Flexor the Mighty! said:
We make movies about evil foreigners out to destroy America, why wouldn't it be the same over there?
I was thinking the same thing, however, it is a little different with some of these movies. I can overlook the evil guy who happens to be foreign or villains who represent a foreign government or group (like, say, The Russian Mob). The problem I have is when many different people from very different countries are all portrayed as being evil for no apparent reason.
For example, in Master of the Flying Guillotine, there is a martial arts contest with people from around the world (India, Thailand, Japan, etc) competing. When the villain shows up and seeks assitance in killing the hero, all the foreign fighters join him. There's no reason for this. After all, they are just fighters in a competition. They'll gladly kill someone because, well, they are evil foreigners.
Anyway, back to Fearless. It looks to be an incredibly fictionalized account of this guy's life. According to Wikipedia (don't read its entry unless you want spoilers), the film is about "The Foreign Chambers of Commerce" efforts to humiliate the hero, Huo Yuanjia, as a way to degrade the Chinese, so they set him up in a series of fights against a British boxer, a German spear fighter, a Spanish fencer, and a Japanese fighter. Also, earlier in the film, the hero fights an American wrestler named "Hercules O'Brien" who insults the Chinese by calling them the "sick men of the East" (whatever that means).
The life of the person it's based on seems to be very different. First, it was a Russian wrestler who insulted the Chinese. Huo Yuanjia never actually fights the guy, who backs down and claims it was just pro wrestling theatrics. If the wrestler was Russian, who was Hercules O'Brien? He was a British Boxer. Huo Yuanjia never actually fought him either (they were trying to work out the rules and O'Brien eventually left the country). He
did fight and defeat 10 members of the Japanese Judo team, though.
I guess the filmmakers decided that fights with American, German, and Spanish guys was more exciting than scenes of Huo Yuanjia and Hercules O'Brien hammering out rules to a fight that eventually never happens.
