10# - Wild Card

Jing Wu

Wolf Warrior is a 2015 action film directed and staring Jing Wu as a Chinese special forces soldier who like all good action heroes does things his own way. In other words he is a loose cannon and those skills apart from getting him punished get him a new job, as a Wolf Warrior part of elite branch of the already elite special forces. However before I continue with the review of the film I first have to say that the reason that I even watched this film is because of the article I did on Chinese YouTuber Accented Cinema who was discussing why he think Chinese films are currently pretty bad at the moment. He showed as examples critically acclaimed films like the 1991 film Hang the Red Lantern but he also showed the film Wolf Warrior as a not so critically acclaimed film. He talked about this film and its sequel Wolf Warrior 2 are "war" films that portray China's military strength but, also have messages saying to whoever the enemy to beware. The second part of his point is definitely true with a character in Wolf Warrior stating, " Those who challenge China's resolve will have no place to hide." The one thing I will take issue with is that this is not a "war" film because their is no war in the movie, it is just an action movie with military hardware everywhere. The film serves more as a display of military hardware, tanks, helicopters, infantry doing maneuvers with all of the latest and greatest gear.


This really shows in the main villains of the film who are at the beginning a foreign drug smuggling operation that our hero Leng Feng, his special forces unit, and the Chinese police must break up. This is where our main character gets himself locked up for being a wild card and as I said ultimately ends up a Wolf Warrior, this is where he meets the cast of cliches that are in the unit. The Chinese equivalent of the yokel chewing straw, the hard-ass sergeant who dosent like him, the guy who has a little girl as his only defining trait, and his sexy female commanding officer who he has tension with. After this are characters participate in a training exercise where we get to see how good Leng Feng and we also get to see more tanks, helicopters, and stuff. Once again I need to state that their is not anything inherently wrong with that in a film it is just the way that it is handled, everything in this film is shot in a very flat, boring, and not interestingly lit way. Action scenes dont really seem to have much if any atmosphere or tension as things just kind of happen in plain and generic way. There for the most part is not really any impact in many of the actions scenes and some of them look god awful like when Leng Feng and his team have to fight off a pack of wolves. That being said that action is not all bad there are a few times when the film cut to first person cameras so that everything becomes claustrophobic and personal the actions does look somewhat better. There is also a flashback scene that I though looked better but not much else was.

Scott Adkins

This is the way the action is until the villains show up and they are team of foreign mercenaries who are all American or British which is not surprising to me. Considering the speech that one of the characters gives im guessing that these mercenaries are stand ins for the nations that actors are from. These mercenaries are however hired by a Chinese drug kingpin so that they can kill Leng Feng, because Feng killed the kingpins brother in the drug raid at the beginning of the film. These mercenaries whose names are only said about once during the film are lead by English actor and marshal artist Scott Adkins. All of these English speaking actors are either not directed very well as Jing Wu was not familiar with directing English speakers or they just decided to dub in their dialogue later either way their performances are wooden. They are just very one dimensional villains with not much personality so when they are killed off it really does not seem like much of anything was accomplished. During the scenes of direct fighting between the Chinese army and the mercenaries these parts of the movie are actually filmed better but they are still missing something. I really am not sure what but it just feels like there is not really any punch or weight to any thing that happens in the film even soldiers are killed. The action in the film is contradictory as it has it feet in two worlds, that of the realistic war film where there is strong attention to the way soldiers move, hold their weapons, look,where people die quick, or gruesome deaths.  It wants to be that in a way or at least look like that and also wants to be a mid 80's or early 90's action film. Something that Stallone or Arnold would not be in, but someone like Chuck Norris would be that caliber of action film. You will have scenes where soldiers are ripped apart by snipers and booby traps, but then their will be a fight scene between a little Chinese soldier and a giant mercenary with comedic editing. Leng Feng is the perfect example of this he moves, looks, shoots like a real person but in the course of this film he is shot around 9 times to little effect. There are some films where people get shot quite a few times and keep going but being shot makes their lives miserable. Leng Feng can take a bullet just barely flinch and keep sprinting at a full clip into a fist fight.

Later in the film after most of the mercenaries are dead it is reveled that this drug kingpin also has stole biological secrets and it going to sell them to a bio-pharmaceutical company which is going to make a strain of disease that can only a effect genetic Chinese people. This part of the plot comes up and we dont here anything else about it until the end of the film when Leng Feng recovers a briefcase full of blood vials. Which just makes it seem like the bad guy in this film during the first draft of the script was not actually bad enough so they had to also make him want to commit a genocide. The film wraps up like you would expect with our hero Leng Feng defeating Scott Adkins, although it was done in martial arts fight that was well done. Then the main villain the drug kingpin and his cronies try to escape disguised in Chinese military uniforms but is stopped after Leng Feng kills all of them. Then he and the cliches come home to heroes welcome where medals are handed out. Leng Feng and his love interest/commanding officer drive off into the sunset.

