The Forbidden Kingdom/Headscratchers


 * So, after the happy ending, Monkey God Jackie Chan continues to be immortal forever as a frail old man. Or maybe he gets worse!
 * I thought the Monkey God was Jet Li...
 * You're right of course, oops. Nothing else about the movie really stuck in my mind. Anyway, the Drunken Immortal, as his reward for enlightenment and heroism, continues to etc.etc.
 * Or perhaps he like Golden Sparrow wanted to see Jason (his student) again so he had to enter this world on it's own terms. Who knows when he dies in this world he will return in the other in the same state as he was when Jason left the other world.
 * It's probably a more fitting disguise as its pretty rude to go asking old people, how old they are.


 * On the subject of the ending, it raises 2 questions in my mind:
 * First, the ending fully implied that the Drunken Immortal is indeed immortal. If that's the case, wouldn't it also imply that all the events actually happened and all the magical stuffs ( the Jade Empire and it's magic, the Monkey King, the Immortals, the Jade Emperor, etc.) were real? Or to put it properly, a major case of All Myths Are True?
 * Since the ending implied that the old man is Drunken Immortal, that means he deliberately invoked a time paradox in order to have Jason fulfill the prophecy. Wouldn't that make the whole story a Stable Time Loop?
 * Er, yes. How is this a Headscratcher?


 * So, the Monkey King. Why is he Cu Chulainn? So he doesn't have the chariot, and he doesn't go really berserk (although he sort of incidentally beats up everybody iirc), but into this more or less Asian cast you drop a guy who looks white(ish) because of the makeup, obviously loves the whole fighting thing, etc. Admittedly I didn't watch the movie for the plot and had to go look up the synopsis to find the character name... but I'm still a little muddled on the whole thing.
 * He's not Cuchulain. He's Son Goku. And you do realize Jet Li plays the Monkey King, right?
 * Actually, I think it would be more appropriate to say that he is Sun Wukong, in this case.
 * The Monkey King is a Trickster Archetype. So, to some extent, is Cu Chulainn. They tend towards similarities the world over.