The Myth (2005)

[Vickiana Sconyers]

Basedduring the Qin dynasty, general Meng Yi (Chan) is tasked with escorting Ok-Soo (referred at times as "Concubine Li") (Kim), a Korean princess, back to China to serve as a concubine for Qin Shi Huang, in an attempt to strengthen diplomatic relationships. Along the journey, a Korean warrior (seemingly her fianc) attempts to seize her back, but Meng Yi saves her. Meng Yi protects Ok-Soo through their journey back, while Ok-Soo tends to his wounds. In the process, she begins to develop feelings for him but Meng Yi, while apparently harboring similar feelings for her, steps back, reminding her of her purpose of becoming a concubine in the interests of her people and successfully completes his mission. The Qin emperor becomes critically ill later and sends Meng Yi to find the elixir of immortality, the only thing that can save his life. Before leaving, Meng Yi discreetly confesses his feelings to Ok-Soo, stating "my heart belongs to you forever," and Ok-Soo vows to await his return. The guards escorting the elixir are ambushed by rebels on the orders of the treacherous prince and chancellor. Meng Yi hands over the elixir to his deputy, Nangong Yan, before dying in the ensuing battle. Although Nangong Yan manages to bring the elixir to the emperor, the prince and chancellor trick Nangong Yan and Ok-soo to test the validity of the elixir and force them to consume the elixir, condemning them to imprisonment in the Qin emperor's mausoleum for eternity.

In the present day, Jack, an archaeologist (also Chan), is Meng Yi's reincarnation, and he often dreams about his past life. One day, his friend William invites him on a quest to find a rare material that can create a field of zero gravity. They travel to a floating tomb of a Dasar prince in India, where Jack discovers a painting of the princess he has been seeing in his dreams. Jack also learns that during a mission to the Qin Empire, the Dasar prince brought treasures and women as gifts. In return, the Qin emperor offered him one of his concubines and asked him to choose, but refused when the prince chose his favourite, Ok-soo. Instead, the Qin emperor gave him a painting of Ok-soo and the Qin Star Gem. William removes a strange black rock from a feline statue, and accidentally collapses the zero gravity field holding up the tomb, resulting in its destruction. William manages to escape, but Jack leaps off a cliff and falls into a river. He loses consciousness and drifts along with the current until he is saved by Samantha, an Indian peasant girl. Samantha brings Jack to see her uncle, a Kalaripayattu (Indian martial art form) guru, who tells Jack to take the sword he found and fight with one of his students. During the fight, Jack has a recollection of a duel he had with the Dasar prince in his past life, and briefly recovers his fighting skills from his life as Meng Yi. Samantha's uncle enlightens Jack about his past and future, and Jack succeeds in returning home safely, and he delivers the sword to the National Museum of China as a national treasure. His action angered Professor Koo, the leader of the syndicate that has been funding Jack and William's treasure hunt.

After extensive research, Jack and William conclude that the anti-gravity material is a fragment of a meteorite that fell to Earth during the Qin dynasty. They find the location of the Qin emperor's mausoleum, concealed behind a waterfall. The massive tomb contains the strongest fragment of the meteorite, powerful enough to make the tomb a floating palace. Jack meets Ok-soo and Nangong Yan alive inside the tomb, and they mistake him for Meng Yi. Professor Koo and his men enter and attempt to seize the immortality elixir, leading to an aerial fight between both parties. William accidentally breaks the balance of the field after removing a piece of the meteorite and causes the tomb to collapse on itself, and dies from drowning in mercury. While Jack is escaping from the collapsing tomb, he asks Ok-soo to come with him, but she refuses after realizing he is not Meng Yi and says she will wait for the real Meng Yi forever, believing he still lives. As Koo nears the elixir, Yan grabs onto him as they fall and presumably perish.

Styna Chyn, from filmtreat, wrote: "Even though Jackie Chan did not direct "The Myth," (Stanley Tong), he did produce it; and his creative input echoes throughout this genre-bending action film. Shot in China, Hong Kong, and Hampi, India, "The Myth" is a comedy of epic proportions. Combining historical fantasy, martial arts, and science-fiction, Tong's film follows archaeologist Jack (Jackie Chan) and scientist William (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) on their adventures in investigating the veracity of a myth involving immortality, levitation, and a Korean princess-turned-concubine for Emperor Qin towards the end of the Qin Dynasty."[2][3]

Robert Koehler of Variety wrote a generally negative review of the film: "Resembling a story session where many ideas are brainstormed and few stick, The Myth messily reps Jackie Chan in epic mode as a [contemporary] archaeologist drawn into a plot to plunder the treasure of the Qin Dynasty's first emperor. As part of a movement in H.K. cinema to return to the ambitious movies of yore, helmer Stanley Tong's multi-period adventure flirts with considerable entertainment on one hand and near self-destruction on the other. Whether Chan's star power will pull in enough international bizbiz is doubtful, though ancillary should flex muscles in most territories."[6]

On 4 May 2009, the DVD was released in Cine Asia in the United Kingdom in Region 2. Another version, including "An Introduction to Cine Asia Featurette", was released later in the United Kingdom on 28 February 2011.

