I love Scott Adkins’ kicks. They really are a wonderful use of the human ability to capture moving images on film.
A petition has been launched online to get Scott Adkins and his kicks the role of Batman in Man of Steel 2. It seemed to start with this YouTube video, which is definitely worth a watch and includes some great Adkins action, although regretfully uses some Nickelback-style shitrock too.
Scott playing Batman would be very interesting, although it’s hard to say if it’d work without knowing anything about the script. Zack Snyder has a great visual style and a penchant for creating massively satisfying action sequences that employ rhythm and clarity superbly. Check the fistfight opening of Watchmen to see how brutal the results can be.
The fact that Man of Steel was less than R-rated in America hampered Snyder’s action direction somewhat, but that film still had nice, epic Superman vs Zod battles. Adkins is a martial arts master who does his own stunts, so would work perfectly in a Snyder film heavy on hand-to-hand combat. There’s no doubt. But despite his awesome angry facial expressions and general badass demeanour, Adkins doesn’t have acting chops anywhere near those of Christain Bale, the Batman actor viewers will no doubt be comparing him to most. So it depends on the script; will it require a lot of emotional depth, or will amazing fisticuffs be more important?
Either way, it’s an interesting idea and a fanboy movement I’m thrilled about. Like the official Adkins for Batman Facebook page to give it support. Over the weekend, the movement appeared to celebrate a small victory by posting the following quote – then mysteriously removing it: “Some BIG news fans!! Warner Brothers have approached Scott Adkins to audition to be the new BATMAN & he has already auditioned for the role.” The story got picked up by a few websites but nothing official has come out of Warner… yet.
In other Scott Adkins news, there’s been nothing new on Ninja II, but a few set photos have come out of Wolf, aka Warg, showing Scott throwing down military-style with director/actor Wu Jing. The film has now officially wrapped.
Another white man with sweet as kicks is Jean-Claude Van Damme. In addition to his wonderful kicking ability, The Muscles from Brussels has done the splits on-screen more than anyone else I know, makes signature grunt noises second only to Schwarzenegger’s and gifts the world flat-out amazing quotes of demented wisdom.
The two greatest Van Damme films are Frank Dux Kumite story Bloodsport and Thailand-based revenge tale Kickboxer. For my money, Kickboxer is the finer of these two films. Sure, Bloodsport appears to have more violence in it, including compound fractures, finishing moves that result in death and just the sheer amount of on-screen blood. But the effects those scenes utilise have aged pretty poorly whereas the fight choreography in Kickboxer is still really goddamn good, and the Tong Po final fight is better than the Chong Li one. Plus it has one of the best dance scenes ever put to film.
But they work well together as a pair of films. The duo of Stan Bush and Paul Hertzog works its magic on both soundtracks and each film shares several amusing similarities, like Van Damme screaming while having his limbs pulled in four directions by an old Asian master, and looking earnestly into that master’s eyes and saying simply, “Teach me”. That’s, like, beautifully childish scripting, and they thought it was so effective in Bloodsport they repeated it in Kickboxer. Mint.
So here’s the news – both Bloodsport and Kickboxer are being ‘rebooted’. This is just as dumb as the American remake of The Raid. These movies are really pretty thin on plot, and shouldn’t be remade. It’s super easy to come up with a simple storyline that’s engaging enough to form a canvas onto which wicked fight scenes are painted. But, it’s Hollywood, and those schmucks love a bankable title no matter how braindead the idea is.
The new Kickboxer is to be helmed by Stephen Fung, the Hong Kong director who gained international attention through Tai Chi Zero and Tai Chi Hero, two heavily stylized and over-the-top kung fu comedies that are apparently a lot of fun. There’s a small gang of American writers and producers attached to the Radar Pictures project, but no word on the cast or storyline yet.
The new Bloodsport will explore the life of 21st century mercenaries as they collide with the underground world of Brazilian Vale Tudo fighting – which has very little to do with the true story of American Ninjitsu master Frank Dux and his winning of Hong Kong’s deadly Kumite. So it’s not a Bloodsport remake at all, but that plot description sounds pretty awesome. James McTeigue (V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin) will direct from a script written by Robert Mark Kamen (Taken). There’s no casting announcements for that one yet either. Here’s an idea: give Scott Adkins the lead in each. Go on.
