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Obama in China: Long gone, and still headlinin'
Interview: Kerry Ann Lee, culture shock = inspiration
The report (in Chinese) says that Yao turned down the role because director Brett Ratner asked him to play a bad guy, which would ruin the image of a good guy that he's worked to cultivate through the years.
You might be thinking, as we are, how Yao could possibly be a villain. First of all, bad guys, no matter how bad-ass they are and no matter how many crooked cops they have under their control, have to keep a low profile. This is hard to do when you're over seven feet tall. When the police make you do the line-up with other suspects, you'll stick out like a sore thumb.
Secondly, how could someone that clumsy possibly kick enough ass to be a master villain. We know what you're thinking -- Yao has skills, how could you say he's clumsy? What we mean is that he's not quite coordinated in the way that say, Jackie Chan is. It turns out that the reason, as reported both in the Chinese article and in Rotten Tomatoes, is that Ratner wanted to recreate a scene from the 1978 Bruce Lee film Game of Death where Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Some of you might have hoped that we would be spared another installment of the series because Chris Tucker wanted a lot of money as well as final cut rights, but it seems from recent reports that they somehow managed to find a solution, because the movie is in production and will be released some time next year.
Image from NBADraft.net.
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Too bad! The Kareem Abdul Jabar fight was awesome. That guy had skills. I'd love to see a re-creation, not sure if that would make it worth watching fucking Rush Hour 3 though.
Yao should have done it. PR, schmee-R, I think the bad-guy screen image would have given Yao major cool points to the public. Whatever... having him on maybe a bit too predictable anyway.
-- MoJo
and you think the MASS western market still haven't had enough stereotyping ideas in their heads?
nice going.
Brett Ratner is incredibly gross. HK tabs had a field day following him around because he couldn't stop trying to molest Zhang Ziyi. He didn't care that he was in public and there were photogs everywhere. She had to control herself and smile through it all because it was her first American film. He's an asshole and it's no surprise that he wants to denigrate a Chinese male. He's not even a talented director.
I love you Yao ming~!!
Yao should have taken the role. It would have been quite awesome, even if he is big and clumsy. On the other hand, Ratner should have given him a different role just so he could be in the movie. That still would've been awesome.
By the way, X-Men 3 was the worst of the X-Men movies, and they need to fix it somehow with X-Men 4. It simply cannot end that way.