The Warrior's Gate (2016)

"We don't need philosophy. We need a break."

The Warrior's Gate was a clunky but affable wish fulfillment for if not teenage boys, twelve-year-old gamer boys. The movie was reminiscent of The Forbidden Kingdom only without actual martial artists in it and any real danger for the main characters.

A teenaged boy named Jack spends most of his time playing a video game as the Black Knight. His house is about to be foreclosed on which doesn't seem to bother him much. After school he works in an antique shop for Mr. Chang who gifts him a large Chinese basket/box. The next thing Jack knows Warrior Zhao (Mark Chao) and Princess Su Lin (Ni Ni) pop out of it looking for his help thinking he is the great warrior The Black Knight. Jack ends up guiding the English speaking Ni Ni through his world, taking her to the mall. When the bad guys show up to kidnap the princess, Jack has to follow them into the basket which takes him to what is supposed to be ye olden times China. Warrior Zhao and a wizard accompany him to help him free the princess with sword and magic. Along their journey, Jack teaches Zhao to break dance and swim. Dave Bautista plays Arun the Cruel, the Horrible, the Terrible, the Miserable who wants to marry the princess who is to become the Empress giving him the fast track to becoming Emperor.

Uriah Shelton was soft and non-threatening as the fish out of water who became a fighter, wooed a princess, and taught Zhao that he needed to take time to have fun. Mark Chao made for a believable warrior and was able to play the straight man to several jokes. He was so darn sexy and capable that it was hard to accept the Caucasian, timid teenager as being of any use. Before you could say "wax on, wax off", Zhao taught Jack one move in a few minutes and the next thing you knew the kid was capable of taking on battle hardened barbarians. And you knew that when he returned to the present, those bullies would be no problem and he would resolve his mom's financial problems with his mad gaming skills. Ni Ni was largely wasted as the princess though she always lit up the screen when she was on it. Bautista made for a large and properly menacing Arun the Cruel, with a few funny quirks. Francis Ng was fine as the strange Wizard who popped in and out to help the heroes. Kara Hui showed up briefly as a witch to challenge the two heroes on a narrow mountain path.

As a flight of fantasy with a thoroughly likeable cast it was not horrible. It wasn't very good either with cringe worthy humor and suffering from a white savior complex. The overly familiar paradigm was about as creative as white bread. Mark Chao and Ni Ni are such strong performers, it felt almost shameful to focus on the teenage boy. Also, the romance didn't work for me. Uriah was playing a young teenager (he was 19 when this film came out) and Ni Ni was 28. It was hard to see what the princess saw in him. Everyone speaking English was also jarring. Perhaps this film would have worked better as strictly a fantasy and not tried to make it ancient China.

This did not look like a 2016 film, but more like one from the late 1980's or early 1990's. Think Karate Kid crossed with The Forbidden Kingdom. The film must have been aimed at young boys giving them an avatar and showing poor Ni Ni in skimpy clothes. The beautiful princess of course fell in love with the nerdy kid. The inexplicable "romance" was chaste and anemic. There were a few curse words and some mostly bloodless killings if you were thinking of letting a child watch it. For adults there were no surprises in this bland and lackluster movie. It did overestimate how much this viewer could suspend her sense of disbelief on too many occasions. The thoughts that kept me most occupied during this film were ones wishing Mark Chao and Ni Ni would work together again in their own movie or drama with no fish out of water gamer to ruin the illusion.

4/5/23

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I watched this movie at a friend's house and I was told that the starting would be a bit scary and then the movie would go slow down in terms of pace. Everyone else thought it was a great movie, but I'm not going to lie, because it had some stuff related to Chinese culture I could tell how realistic everything was, and therefore I didn't like it that much.

Story: The overall story was okay, I guess. A teenage boy suddenly receives this box from his friend and then the box transports him into this "other world" to protect a Princess so she could be crowned Empress. Nothing really makes sense in this movie, because the Princess has shown her martial arts skills multiple times but then sometimes she just weakens for no apparent reason and is in need of help, then there's the boy Jack who was supposed to be bullied, weak and not at all good at fighting but then after 2 or 3 lessons with a warrior he becomes a better warrior than the guy who's been training for all of his life. The parts I really hated about the movie was that at parts, the Princess and the warrior would speak Mandarin but then they would speak English to Jack. I think that they should've just spoke English through the whole movie because it just felt so, out of place.

Acting/Cast: The cast was alright, but the main character Jack Bronson (the teenage boy) is supposed to be like 16 or something but then during the Empress's coronation he looks like a 25 year old man. The actress who played the Princess did a good job, and so did the rest of the cast but there definitely could've been an improvement.

Music: I didn't actually remember any music, so I gave it a neutral.

Rewatch value: I definitely wouldn't, but others might so I gave this a neutral.

Overall, watch it if you want, you might have different opinions, but I didn't think this was a good movie at all.

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