Episode #43 -- Once Upon A Time In China

(or: “A Rare Case Where A Thousand Pardons May Be Insufficient”)

Boy oh boy, if you like episodes of podcasts where the hosts stumble their way through a discussion of the plot of a movie, hampered by iffy translations and the movie’s assumption that its viewers are familiar with the cultural norms of the country it’s set in, do we ever have a podcast for you!

Once Upon A Time In China is a 1991 Wuxia film starring Jet Li that is based on events in the life of Wong Fei-hung, a real guy whose exploits made him into a folk hero of sorts. For those who aren’t familiar, Wuxia films are historical martial arts movies, for lack of a better way of describing them. Our primary reference point for fighterman movies are from the Steven Seagal or Dolph Lundgren œuvres (and when we say “our”, we really mean “Andrew’s”), and this is definitely not one of those movies— no one makes witty rejoinders when someone gets shoved into a furnace towards the end of the movie, for example. Whether that’s a good thing or a missed opportunity is subjective, except it’s totally not and fuck Steven “S-Dawg”* Seagal. Not literally, though. Never literally.

* We may not have any evidence to back this up, but c'mon, you just KNOW that he’s unironically referred to himself in this manner at least once in his life. At LEAST once.