It is really surprising to me how much i found this film to be boring, cheap looking, and overall bad. I thought that from the clips AccentedCinema showed and just the little I knew about the film I wouldn't like it but, I did not expect to be so uninteresting. This movie is not really worth anyone's time or money unless you just want to see the state of Chinese action movies in a modern setting. Where the gear, guns, vehicles, and the overall almost pornographic quality of all of it is on full display. This film is right in line with some of the other clips of modern Chinese films that AccentedCinema showed strangely directed action scenes, unnatural dialogue, a reliance on CGI which makes the film look cheap, and trying to copy others while not doing it correctly.

9# - Classmate Blog Critique

For this classmate blog critique I wanted to take a different approach, instead of focusing on just one person I would discuss my three favorite blogs and in my opinion their best piece. When discussing the blogs I think it is important to say what about it so good whether it be the writing, aesthetics, personality, or analysis. Mainly because I want to make sure that I am giving out compliments and criticism at the same time so the person who I am talking about might think my opinions. So lets talk about the blogs:

1. Suzanne Lauoue 

The first thing that I really appreciate about Suzanne blog is that she writes in clean and understandable way that makes any of her posts a breeze to read through. This really shows in her article about soap opera critic Carolyn Hinsey, where from the writing it is clear that she knows a lot about the this person and about soap operas. Not just because Suzanne explicitly mentions that she has been watching these shows for a long, but because she talks about things most people wouldn't even mention like production design and the difficulties these shows have in introducing whole new characters. She also shows her personal opinion a lot especially in the blog post about the Chevy Chase and Richard Dreyfuss vehicle "The Last Laugh", when she makes the point that the film is really marketed to people closer to her age, however I have parents closer to her and they would most likely have hated this movie. That is her opinion and I am glad to hear it but, this film was more than likely marketed to people who are much older. The only real criticism I have is with aesthetics, I really do not like the background that she chose for the blog. The hummingbirds going to bushes and then as we scroll down it goes from a peach color to like a darker pink that just stretches on forever. This is not a large criticism but, I have just never liked this preset background before.

2. Desmion Owens 

The back for his blog says everything you need to know about it that this is Desmion Owens's blog and that you are going acknowledge and respect that. Personality is the most important factor when it comes to his blog, not to say that their is anything wrong with any other part of his blog. The writing is always good and the sourcing providing background to the piece is always very good. But, when you are reading his blog it is clear that we are looking at his personal interests and what those mean to him like in his most recent post talking about The Source a magazine covering hip-hop music, hip-hop culture, and culture broadly. We get to know that he actually has some connection to this magazine as it was a window to a world that he was so interested in that he actually tried to participate in it. So, when he brings up the problems that The Source has with how much does its rating system matter in the era when stars are made off of hype and social media. We see that this world and the quality of the work within it actually matters to him. I also think that this problem that he sees at The Source is really a problem that all media criticism is facing because almost everything is available online or free people dont really care as much about quality.

3. Justice Seymour 

Right off the bat I have to say the name of the blog Justice Seymour Started A Blog is exactly what a blog with an all black background should have as it's title. I like that, it shows that the blog is a repository for the writing and not an elaborate background piece with writing on it. The writing itself from Justice is and has remained at the same level of all of his stuff and that is to say that when I read it, it is in his voice. That to me shows how much his writing is connected to him and it also makes it easier to read as it comes off a lot more casual. I really liked when he dunked on Bill Maher for making fun of people who like Superhero movies, not just because it showed how Bill Maher is really behind the time when it comes to understanding current day pop culture. But mainly because I really have never been a fan of Bill Maher as he came across as a prick to me. Although I will say that I am sick to death of Superhero movies and I think personally that they need to take a break for some time. But I am not in charge of Disney who owns just about everything these days and seems as if they will run all of the properties into the ground as long as people are willing to pay for it.

8# - International Media

In a paper that I wrote for International Media Trends I talked about how Chinese companies have started helping with the production of films in the west the result of which is the 2019 Best Picture winner Green Book  So, we collectively as a country, as a human race, and Spike Lee can all blame not only Steven Spielberg's Amblin entertainment and the Chinese for that derivative "entertainment". The Oscar is a monument to success and Chinese audiences also loved Green Book probably because they hadn't seen a formulaic plot about race relations from the 1990's before. Jack Ma CEO of Alibaba the company that had a hand in producing Green Book went on to say, "Alibaba pictures will introduce more movies like this into China, and we will learn from them and gradually produce movies like this". This is what I want to use the topic of international media to talk about the ways that the Chinese cinema tries to copy American films, but does not put their own spin on it. 

