Summer Movies
June 20, 2003
When I was growing up, summer meant one thing — movies. And not just any old movies, but the movies that I looked forward to seeing all year long. Summer was (and still is) the time when the studios released their big guns, generally those filled with action, special effects, comedy or some combination of the above. Ghostbusters, Back To The Future, Beverly Hills Cop, Poltergeist, the Indiana Jones series — those are the films that I associate with the summers of my youth, when my friends and I would buy a ticket for the first matinee and spend the rest of the day sneaking into everything playing in the multiplex.
The one thing missing from the vast majority of these movies was any sort of significant Asian presence. And when you did see Asian faces in these films, they tended to be stereotypical (like the anonymous hordes of Vietnamese soldiers plowed down by Sylvester Stallone in Rambo) or their existence had to be justified by an overt Asian element, like martial arts (i.e. Pat Morita in the Karate Kid series).
Now flash forward to the summer of 2003. We’re three years into the 21st century and the question is: Have things really changed that much from the days when I watched Innerspace (which was set in San Francisco, but, if I remember correctly, featured no Asian cast members, not even a token extra)?
So what does this summer hold?
Three of the most highly anticipated movies have already been released, The Matrix Reloaded, X2 and 2 Fast 2 Furious — and each features prominent Asian Pacific American characters in its cast. The Matrix Reloaded creates a multicultural world populated by APAs like Randall Kim’s Keymaker and Keanu Reeves’ Neo. X2 has Kelly Hu playing the villainous Lady Deathstrike. And Devon Aoki plays one of the fast-driving hotties in 2 Fast 2 Furious.
That APAs have significant supporting roles in these movies as characters that aren’t defined solely by their ethnicity, is an indication that there has been some progress since my youthful movie-going days. On the other hand, there’s still a feeling of marginalization.
2 Fast 2 Furious (like its predecessor The Fast and The Furious) is an example of that. Both movies were an attempt to explore the contemporary world of streetcar racing. The reality is that most of the people who are a part of this car culture are APA youths, but that isn’t reflected in either film.
Opening on June 27 is another highly anticipated sequel, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, starring Lucy Liu as one of the three angels. The first Angels featured action, comedy and hot women kicking ass, grossing $125 million at the box office. The sequel will most likely feature more of the same and be just as successful.
No one’s going to mistake the Charlie’s Angels films for Citizen Kane. But despite the rumors of script problems and clashing personalities on the set, the first one did what a summer popcorn movie should do. It was fun and entertaining and was a much better film than other projects with better pedigrees like Tim Burton’s lifeless and incoherent remake of The Planet of the Apes.
What was also cool about Charlie’s Angels is that it features an APA actor as one of the leads, on the same level as the characters played by Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz. At the time she was cast in the first Angels, Liu was a rising star but not in the ranks of Diaz or Barrymore. (The part of the third Angel was originally going to be played by Thandie Newton before she dropped out.) So it’s to the producers’ credit that they chose Liu over the many other non-APA name actresses who were lobbying for the part.
What’s lacking from the Hollywood releases is any significant presence of APA males. Aside from The Matrix Reloaded and the third in the American Pie franchise — American Wedding — which will see the return of John Cho (Better Luck Tomorrow) as the MILF guy, there doesn’t appear to be any other APA men of note.
Where Asian and APA males do have a presence is behind the scenes of three more of the season’s big releases. The Hulk finally makes the leap to the multiplex courtesy of director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Hong Kong director Ronny Yu’s Freddy Vs. Jason will pit two of the biggest horror icons — Freddy from the Nightmare on Elm Street series and Jason from the Friday the 13th series — against each other. And the big screen version of the television series SWAT is co-produced by George Huang (Swimming With Sharks).
Of these films, The Hulk has the most at stake. It’s a project that’s reportedly costing over $100 million, helmed by a director not known for making big-budget, special effects popcorn movies. But the early buzz on the film has not been positive. There were rumors that Ang Lee was making more of an art film than a summer blockbuster and that Universal (the studio bankrolling the film) was unhappy with what they were seeing. There were extensive re-shoots and after the fully computer-generated Hulk made his first appearance during a Super Bowl spot, the word was out — the Hulk looked fake.
Recently, an early cut of the film made its way onto the Internet and the response from fans who supposedly watched this version has ranged from frustration to hostility. Fan postings on Internet sites like Ain’t It Cool News have been downright nasty. A typical example from one self-proclaimed Hulk fan on the site reads: “I saw the workprint of The Hulk and it f—king sucks! Bad CGI, bad acting, bad sound, bad script, bad casting choices … All bad!”
Ang Lee has responded to the fan rumblings by saying that the finished film and the final CGI rendering of the Hulk himself will be very different from the early versions people might have seen. Ain’t It Cool News founder Harry Knowles also recently posted his own review of The Hulk on his website after catching a sneak peek of the finished film. In a glowing review, Knowles praises the CGI work, the script, casting and the direction.
“Ang Lee has done a tremendous job here,” he wrote. “He’s constructed a wonderful film that dares to be very smart, artistic, thrilling and exhilarating.” Of course the moment Knowles’ review was posted, fans posted responses suggesting that Knowles was being “paid” to be a mouthpiece for Universal. The Hulk opens this weekend and audiences can decide for themselves whether this will be another Spiderman or whether it will lay an egg like Howard The Duck.
For moviegoers who are looking for more complex and fully-realized Asian films this summer, the arthouse is still the best option. Having already been released in Chicago and the Bay Area, Eric Byler’s Charlotte Sometimes opens in several Los Angeles theatres this weekend. Charlotte Sometimes, an examination of the love lives of four young APAs, garnered two IFP Independent Spirit Award nominations earlier this year.
Also hitting arthouses this summer is a slate of films from Asia. Currently in theatres: Chen Kaige’s latest, Together, which tells the story of a father and his violin prodigy son and the Pang brothers’ supernatural thriller The Eye, which Tom Cruise’s production company is currently re-making. On deck: the Japanese import The Sea Is Watching with a script by the late Akira Kurosawa, the Hong Kong action thriller So Close and the romantic epic The Legend of Suriyothai set in 16th century Thailand. Others films not to miss are Starkiss: Circus Girls in India, which tells the story of Nepalese kids sold to the circus by their parents, Hong Kong’s big hit Shaolin Soccer, about a kung-fu monk who leads a soccer team, and Whale Rider, which tells of a young Maori girl’s fight to prove her destiny.
With the success of Asian foreign films in America and heavy-hitters like Ang Lee and Lucy Liu playing such a major part in big budget Hollywood franchises, there’s no doubt that much has changed since I whiled away my summer days at the movies.
Still, I look forward to the day when I see two APA men in a buddy-action movie like Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys 2 or someone like Kelly Hu kicking ass as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. I look forward to the day when an APA kid who spends his summer days sneaking into the movies can look up at the screen to see Asian faces staring back.
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