Five Deadly Venoms, Pacific Rim, and Authenticity

After watching Five Deadly Venoms this morning, I decided to take a shower. I know some people sing in the shower or just focus on cleaning but I have a tendency to relax. I free associate or maybe zone out. If I just watched a movie, which I had in this case, then I usually think about that movie.

By this point, I had drafted my review and had given Five Deadly Venoms a 2.5/4. I took a shower because I didn’t really know what else to say. It is one of those movies that is what it is. It is a Kung Fu movie from 1978. It wasn’t the best but it wasn’t trying to be the best. I included that in my review so I didn’t know what to say in terms of a discussion.

Then, rinsing shampoo out of my hair, I had an imaginary conversation with someone.

“What did you give Five Deadly Venoms,” he asks.

“2.5/4,” I respond, “it was fun and it wasn’t trying to be anything more than a fun movie.”

“What did you give Pacific Rim?”

“2/4.”

“Why is that? Didn’t you say in that review that it wasn’t trying to be anything more than a silly action movie?”

Answering that question, why I gave Five Deadly Venoms 2.5 and Pacific Rim 2, is what I’ve decided to write about for this post. My initial, gut reaction is to say well, Five Deadly Venoms is somehow more authentic.

A red flag went up in my mind.

To criticize Pacific Rim for not being an actual old giant alien fighting robot movie is silly, not to mention fundamentally wrong. To make such a claim, in effect, I would be saying Five Deadly Venoms is an authentic Kung Fu movie. I’ve mentioned this question of authenticity in other posts (The Lone Ranger comes to mind first) and I hesitate to attempt a full explanation. It is a slippery slope. We would have to define “Kung Fu”. Then we would ask are the actors actually practicing a “real” style of Kung Fu? Are the costumes accurate in terms of the time-period? The questions continue and spiral downward endlessly. Such a position assumes that there exists or there could exist something truly authentic.

What is comes down to, is that Five Deadly Venoms would not be an authentic anything. It’s just another of the multitude of Americanized Kung Fu movies that came out in the 1970’s. So, that said, my initial justification in my imaginary conversation is out but it did lead me to something else.

Perhaps my phrasing was off. One of the reasons I like Five Deadly Venoms was because of its focus on action (even if it really isn’t Kung Fu). It’s plot is barebones: a student has to find five guys, each a master of a different form of fighting. The story is set in a small city whose name I don’t even think we are given. There are only a half dozen different sets in the movie so we don’t really have any understanding about the film’s world. The film doesn’t tell us because we don’t have to know, and quite frankly, nobody cares. After all, we are here for action.

Pacific Rim included additional elements that distracted from the core giant-alien-fighting-robots. Did it have to compartmentalize different cultures into different teams as it were? Did it even have to set it in the modern day world (and pass it off as the future)? No, it didn’t. At the end, we are left with the feeling “Alright, the good guys *cough* America *cough* saved the day!” In Five Deadly Venoms, the good guys defeated the bad guys and that’s that. Pacific Rim could’ve just been about a generic corporation fighting generic alien invaders. That’s why we’re here, right? Just give me some robot fighting action and leave all the extraneous details at the door.

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If you haven't read it yet, check out my review of Five Deadly Venoms

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