Hi there fellow users. I hope life’s treating you well. So, I just got around to seeing the new live-action Mulan movie
"Martial art is based on deception... my friend."
now that it’s on Disney Plus, and while I definitely think the villains of that movie avoid falling into the Pure Evil category, albeit somewhat narrowly in the case of Bori Khan, which you can read more about here if you're interested, I also happened to just get around to seeing another action movie that features both Jet Li and Mulan’s actress, Liu Yifei. I guess it felt appropriate to see them around the same time. Anyway, the main villain of this movie is a different story, and as it turns out, he’s yet another character who has not been officially approved yet despite indeed being listed in the category, which I agree applies to him, so here I am with my 3rd proposal under my new username and my 27th overall.
What’s the work?[]
The Forbidden Kingdom is a fantasy kung fu wuxia film from 2008 that is loosely based on the 16th century novel Journey to the West, and is most notable for being the first, and so far, only film to co-star Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It centers on a teenager named Jason Tripitikas from South Boston who is a big fan of martial arts films and often visits a local pawn shop owned by an elderly Chinese man named Hop to buy wuxia films. However, he is soon forced by a gang of hooligans led by a vicious bully named Lupo to rob the store. This leads to an altercation where Lupo shoots Hop, after which he urges Jason to take a special golden staff that he discovered in the shop earlier that day to its rightful owner. After being pursued and cornered by the gang on a rooftop, the staff transports him to ancient China, where he soon teams up with a man named Lu Yan, and subsequently, a young woman named Golden Sparrow and a monk named Silent Monk, to return the staff to the Monkey King. Doing so would free him from being imprisoned in stone, which would also help end the oppressive reign of the one who did that to him, which brings us to the candidate.
Who is he and what does he do?[]
The Jade Warlord is the main villain of the movie who rules over Five Elements Mountain and the Chinese kingdom. He is an immortal general who apparently served the benevolent Jade Emperor before he left to begin 500 years of meditation, but despite the Emperor approving of Sun Wukong, most commonly known as the Monkey King, the Jade Warlord saw him as a threat to his power, especially after he crashed the Peach banquet the Emperor holds every 500 years and got to drink the Elixir of Immortality. Therefore, after he left, he challenged him to a one-on-one duel. Though he initially seemed to fight fair, once he started having trouble defeating him and worried that he wouldn’t be able to, he tricked him into laying down his staff by challenging him to a fist fight without the use of magic or weapons, then immediately breaks this promise by using his power to turn him to stone (since the Monkey King was also immortal, he couldn’t kill him). However, before he was completely immobilized, he cast his staff far away, with a prophecy developing over time that a “seeker” would return his weapon to him and free him.
For the past 500 years since then, and without the Emperor to monitor his actions, the Jade Warlord has been reigning over the kingdom as a ruthless tyrant, sending his armies to slaughter villages full of innocent people both in search of the staff and to forcefully conquer it region by region. We see examples of this in the present when Jason initially wakes up in a rural village and shortly afterwards, witnesses the people being pillaged, imprisoned and/or murdered by his soldiers, and later on when the main characters travel through an empty, destroyed village where they find several civilian corpses hung from a tree. He is also revealed to have caused the death of Golden Sparrow’s parents, which is why she’s on a mission to kill him; because her father was a government official who opposed him, he decided to set an example by sending legions of soldiers to massacre everyone from the village and burn the village itself to the ground (as she put it, “screams of innocent people hung in the night air”). She only survived because her mother hid her in a well before she was shot down by a soldier’s arrow. We see part of all this through a flashback as she tells the story.
When we see him in the present, he is with a couple of mortal women who have been brought into his temple and whom he is making advances towards, all clearly against their will based on their uncomfortable expressions and body language. When a soldier comes in to inform him that someone was spotted with the staff in the Middle Kingdom, he stabs and kills him with his own knife just because he found the news “offending”. He then sends the witch, Ni-Chang, to retrieve it for him.