In a YouTube video by the Channel AccentedCinema called Why are Chinese Movies so Bad, where he talks about how most of the big films coming out of China have been as the title would imply bad. How Chinese cinema is mocked by not only many around the world but, the Chinese people themselves. This is not because of a lack budgets or bad production design as many of the films that are shown as examples in the film have money practically dripping off the screen. The problem is communicated through the repetition of showing a scene in the film Crazy Rich Asians were a woman says that, "We were inspired by the Hall of Mirror in Versailles". In that these Asians standing in for all of Chinese cinema have plenty of money but can only be inspired by things that were produced in the west in other words Hollywood. One of film examples is the film Wolf Warrior 2 Chinese action movie where a lone Chinese special forces commando who's a bit of a rouge has to get this single handily stop foreign mercenaries in Africa from terrorizing the country side. The visual comparison that AccentedCinema uses is Rambo specifically Rambo III, where a lone commando single handely kills the entire Soviet Army in Afghanistan. We see critics in China ask the director why can your protagonist kill everyone by himself and save the day, he answered essentially if American characters can do it why cant we. There isn't and his character can do anything he wants but movies like Rambo III and action movies in general besides oddities like the John Wick series are not really made anymore. If they are they are vehicles for Stallone and Arnold to make some scratch before going on to do something bigger and better. 

AccentedCinema points how in the 1990's Chinese films were at the top of movie festivals and critics minds, films like Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell My Concubine. That the directors of those films were trained in film schools and were cultural workers so there was less of a concern about the bottom line. How after China became the Ultra-Rich nation that it is today that private companies have started to produce all of the of the worst CGI riddled garbage that they are known for today. This is essentially the same problem that the US film industry has today with large monopolies making the same film over and over again, endless remakes, and nostalgia cash grabs. In the US if you want to see a "real" movie made by a filmmaker they are all in smaller studios that for the most part which dont spend to long in the theater or they are buried behind The Office in your Netflix queue.

 The films that are the "real" films that he is talking about are unmistakably Chinese and they are not afraid to be what they are.  That from what he says appears to be a problem that the Chinese themselves are dealing with. He says that there imitation is because they are ashamed of Chinese culture, I am little skeptical of this not that I think that he doesn't think this. China is one of the largest countries in world and a new superpower you would think that a people like that would be annoying you with how proud they are. I think honestly that he sees these trash films as a stain on the totality of Chinese Cinema and if were him I would have the same opinion. Chinese film needs to unmistakably Chinese of course and it also needs to aware of the larger world around them. He makes this point by saying that films about the issues facing China today and the larger human condition that we all share are the important ones.  

7# - Social Media

Social media like twitter is incredibly popular in that almost everyone uses it from the lowest retail
employee to the President of the United States and it does not show any sign of stopping. Since all of the people have congregated on social media then it is only a matter of time before companies show up and try to sell something to you. This is not in any way surprising but, what is interesting is that these companies like Wendy's or McDonald's focus on the "clout game" that is social media. Instead of showing you an ad of the new product they will instead have a snarky conversation with some random person on twitter, so that they will be seen as in touch with current culture and you will have a more favorable view of them. However, the "funny" social media accounts of companies don't interest me that much as all they are is new way to accomplish an old goal of getting you to buy there product.

What is interesting to me is the social media presence of movie stare John Wayne and the most well known film critic Roger Ebert who last time I checked were both very dead. John Wayne's twitter account serves mostly as a fan page to him showing behind the scenes photos of himself, director John Ford, and many others on various different projects in his career. This twitter account is owned and operated by the John Wayne Enterprises website that among that various articles about Marion Morrison's career offer a large catalog of John Wayne branded items. From t-shirts, to coffee mugs, trucker caps, hatchets, and even leather goods which honestly seem like something that they should sell. John Wayne Enterprises is doing what anyone would do with a name recognition like that, but I think the time is fast approaching when that name wont mean much as I really dont think many people have any connection to John Wayne. Roger Ebert's twitter account on the other hand is very different in that he was alive when it was created and he maintained it up until the point that he couldn't any longer. It is unlike the John Wayne account in that it serves both as memorial and a place that his archives of all of the work that he did over his long career. It also serves as a gateway to his website where his work still exists and where other people still write articles and review movies for.

Like the John Wayne and Roger Ebert accounts Stan Lee the Marvel Comics mastermind and figurehead also had a twitter account that he ran until his death in late 2018. His twitter account is filled with photos from Stan Lee's life and his involvement with the comics industry. It also serves like Ebert's as a gateway to his website where people still write articles which are all essentially just puff pieces that promote current Marvel media. This is essentially what Stan Lee's twitter has become even promoting the upcoming Captain Marvel film but this was not always the case and only after his death has the promotion of current media become a main focus. I find this to be a bit unethical but not unexpected, what I do have a problem with though is that to me some time when I look at the twitter it appears like Stan Lee is not actually dead. My main piece of evidence is the constant articles constantly talking about all of the things that Stan Lee liked to do and the fact that the pinned tweet is about the outpouring of support that he received when he got sick. Maybe this is me jumping to conclusions but I would not put it past people to at some point in the future to try and keep the idea that Stan Lee is actually dead out of people's minds. That being said that common theme from all of these twitter accounts is that people can still in someways appear to be active online and their name can be used for positives like Ebert's and questionably like Lee's and Wayne's.

The outpouring of love for Stan online has been extraordinary. As a thank you, we have a video of Stan to share in the below link, along with our promise to continue celebrating Stan’s work & memory on his social media accounts for fans to enjoy. https://t.co/kdkGlmCCEI pic.twitter.com/XHTdEYWGqu

— stan lee (@TheRealStanLee) December 12, 2018