Deleted the following because Red Shirt Army requires that all of the members be killed, and that did not occur in the film. As pointed out in a deleted bullet point, "the Chang Sings are shown standing behind Egg Shen after the climactic battle as he blows up the statue in Lo Pan's temple."
- Redshirt Army: A squad of Chang Sing warriors provide the muscle as Jack, Wang, and Egg Chen storm Lo Pan's wedding.
Removed:
- Fainting: A Monster Faint example. Gracie Law is kidnapped by one of Lo Pan's monsters. When she faces it head on, she screams in terror at its horrible visage and faints. The monster puts her over its shoulder and carries her away.
Gracie does not faint. She struggles against the monster.
Removed:
- Eskimos Aren't Real: At one point when the heroes say they are looking for a Chinese girl with green eyes a character inexplicably says that Chinese people can't have green eyes. Not only can they, it's not even that uncommon among the Uighurs. As she's a brothel owner, she may just be lying to get them to leave.
This isn't really an example of the trope. We're not supposed to find it humorous or ignorant that the madame claims that Chinese women "don't come with green eyes," since it is rare, and even Wang states "Do you know how rare that is?" about his girl's green eyes. Further, the madame might not have literally meant, "There's no such thing as a Chinese girl with green eyes." She could have just meant, "Don't expect any green-eyed Chinese prostitutes in my bordello," either because they're simply too rare or because David Lo Pan has first dibs on them. And even further, everything about the film seems to suggest that when people are talking about "Chinese," they're specifically talking about Han Chinese, which make up 92% of Chinese citizens. Modern-day China encompasses many former nations and peoples, and includes a lot of ethnic minorities, like the Turkic Uyghurs. The Uyghurs are rather infamously being oppressed by the Chinese government for not being Chinese enough.
Would Jack Burton be an example of a Decoy Protagonist?
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Seems like it. I'm pretty sure the question has been asked before, though. Might want to check the article history.
Ah, found it. Jack is The Protagonist, he's just not The Hero. So the trope doesn't apply.
Edited by 70.44.88.7 "It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Should we add “Magic Feather”? There’s that scene where they drink the magic potion, and right afterward Egg Shen gives Jack a knowing wink, after which Jack, now realizing the potion only give you a “huge buzz” starts commenting “is it getting hot in here?” I always took that as Egg letting Jack in on what was really happening.