The theme song for the film, titled Wujin De Ai (無盡的愛; Endless Love) was performed in both Mandarin and Korean by Jackie Chan and Kim Hee-sun. Chan's stanzas were all sung in Mandarin, while Kim's solo stanzas were sung in Korean. However, the duets were all sung in Mandarin. The song was made by Choi Joon Young who is a very famous music composer.

The Kalaripayattu martial arts were performed by experts from C. V. N. Kalari school, led by Sunil Kumar Gurukkal, and based in the town of Nadakkavu, Calicut in the state of Kerala, India. The list of stunt performers includes: John Foo, Wu Gang, Han Kwan Hua, Lee in Seob, Ken Lo, Park Hyun Jin and William Dewsbury.[citation needed]

On 10 January 2010, a 50 episodes television series, titled The Myth, was broadcast on CCTV-8 in China.[8] Jackie Chan was the producer for the series while Stanley Tong was the creative director. The television series had a storyline that is different from the film.

Covering all aspects of mythology, this Companion includes essays on the world's major mythological traditions (Greek, Native American, Indian, Japanese, Sumerian, Egyptian), along with retellings of better-known myths, and entries on mythological types, motifs, and figures (such as the Descent to the Underworld, the Hero, Creation, Odysseus, Spider Woman, and Inanna), and related subjects (such as fairly tales and legends). The Companion locates myth firmly in our lives today by exploring language patterns, psychology, religion, politics, art, and gender attitudes.

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After the advisories of the cryptic abbreviations and the didactic introduction, the reader tries to get over the fixities of the frightening terms and figures (grouped in two boxes): Sd1, Sd2, Sr1, and Sr2, that are connected with single and two double-headed "arrows," arranging the notions of "Signification," "Meaning," "Concept," "Form," and other terms. The persuasive reader (no more innocent reader) reaches this question: is myth an ordinary narrative or, better, a sign? In Roland Barthes's Mythologies (1957), the signifier (the mystical Sr1) and the signified (Sd1) create together a "meaning" of the sign, that in turn creates the double complexity of Form (Sr2) and Concept (Sd2). (The two-level construction of "meaning," "form," and "concept" comes originally from Louis Hjelmslev's linguistic Prolegomena to a Theory of Language [1943] and is extended and amplified in Barthes's Mythologies to describe cultural phenomena in French language.) For Marderness, the myth has turned into a "language-text," complexifying the mythical narrative with the important third factor, evolving the "mythical reading" in retelling the history of the biblical stories, the epic poem of Virgil's Aeneid, and two American novels: Anchee Min's Red Azalea (1994) and Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies (1994).

In mythical reading, the language-object functions ambiguously as a meaning and a form. In cultural reading, focus falls on the form. In extramythical reading, the language-object functions ambiguously as a meaning and form, but the form is indefinite. In mythological reading, focus falls on the meaning.

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

A number of popular notions and outright myths on governance and corruption are addressed in this chapter. We distinguish clearly between governance and anti-corruption, while probing the links between both notions. In so doing we challenge the conventional definition of corruption as being too narrow, legalistic and unduly focused on the public sector, while underplaying the role of the private sector. We then challenge the notion that governance and corruption cannot be measured, showcasing the latest worldwide governance indicators, measuring six dimensions of governance and cover over 200 countries, based on multiple sources, including the EOS. Thanks to these governance indicators and related datasets, it has been possible to study the extent to which governance and anticorruption matters. Consistent with the adage that 'sunlight is the best disinfectant', the potential gains of embarking on a transparency reform strategy is given particular prominence in this chapter, and a detailed 12-point 'scorecard' for countries to rate themselves in terms of the implementation of concrete transparency measures is presented. The chapter then concludes with a call for a global compact on governance and anti-corruption, where the G-8 and other rich countries, the multinationals, IFIs, civil society and the government leadership in the emerging economies share responsibility in making concerted progress.

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