MovieChat Forums > Xin shao lin si (2011) Discussion > So... the message behind this movie is.....

So... the message behind this movie is...? *SPOILERS*


Second warning. Spoilers below...





Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those angry little dweebs who post angst ridden opinions about how because all waiting staff in a movie is one race, then the movie is obviously racist and evil - or some other esoteric drivel.

However please let me summarise this movie.
In China, it is Western loving misguided brother fighting heartland/traditional brother that causes all the pain and suffering there. However it is the evil foreigners/Westerners who really are the cause of it all as they want to steal all the ancient Chinese artifacts. They get these treasures by tricking the leaders into taking away all of China's land by building railroads over it (but in reality they are acting digging up the land that has the spirits of the ancestors in it and thieving the goods).
The hero rediscover his inherent goodness in Shaolin (which is the Spiritual bedrock of China) and tries to stop this dastardly scheme, however the evil foreigners realise they are missing out on these treasures so they decide "hmmmm drat it all. Lets bomb the place and kill everyone. Then its home for cucumber sandwiches and the child's blood soup for afters. mmuhahahaha"
Then heroics, lots of explosions/deaths etc. Will the Spiritual heart of China be destroyed by the evil foreigners and their local minions..? The drama...

Will someone please tell me why the evil foreigners will go to all that trouble and expense (lets face it, weapons and ammunition are expensive!) to steal some old statues and gear? The goods weren't even made of precious metals or anything - who would realistically want them? Oh, let me guess - they were a symbol of the soul of China being ripped out of the ground and ruined by the evil Westerners?

The Boxer rebellion it was hinting at was really all about trade and conquest (which all civilisations have done at some point). These silly old statues had nothing to do with the wars of the time. I am aware that the British Empire did some horrible things, but the kind of xenophobia in this movie is quite disturbing to see. If a studio in the West painted all the 'foreigner' characters in the same stupidly malicious manner they would be up for a hate crime.

To all the people who read this and say that it is just a movie and lighten up I would say; that doesn't make it right. I'm not trying to be a boring old puritan or anything but surely a studio can come up with something better? China and the West do not need inflammatory ideas like this whipping up people into a nationalistic fervor. That can only end badly for everyone.

Its a pity as the martial arts scenes were great. There were some touching moments in there and some awesome action sequences. The acting was fine too and I enjoyed seeing Jet and Jackie together in the movie.


Flame me if you want. All I ask is that you watch the movie again before you post and think about the underlying message.

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(Jet Li was not in this movie. Only Jackie Chan. Jet was in the 80's Shaolin. Nicholas Tse and Andy Lau are in this movie along with Jackie Chan, thus I don't understand your Jet and jackie comment, I think you need to watch it again -laughs-)

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Dude come on now

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I wonder why they make a movie about foreigners stealing Chinese culture, not about about PRC government destroying Chinese culture and murdering millions of Chinese people. Shows what kind of country China still is.

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""""murdering millions of Chinese people""""

What? You have your source to back up your statement or did you just spit out some nonsense out of your hatred on the Chinese government? True, they did murder innocent people and it was a tragedy for those victoms. The death toll at the Tiananmen Square protest was around 3000, not millions.

If you talk about murder, there are also indirect ways to murder someone, like sending bunch of innocent but misdirected soldiers to a meaningless war. Would you consider that murder as well?

Don't get me wrong though, I still hate the Chinese leader back then, Deng XiaoPing for what he had done at the Square.

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[deleted]

[deleted]

hahaha you want to talk about Tianmen but ignore the cultural revolution?? That's like wanting to talk about crystal night but ignoring the holocaust.

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nonsense? Shamshangdoo, do you know Chinese history at all?
Ever heard of Mao? the Cultural revolution? the great Leap? Gang of four?
So many precious Chinese cultures, historic artifacts, books, architectures, paintings...etc etc and worst of all, humanities... were completely destroyed. Please educated yourself with Chinese history before all obnoxious here.

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The movie is not about evil foreigners, or foreigners, at all. The white bad guy with the weird Chinese accent is just an one dimensional bad guy that's in no way shape or form the focus of this movie.

The focus of the movie is the greed that overtake these warlords until they are willing to kill even their own brothers to satisfy this greed, and the consequences and their regret when they realize what they have become and sees the result of their actions.

I'm gonna take kind of a cheap shot at you (because your simplistic explanation of this movie pisses me off a little), and say you are probably white and therefore you try to make the white character in this movie more important than anything in this movie had suggested. If you watch a James Bond film, do you focus the whole movie's motivation on the silly one dimensional evil henchman who gets less than 10 min of screen time? You tried to impose your own self importance in a Chinese movie about Chinese people. Just stop it, you are not that important.


I have to return some video tapes

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Agreed with NuggetsVSCav, the westerns weren't even important.

