Overtones is an understatement. The message is: all outsiders are bad news, especially Americans. Odd dialogue given good and evil are displayed in both chinese and westerners. Maybe something was lost in the translation to english. I cant read lips. I sure as hell cant read lips in chinese.
The martial arts scenes are terrific. Jet Li is, IMHO, the best. Jackie Chan does stunts, Li fights.
If you can get past the dialogue, it's a great movie.
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It is suppose to have a 'dislike for foreigners' theme. Americans promised handsome pays, good livelyhood when recuiting Chinese workers. Chinese were cheated when brought over to America to build the railroads. All the dynamite-lighting were done by Chinese, and the Americans would slowly pull the Chinese back up so he would die in the explosion. Back then, such 'humor' was 'okay', because society was very well racist. "Not a Chinaman's chance." You don't have to pay a dead man.
To under why Chinese characters in the movie are so pissed. Study a chapter call "Century of Humiliation" in China. China was colonized by like 8 countries. America being one of them.
There is also an anti-Manchurian theme in the movie. At the time, China was ruled by Machurians.
It is not big deal that this movie has a some anti-American theme in it. Look at all the Bond movies.
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- Cyberian
Cyberian-1 has watched 'Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story' one too many times.
shareYeah, you try and be a once proud Empire brought to it's knees by underhanded dealing, unfair treaties, and a failing government, then not have any animosity towards the countries that abused their tenure in your country. You obviously have no clue what the Chinese had to endure.
Most likely Tsui Hark and Jet Li didn't feel these things about foreigners, but wanted to capture the feeling of the time period. You can't have early 19th century China WITHOUT having oppressive foreigners. Hell, the White Lotus Cult in the second movie was loosely based off of the Yihequan's (commonly known as the Boxers) in China.
"Loosely based" nothing! There really was a White Lotus Cult. There may still be one today! One of their offshoots eventually became the Triads.
"Farts! Double farts! Turds! Double Turds!"
--Caddyshack, 1980
Haha, I guess you have no understanding of your own ethnocentricitism. Let's go and look what the Occidential World has brought to this world with their clever inventions such as guns and the a-bomb, not to mention all the cultural diseases such as obesity. The movie series if anything doesnt even touch the major issues mostly Western exploitation then it should, but once again, this is a movie.
I just totally debunk this comment that the movie had "strong racial overtones."
Wait, I guess the movies such as Alamo really did justice. Right? When in fact the White killed the Native Americans, then the other way around. But that is how Hollywood works.
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"Let's go and look what the Occidential World has brought to this world with their clever inventions such as guns and the a-bomb, not to mention all the cultural diseases such as obesity."
The Chinese invented the gun.
<p>This movie has a justified negative portrayal of westerners, because there was a lack of cultural and racial sensitivity in the 18th and 19th centuries as Europeans and later Americans went in search of new colonies and natural resources to exploit. he time period appears to be the late 1800s, a time when black Americans were barely out of slavery and still badly mistreated even as free men. East Asia was considered ripe for the picking by not only the Americans and British, but French, Portuguese and Spanish. And, as another poster stated, the Manchurians, a group of foreign Asians, were occupying and ruling China.
<p>In fact, I consider "Once Upon a Time in China" to be a kind of Asian "Braveheart," as the native peoples are fighting against an oppressive group of foreign occupiers/colonizers. I am an American and don't mind the portrayals of westerners in this movie, because they truly were a bunch of bastards interested only in money and the natural resources they could pull out of East Asia. The religious leaders didn't care about native religions and considered such to be barbaric. The opium trade was in part started by westerners and rapidly became a monkey on the backs of many a Chinese.
<p>So, don't cry, westerners. We have inaccurately portrayed Asians in our movies for decades, so now see how your own medicine tastes.
you mean they are lowering themselves to our standards? hehe.
and i didnt really see the racism. racism is when you treat others differently while they are the same (except for race). the contact between Chinese and westerners in the movie was so limited that there was no racism visible. only a mild form of xenofobia. which is kind of logical, since the xenos in this movie were something to fear. and lastly, the bad guys were americans after all. they were much more brutal than the dutch for example so i dont feel offended. ;)
This film dealt with issues of colonisation, cultural identity and foreign exploitation of China's people and resources, yes, it does have heavy anti-american sentiments, but all justifiable. There is no denying the horrific travesties of the time period inflicted upon the chinese people by the so-called civilised saviours. There's no way to get around it. You cannot condemn honesty.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
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I think there are merits to both sides of this debate; while I think calling the movie racist and xenophic misses virtually all of the nuance of the script (another poster rightly noted that the film is also critical of Manchu rule, not just "the West"), as well as the relative historical accuracy of the movie in terms of the actual behavior of imperial occupiers under the Treaty Port system, it's true that the movie occasionally borrows a little too heavily from the classic anti-Western tropes to the point that it starts to feel strained. I'll conceed that.
