Review: The Forbidden Kingdom Trailer

The Forbidden Kingdom is a movie due for release in theaters this April. The story revolves around a boy from South Boston named Jason Tripitikas (played by Michael Angarano) who somehow finds an old weapon. This weapon transports Jason to ancient China, where he meets a martial artist named Lu Yan (played by Jackie Chan). Jason and Lu work together on a quest to save the Monkey King (played by Jet Li).

The film is labeled as an action movie, but it also appears to have a bit of comedy, and a whole lot of fairytale. According to IMDb, the movie will have a rating in the United States of PG-13, which seems appropriate based just on the scenes from the tailer. There is a lot of martial arts action and with that comes violence. I do not know if there should be any language warnings as there was not a whole lot of talking in the trailer.

The trailer does not give much information on the movie, but most trailers are like that. Based on what I saw, though, this movie seems to be something that I would not mind watching. It has a little bit of everything thus could appeal to many different people. The scenes that are shown in the trailer are humorous and enticing, although it appears a bit immature. It follows a rite-of-passage storyline, in fact the text in the trailer indicate that that is the whole point of the story. There were scenes indicating that there may be a boy-meets-girl theme in there as well.

The Forbidden Kingdom reminds me of several of Jackie Chan's previous movies, especially The Medallion because of its connections of martial arts and the supernatural. According to IMDb recommendations, viewers who liked Big Trouble in Little China (with Kurt Russell) and The Quest (with Jean-Claude Van Damme) would also like this movie.

Fans of Jackie Chan or Jet Li will probably find this film worth watching, but I believe that the major viewers of this film will be in their teens or early twenties. Ultimately, I would recommend this movie as something worth seeing, when you do not want to think too hard about a movie. It sounds like the plot will be very simple and looks like the settings will not be very historically accurate. I would not recommend watching this to learn about Chinese culture or history. It appears to be purely for entertainment.

IMDb, The Forbidden Kingdom, IMDb.com, Inc.
IMDb, The Forbidden Kingdom Trailer, IMDb.com, Inc.
IMDb, Recommendations for The Forbidden Kingdom, IMDb.com, Inc.