Fury: No one says ping-pong better than Dan Fogler, especially when he scores the beautiful Maggie Q.

- The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift : no one says Tokyo better than Lucas Black

The Forbidden Kingdom is just the latest example. The lead offender in this film is Michael Angarano is so bad in this film (in fact, all the white actors are so poorly written and such miserable actors that all of them recall Cynthia Rothrock films and make me yearn for the fine thespian line readings of Ralph Macchio . The filmmakers (Director Rob Minkoff who directed other Asian-American films like Stuart Little and Writer John Fusco, whose previous claims to fame include writing credits for Young Guns II and being friends with Jon Bon Jovi) should have just admitted that they couldn’t afford Shia Lebeouf.

Alright, we get it Hollywood. White people can love kung-fu movies enough to mangle them too with a few too many white guys. But these stories are so transparently about Asian-Americans that there appears no other reason to include a white actor other than to appeal to white Americans. And in some ways, that’s the most offensive aspect of this trend, that Hollywood can’t conceive of a movie doing well without a white main character even though there have been plenty of examples in recent years (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , the Harold and Kumar movies, the Rush Hour movies, etc.). The Forbidden Kingdom is just another example of cultural laziness all around. Lazy filmmaking, lazy directing, lazy screenwriting, lazy casting. A film that’s already got two of the largest Chinese film stars going at it for the first time decides to cast a white teenager in its lead because for some reason, they didn’t feel Jackie Chan, Jet Li and a half dozen other Chinese movie stars could carry the film, even though they’ve carried a number of crappier films for the past decade. That’s the ultimate insult of The Forbidden Kingdom and the others of its kind, the willingness to wallow in old cliches cum racial stereotypes instead of taking advantage of the new diversity in Hollywood.

For that reason, The Forbidden Kingdom is not just a bad movie, it’s a regressive one.