Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Prof. Popinjay

First published Sept 26, 2020

     I didn’t watch this movie. Not again anyway. When I turned it on I realized I’d seen it back in 1997 and I remembered enough to know I wouldn’t be able to hack it. I love Jackie Chan. I avidly collect his films. There’s just this era of his films I can’t palate and this is one of them.

    It’s not Jackie himself. He is always a joy to watch. Frankly it’s the villains. In these “modern” Jackie Chan films the villains are such an over-the-top ridiculous form of despicable, doing evil things with no purpose other than to present to the audience how despicable they are. Then there’s the mandatory gang of Australian bad-asses with attitudes, clothes, and mullets left over from the 80’s.

A lot of films made overseas take some time to get an international release as the distribution rights are slowly obtained by American companies. Frequently, a foreign sequel will become popular in the states before its predecessor and so the proceeding film gets a re-edit and sometimes even a rebranding and is then released internationally as the sequel rather than the prequel. It’s insane. This means even though we in the states regard a film as a sequel, this new-to-us film is in fact a prequel filmed considerably earlier and often times you can really tell. There are many things that seem particularly dated. Sometimes the “sequel” isn’t even connected to the original at all but simply features the same actors and a reference to the original is made in the dubbing. Amazingly many of the newer Chinese films are filmed in English to assist in expediting international release and then later re-dubbed into Mandarin.

      It doesn’t help that at one time the foreign perception of an American gangster seemed to manifest as a mullited product of the 80’s anyway. Frankly I’m a little worried about how I’ll receive Wonder Woman 84 considering my distaste for villains of that era.