The Forbidden Kingdom offers martial arts aficionados a historic cinematic moment: the first on-screen kerfuffle between the two Chinese titans of action flicks, Jackie Chan and Jet Li Lianjie.
'I haven't had that feeling in a fight for over 15 years,' says Chan at a press conference last month at Hengdian Studios, where the film was being shot after spells in the northwest near Dunhuang, the Wuyi mountains in the south- east and then bamboo forests in Zhejiang province.
The on-screen duel was 'very comfortable and enjoyable', Chan says. 'It's the same feeling I used to have when I worked with [fellow action film veterans] Sammo Hung Kam-bo and Yuen Biao. Jet and I work in complete harmony. The movements between us, every kick, every punch and even breath are so fluent and fast ... Although this was the first time we worked together in one movie, it seemed we'd been working together forever.'
Working alongside director Rob Minkoff is Hong Kong cinema-tographer Peter Pau Tak-hei, best known for his Oscar-winning work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and action and martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, whose many credits include Crouching Tiger, Kill Bill and the Matrix trilogy.
In The Forbidden Kingdom, Yuen reunites with Chan, with whom he worked on Drunken Master in 1978, and Li, the star of the Yuen-choreographed Fearless last year.
'Working with any one of them individually would be enough,' says Minkoff, who's better known for directing family movies such as The Lion King and Stuart Little. 'But to work with them all together is unheard of. It's such a remarkable experience.'
The film was developed from an original script by American screenwriter John Fusco about a modern-day, kung fu-obsessed 17-year-old American, Jason Williams, who is transported to ancient China after discovering the staff of the Monkey King in a Chinatown pawnshop.