After an encounter with her that results in her fatally wounding Lu Yan with an arrow in the back, Jason leaves the monastery they take refuge in, heads to his palace alone and makes a deal in desperation to give him the staff in exchange for his immortal elixir since it’s the only thing that can save his life. However, because he already promised to give the elixir to Ni-Chang in exchange for bringing him the staff, he declares that he must face her in a one-on-one battle to the death to determine who will get it. Despite becoming a decent fighter thanks to some training from Lu and Silent Monk during their journey, he is still easily beaten by Ni-Chang, after which the Jade Warlord has his soldiers prepare to execute him, though not before he mocks him for even thinking he stood a chance to begin with.
Of course, Silent Monk, Golden Sparrow and a bunch of monks from the monastery arrive just in time to save him, after which a big battle between the monks and his soldiers breaks out. While this is happening, the Jade Warlord tries to cast the staff into the volcano to make sure the Monkey King stays trapped in stone and that his reign will continue, but he is stopped by Silent Monk, who he engages in battle with. Meanwhile, Jason helps him out by grabbing the staff and throwing it to the imprisoned Monkey King, which sets him free and causes Silent Monk to vanish, revealing that he was one of his clones all along. He and the Monkey King then resume their old battle, during which Golden Sparrow interrupts them to remind him of the death of her parents, which he has no recollection of, presumably due to the sheer number of his victims. She then tries to shoot him with a jade dart that she created and that has the power to kill an immortal, which she had been saving specifically to kill him with. However, he deflects it and fatally injures her before continuing his battle. Fortunately, Jason helps her achieve her goal by taking the dart for her and stabbing him with it when his guard is down during the fight, after which he falls into his lava pit and burns to death, finally bringing his tyrannical reign to an end.
Mitigating Factors[]
None. Despite being introduced as serving a benevolent emperor, as soon as he left and put him in charge of things, he starting ruling as a brutal tyrant, making it apparent that he was only ever a power-hungry warlord who was waiting for an opportunity to conquer the land more forcefully. He also has no honor, since despite his abilities, he has no problem fighting dirty and using underhanded tactics whenever it suits him. He seems to be on decent terms with his henchwoman/witch, Ni-Chang, seeing as how he made a deal to give her the immortal elixir if she retrieved the staff for him that he didn’t break, but he obviously only made and upheld it because it was a beneficial one for him. He shows no signs of having a personal relationship with or any real care for her, so it’s not mitigating in the slightest.
Heinousness[]
He easily sets the standard of the movie since he’s the main antagonist who’s behind everything that’s going wrong in ancient China, and while the story is both very standard and even light-hearted at times, the Jade Warlord is quite a nasty and serious villain. Because of the aforementioned evidence that’s presented, it’s quite apparent he’s responsible for the deaths of many, many innocent people just for the sake of conquering China and locating the staff, as well as quelling any form of resistance. Having Golden Sparrow’s whole village burned to the ground just because her father was a government official who opposed him is an especially good example of just how ruthless and unnecessarily extreme his methods are. His tyrannical rule is especially unsettling when you remember that he’s apparently been ruling that way for roughly 500 years like a god among mortals.
I’d say he primarily qualifies for that, but it also helps that he’s a shamelessly dishonorable fighter who tricked the Monkey King and trapped him in stone that whole time just because he felt like he was a loose cannon and a threat to his order. He also tricked Jason into handing him the staff for nothing by getting him to participate in what he knew would be a one-sided fight against Ni-Chang that he couldn’t possibly win. Seeing as how he could have just straight-up refused to give him the elixir and taken the staff from him immediately, he seemed to do it solely for the fun of seeing him get beat up and have his hope of saving his friend crushed. Oh, and if that one scene is any indication, he’s also a typical “bad boss” who kills his soldiers for minor reasons, as well as captures women from villages he’s conquered and makes them into his concubines if he's interested in them.
Final Verdict[]
I’d say he’s a solid keeper. What do you think?