I recently saw this old TV movie called ‘Lost Empire’, out in 2001, starring Thomas Gibson, BAI LING, Russell Wong, and Ric Young, and (disappointingly) written by David Henry Hwang. If I didn’t know better I’d say the recent movie ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ basically copied this movie, but cut it shorter from ‘Lost Empire’s 245 minute TV version.

The story is about this White asiaphile from the United States, who randomly becomes the ‘Chosen Scholar’ in a mythical Chinese story to free the Monkey King from being trapped in a mountain, and to save a magical book. He gets sucked into this because he falls immediately in love with the Goddess of Mercy, played by Bai Ling, upon seeing her. There are also heavenly celestials and the Emperor God, and then a band of evil extremist Gods who do under-handed things behind the Emperor God’s back. The Monkey King has to teach the ‘Chosen Scholar’ how to fight, and in the beginning he’s a nerdy klutz and by the end he’s defeating heavenly demons single handedly. After making out twice with the asiaphile, spliced in certain places throughout this crappy movie, Bai Ling says she’s in love with the asiaphile and wants to sacrifice her heavenly powers to be with him. In the end the magical book is saved, and a reincarnated Bai Ling meets the asiaphile in a university in China. The end.

I forgot to mention throughout the movie the extremists are painted as wanting to bring back traditional Chinese culture in their magical world, which in the movie is literally uttered as wanting to bring back slavery and suppress freedom. Also, Confucius is also in this movie, as a God who is a lying, gosspy, egomaniacal criminal who also gets demoted in the end.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0198779/plotsummary

This movie was produced by Hallmark, the same company that made that HBO ‘Marco Polo’ movie where Kublai Khan is played by a White guy.