Adkins and Van Damme have appeared alongside each other in Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Assassination Games and The Expendables 2. They’re not appearing in The Expendables 3, however, and Bruce Willis isn’t returning either. That bald-headed asshole recently showed how obnoxious he is in a junket interview for Red 2, and shortly after Sylvester Stallone sent out a few tweets dissing him and saying Harrison Ford has replaced him in the third instalment in his old-dudes-blow-shit-up franchise.
WILLIS OUT… HARRISON FORD IN !!!! GREAT NEWS !!!!! Been waiting years for this!!!!
— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) August 6, 2013
GREEDY AND LAZY …… A SURE FORMULA FOR CAREER FAILURE
— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) August 6, 2013
LOL @ grumpy old men. Reports on the internet suggest Bruno was offered $3 million for four days work on the film, but refused to do it for less than $4 million. What a dick.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has been being awesome on social media recently, of course. It seems he’s taking a leaf out of Vin Diesel’s book on how to treat fans over social media, but putting a very The Rock spin on it. Two great recent examples include this amazing piece of fan service, and tweeting a few photos from the set of Hercules: The Thracian Wars including this one.
He captioned it with: “No ‘over-intellectualized actor speak’. Straight gut talk..bring it on motherf*cker. #EpicWar” That club he’s holding, that shaggy long hair, that caveman costume and oh my god, those muscles… I cannot wait to see more on this one. A bit more has come out on rival film Hercules 3D, starring none other than my man Scott Adkins, too. Director Renny Harlin, of Cliffhanger fame, told Empire it’s “Somewhere between Gladiator and Clash Of The Titans… definitely based on the mythology of Hercules, but we don’t have monsters and flying horses and things like that.” Still thrilled we have two Hercules movies on the way; it’s so sweet.
Pain & Gain is worth checking out, especially for fans of The Rock. It’s not a great film, but it’s occasionally hilarious and Dwayne is primo in it as a cokehead Christian simpleton torturer.
In Indian Men Can Kick news, this trailer blew me the fuck away. The movie is called Commando: One Man Army, and it looks like Commando meets Ong Bak. Ridiculously handsome lead actor Vidyut Jammwal not only performs amazing fight moves and stunts, but also really good exercise porn including vertical push-ups, horizontal jump push-ups and inverted sit-ups while hanging from a tree. There’s quite a few clips online worth checking out, but this trailer sums it up well. I especially love the amazing take-down at the end of it:
A couple of Hong Kong films that I’ve been really looking forward to have opened overseas. Dante Lam’s Unbeatable (opening in NZ cinemas Aug 22) sounds similar to Gavin O’Connor’s criminally underrated Warrior, judging by Twitch’s review. Despite the MMA focus, the film is said to be light on action and heavy on its character-driven redemption story. In contrast, Johnnie To’s Drug War sounds like the high-octane action is rammed into it hard. Want an enticing pull-quote? Lee Marshall at Screendaily.com says it is “Gritty, uncompromising and hugely exhilarating… comes on like The French Connection meets The Wire, and features several scenes of in-your-face (and in-their-noses) drug use.” Apparently this played in New Zealand cinemas in April but I missed the damn thing so am waiting for the Blu-ray.
Hey, what’s better than Jean-Claude Van Damme? Two Jean-Claude Van Dammes! While I watch Bloodsport and Kickboxer on a fairly regular basis, I recently revisited Double Impact for the first time in more than a decade. That movie has aged like a fine wine. Van Damme plays twins separated at birth as their parents are massacred by some Asian meanies including Chong Li from Bloodsport. The JCVDs grow up on different sides of the world but get back together to waste said meanies. Yes, there is a scene where JCVD fights JCVD, and it rivals Schwarzenegger giving birth in Junior for marvel. I really like when slicked-back hair JCVD wastes a room full of far better-armed dudes by dual-wielding Glocks and rolly-pollying across the floor emitting signature JCVD grunts and moans and firing wildly. And of course there’s this amazing piece of soft-porn that features perhaps the best Van Damme dialogue ever:
Double Impact is a really fun old action, with hard-R violence, a nice high body count, loads of hilarity and great boobies too. Watch it third after Kickboxer and Bloodsport, then watch (in order): Universal Soldier, Hard Target, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Sudden Death, Cyborg, Lionheart, JCVD, Death Warrant, In Hell, Timecop, Inferno, Wake of Hell and Nowhere to Run. Avoid the rest.