This particular argument, however, is remarkably stupid. Yes, in fact, Adolf Hitler committed the largest genocide in history. But you will notice that he is not exactly neglected by the movie industry; in fact, the Holocaust is arguably the most heavily cinematically documented event in the history of the world, in terms of sheer amount of film. Napolean Bonaparte and France's conquest of Europe is the subject of more films than I can count in European cinema (although, granted, I'm pretty bad with numbers). I'm reasonably sure Hark would have no problems saying they were horrifying men too, but his film is about an event that is a little more close to the immediate emotional world of his audience, and it doesn't exactly seem illegitimate for a filmmaker to want to examine an underexplored and violent period in what he regards as his people's history. To lump OUTIC in with generalized "America-bashing" seems pretty facile (remember, when it was filmed in 1991, unlike today, America's image was pristine and its popularity in global terms was unparalleled and still growing, it's not as if he was just bandwagoning with some global US-hating rhetoric that was popular at the time)...it's quite possible for a filmmaker to be both critical of a country's current government -and- historical atrocities committed by other countries (as, in fact, Hark has been). He wasn't trying to "prove" anything; not every film is directed by Michael Moore, and there's no reason to be so hyperdefensive of America. After all, if things really are "different today," then recognizing mistakes of the past in the US' dealings with China is not only unthreatening, it's a necessary part of the advance of the nation "doing well"...Richard Nixon of all people made that argument. So quit whining about how abused we are here in the good old U.S. of A., and enjoy a pretty kickass movie that also reflects on more than just contemporary politics.
No way!! I thought Homeboy Stalin had Adolf beat on the genocide department. I thought he has also been proclaimed by historians to be the #1 Killer of Jews ever
"Yes, in fact, Adolf Hitler committed the largest genocide in history."
No he absolutely did not, that's just historical ignorance. The British committed the most complete genocides in history against the native peoples of Australia (esp in Tasmania, they were nearly wiped out-- and no this was not epidemic disease, it was hunting down the people), in Canada and what's now USA before it became independent, in Ireland and esp. in India. By many accounts the British slaughtered close to 80 million people in India (read Mike Davis, "Late Victorian Holocausts"), and very deliberately-- massacring whole towns full of Indians who wanted to resist British colonialism, burning down Indian fields to starve out the people, plus the Brits had their own concentration-like camps on some islands off India's coast. Bo, the British have committed the most and worst Holocausts of any nation, and they've been far less forth-right about it than most other nations.
But it also shows that not all Westerners are bad, and are helped by Wong Fei Hung.
The Reverend Father, at the end when he wears a western suit and takes a picture.
Then in the 2nd film, where he helps protect the british consulate, and saves to westerners with chinese medicine, in which the british consular told Wong Fei Hung how impressed he was, and that he was filled with so much respect.
It shows the good and bad.
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the movie is supposed to inspire chinese pride as well. the point of making it about WONG FEI HUNG is because he is a national hero. if they wanted to make a racist movie hark would have done so and not put wong fei hung in it. but he put wong fei hung in it to instill national pride in those who watched the movie. western films do that too i.e. the alamo. and the truth was the truth its not like this stuff didnt happen and it was made up. in fact, SOME westerners did things worse than what was portrayed in any of the 5 films in the series yet hark didnt include it in the film since it's purpose is to instill pride and not racist views. and as people mentioned before, hark did show positive things about westerners although in that era, there were more bad people than good, which is reflected in the film. furthermore, the film is meant for chinese people to watch. sorry if that offends you but i am sure that when hark made the movie in 1991, he didnt care whether or not it'd have an international audience. with that in mind, probably all of the intended audience knew of these things anyways and would have already made a decision on the topic.
shareI thnik we've had enough of this, so I deleted my posts. I wasn't really mad at the movie, I was more angry about some of the responses to this topic. I kind of wrote it all as one giant response, and I wasn't thinking much. I'm gonna go watch the movie again.
sharein number 2 he defends foreigners/outsiders though!
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