![]() ![]() For the sake of wish-fulfillment, we are expected to believe Ni Ni’s combat-ready Chinese princess not only falls in love with Uriah Shelton’s pasty, skinny, whiny American teenager, rather than with Mark Chao’s dedicated and impossibly handsome warrior, but also needs to be rescued by said teenager repeatedly over the course of the film.Īnd yet, there are many saving graces. The Warriors Gate also induces cringe with the outlandish and endlessly belief-obliterating ridiculousness of its plot (see the first paragraph), especially in an overblown wish-fulfilling angle, reminiscent of many an eighties’ quest film, but stretched to absurd proportions: over the course of 100 minutes, the scrawny, slap-worthy Jack gets to not only fend off his bullies and kiss a girl (reasonable goals even though the latter is an empress), but also defeat countless barbarians with instantly-acquired martial arts (no training montage here, just magical powder), and create and sell a video game based on his adventure. And the first half-hour of The Warriors Gate includes online video-games! Extreme biking! Hip Hop dancing! The kids are going to lap this up! They didn’t, the film died a swift death at the Chinese box office. Derivativeness aside, it’s a typical Luc Besson trope to try and cram a film with as many elements perceived to be appealing to his target demographic as possible. This is almost unofficial remake territory. In both films, a bullied American teenager is given a magical artifact by a Chinese shopkeeper and is transported back to Ancient China where he gets two mentors, a goofy one and a stern one, learns martial arts, falls in love with a kick-ass Chinese girl, and then comes back to fight his bullies and eventually get the girl, even though she’s Ancient. Jack is transported into Ancient China, where he’s welcomed by a zany wizard (Francis Ng) and reluctantly embarks on a quest with Zhao to rescue the princess from the hands of the barbarian king Arun (Dave Bautista).īefore even getting into the agonizing ridiculousness of this plot, it’s worth mentioning how derivative it is of Rob Minkoff’s enjoyable adventure The Forbidden Kingdom (2008), with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Despite the mix-up, Zhao leaves Su Lin in the custody of this scrawny teenager, until a few days later barbarians barge into the house through the same box and kidnap Su Lin. ![]() They come from Ancient China and are looking for the Black Knight, a fearless hero who is none other than Jack’s video game avatar. But one night, a princess named Su Lin (Ni Ni) and her bodyguard Zhao (Mark Chao) emerge from that box, right into his bedroom. One day, the latter gives an ancient Chinese box to Jack, who starts using it as a container for his dirty laundry. His only friends are an obese fellow geek who calls himself the “octoman” and Chang, a Chinese shopkeeper who employs him from time to time. His father is out of the picture and his sweet mother (Sienna Guillory) can’t quite make ends meet, so they might have to move out of their house if she can’t make a payment soon. ![]() It follows Jack (Uriah Shelton), a stereotypical American geek who shares his time between video games, biking and being bullied by the jocks in his class. A major co-production between China and France, The Warriors Gate is the brainchild of Luc Besson, who in addition to producing it, co-wrote it with his The Fifth Element/ Kiss of the Dragon/ Taken/ The Transporter partner Robert Mark Kamen. ![]()
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