Lost Empire, The (2001) (TV) USA
[Director: Peter MacDonald; Producer: Robert Halmi Sr., Steve Harding, David Henry Hwang; Writer: David Henry Hwang]
Cast: Thomas Gibson, Ling Bai, Russell Wong, Ric Young
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Plot: American journalist Nick Orton is caught up in the world of Chinese gods and monsters while on a search for the long lost manuscript to ‘Hsi Yu Chi’ (The Journey to the West) by Wu Ch’eng En. He is accompanied on his journey by a humanoid ape with incredible strength and magical powers, a humanoid pig-man, and his brother-in-arms, an ex-cannibal. Based on one of the greatest stories in Chinese history.
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David Henry Hwang has a very checkered record writing screenplays. His most notable before this has been Golden Gate, that awful little movie with Matt Dillon and Joan Chen. Somehow, all the brilliant complexity of his plays disappears when he sets pen to paper for the silver screen. The results are often a tedious collection of cliches. But then, they tend to have a strong, if mushy, love element usually missing from Hwang’s sharp, acidic plays.
It’s a weird dichotomy, suggesting that Hwang is at his best working on the stage, where his talents seem to be best served. And, taking into account the lengthy period between his screen works, one might think that Hwang realized how bad his screenwriting was and how good his playwriting was, and then chose the latter over the former.
So why did he decide to partner with the people who created the TV miniseries of Gulliver’s Travels? This is the most recent, and possibly the last, of that group’s forays into small-screen creativity. It is not good, in any normal sense of the word: it is cliched, unsophisticated, and in some cases, rather poorly brought off. Basically, everything that David Henry Hwang’s screenplays have been in the past. Also, though, this one boasts the most effective love interest of Hwang’s screen ventures. And even though the end product makes you groan occasionally and the fight scenes suffer from a terrible lack of choreography, there is something catchy about this production. Among other things, this retelling of the Chinese literary classic The Journey to the West, following the adventures of the mischevious Monkey King (played here by Russell Wong, who looks like he’s having great fun), is a great introduction for kids to the myths and legends of Chinese culture. Visually, the characters come to life through a combination of wild special effects and good production design.
The dialogue is embarrassing for some of the production. But the farther it gets in the story, the less annoying that becomes. Watching the full, three-hour + production, my skepticism gave way in the face of the rip-roaring enthusiasm everyone involved seems to bring to the production. This seems to be a project on the part of everyone involved, to bring Chinese myth and literature straight to the doorstep of Western culture. Too bad it wasn’t as big as Gulliver’s Travels-then it might have given a lot of Westerners a real education.
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