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I agree with Nuggets too. If you look at the movie again doublethink03 -- who are the ones fighting eachother? Who is killing who? It's CIVIL war MAN for MOST of the movie not including the small opportunist artillery fire moment near the end by the foreigners.

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Same here.

I think "the foreigners" represented greed and a nebulous "other" that the various warlords could have been united against, but were too busy with conquest, rivalry, materialism, etc.

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Sigh... in the end this movie is all just about typical China's propagandas in order to overlook their past warlords actions, and used the westerners as the scapegoats to switch the blame around. How typical of China's movies for the past decades.

Historically, Chinese leaders had killed MORE of their own people than any other race on earth. But now what? They wanted to use foreigners to make Chinese viewers overlook the crimes of their own current/past warlords/governments?

@Nuggets
I think you're the one who've tried too hard to impose your own self importance in a Chinese movie about Chinese people, while overlooking the deaths of untold millions of your own race (Chinese peple) by the actions of your own government and their propagandas. The way I see it, you're only arguing for the sake of winning an argument, not to learn from the truth and fight for a change & the future of Chinese people. I've seen men like you as a typical mainlanders: far from smart, but stubborn and loud to make yourself look intelligent. How pathetic...

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The ironic bigotry of your last sentence shows who is truly the pathetic one here. I also find it quite laughable that you jump to conclude Nuggets is Chinese, which wasn't implied in the slightest.

You throw out random facts like "the deaths of untold millions of [Chinese people] by the actions of the [Chinese government]". Sure, maybe this is the case (intentions aside), but why does it matter here? In case you haven't noticed, most of the killing in this movie WAS done by Chinese people. Is there propaganda in this film? Maybe a little, but there is far worse in Western media.

And please elaborate on how propaganda has been "typical" of Chinese films in the past decade. The fact that this film hardly has any already puts a dent in your argument, and judging by the mere suggestion, I'd guess that you don't watch Chinese cinema enough to hold a credible opinion.

To OP, Shaolin is far from the "spiritual heart" of China, although ironically that's what most Westerners perceive it to be. This was simply a movie designed to capitalize on modern fascination with the Shaolin Temple. Do a little research on Chinese history, and maybe you'll realize just how insignificant this movie is regarding faucets of nationalism - which seems to be a popular stab at any movie released from China (unfounded as it may be).

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I agree. The foreigners were side characters at best. This movie focused on the tyranny of the warlords and their civil wars. As you say, the movie's message appears to be more about regret than anything.

Great film by the way.

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Artifacts don't need to be of precious metal,
Their age makes them precious.
There are plenty of Chinese artifacts still in the Western World which were taken in the early 20th century.

Shaolin is NOT the "Spiritual bedrock of China" as you point out.

Confucianism/Taoism/local folk customs in their evolved form are, its a big country & can't be lumped together, besides Shaolin became prominent way way late in their history.


About the Westerners being deionized, actually the scene where the English guy orders Canons to be fired on the Temple reminds me of "Jallianwala Bagh massacre" in 1919 in India.
Very similar in how it happened with more horrifying results.
So in historical context what was being shown was how the west really behaved at THAT time in its colonies and in territories it wanted access to.

Historical facts aside, i think every country makes nationalistic movies, but when there is pre-existing bias, this feeling of the other side demonizing "us" & vice-versa is more prominent.

US nationalistic movies will get similar treatment in China and does Chinese movies to US audience.

Personally i don't see it as Xenophobia in the literary sense,
the West DID in-fact do absolutely horrendous stuff in the past, most have not even Apologized till date for those acts (its another argument which says saying sorry for stuff that happened all those years makes little sense)

So its pretty understandable the anger some societies still feel and movies are targeted at that sentiment. Its natural.
Whether it should be given promotion like in a movie is another matter.

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Your point is... ?

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It's just a sort of standard plot for chinese movies set around about that period in time, it is racist but not too far from the truth, you just use artifacts in a movie because building infrastructure is boring and kind of hard to be angry about. It's only a back-drop for the redemption, fighting and holiness.

As for the people's revolution, in any revolution people die, in a country with lots of people lots of people die. The amount of people starving to death in china has been reduced to the point where the revolution has saved more people than it's killed.

Mao wrote quite a few books on his political-philosophy which are good to read if you want some more perspective on the whole thing.

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Meanwhile the rest of the world doesn't care about this thread or these rants. I enjoyed the movie. Now off to the next film on Netflix.

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You win. Most ignorant post on this board. Congrats.

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Actually, I think you just won.

A pithy nine word reply that doesn't contribute anything to the discussion... and you call me ignorant?
Nice one.

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Actually the whole movie seemed so pointless, that I kinda like the fact that the evil western devils rained hell on them.

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Heh I think you won the post of the thread there.

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