"The Last Dragon" turns 25
September 24, 2010 9:13 PM   Subscribe

Yeah that's right. The Last Dragon is the Greatest of All-Time. Why? For me there are so many reasons.
posted by Joe Beese (29 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Just FYI: I possess the power of the GLOW.
posted by Dr. Zira at 9:20 PM on September 24, 2010 [1 favorite]


I agree. It is the greatest "cheesy 80's urban kung fu movie" of all time.
posted by LeLiLo at 9:22 PM on September 24, 2010


Sho'nuff!
posted by yeloson at 9:33 PM on September 24, 2010


Just direct-a your feets-a to Daddy Green's Pizza.
posted by middleclasstool at 9:36 PM on September 24, 2010


OMG I loved this movie when I was kid. I would mix legos and clay to make that badass boss dude at the end.
posted by spiderskull at 9:47 PM on September 24, 2010


I was going to ask who was the baddest, but yeloson anticipated my question with a quick and thorough response.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:48 PM on September 24, 2010


but yeloson anticipated my question with a quick and thorough response.

How did he know?!
posted by spiderskull at 9:58 PM on September 24, 2010


"we shouldn't judge a book by it's cover"

How about by its atrocious mangling of the English language? I hope it's OK to judge based on that, because that's where I stopped reading and closed the tab.
posted by yiftach at 10:02 PM on September 24, 2010


Yeah. Sure. Whatever.
posted by clarknova at 10:04 PM on September 24, 2010 [2 favorites]



Who's the shogun of Harlem?!
posted by Lord_Pall at 10:22 PM on September 24, 2010


Every time I hear the song in those opening credits, I think of the Sarah Silverman Program episode where the gay character defends his boyfriend from Zach Galifianakis.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:47 PM on September 24, 2010


I freaking love this movie. Vanity was just pure sexiness and the movie had a kind of goofiness that just worked for me.

I wonder why Berry Gordy didn't make more movies?
posted by Bonzai at 11:08 PM on September 24, 2010


Back in the summer of '95 or so, they must have played The Last Dragon on HBO at least once a day, and my younger brother and I watched it almost every single time. Who knows how many times I've seen it by now but I don't think I'll ever get sick of it.
posted by Venadium at 11:15 PM on September 24, 2010 [1 favorite]


I chuckle every time I think of the name Bruce Leroy.
posted by cazoo at 11:16 PM on September 24, 2010 [3 favorites]


BruceLeroy
would make for a nice MeFi nick.
(for those that dug deeper than myself)
have at it
posted by will wait 4 tanjents at 11:50 PM on September 24, 2010


How about by its atrocious mangling of the English language?

Quick, run home and tell your family you saved us all from a missing apostrophe! They'll be so proud.

Or they'll sob into their hands. Again.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:28 AM on September 25, 2010 [5 favorites]


(And I have the soundtrack to TLD on vinyl. I'm old. So very, very old.)
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:29 AM on September 25, 2010


I think someone is confused as to the meaning of "in depth analysis". I could apply this formula (I saw this movie when I was 12 a bunch of time, hence it is awesome) to just about any daily staple of HBO's programming from my childhood and declare it the "Greatest of all time"

My list is as follows.

1) Rocky 3
2) Grease 2
3) The Beastmaster
4) Weird Science
5) Krush Groove
posted by billyfleetwood at 12:34 AM on September 25, 2010


How about by its atrocious mangling of the English language?

If commonplace and age-old its/it's confusion constitutes "atrocious mangling" and means abandoning ship, you mustn't do much extended web reading.
posted by rory at 1:31 AM on September 25, 2010 [1 favorite]


billyfleetwood, I'm sorry, but as we all know, Rocky 4 is the best Rocky film.

If he dies, he dies.

I must break you.

The training montage, where Rocky runs up a mountain for little obvious reason.

Of course, the best being Rocky's stirring, emotional, horrificly slurred-to-the-point-of-unitelligibility speech, in English, to the crowd in Moscow that somehow wins over the crowd, has them begin chanting Rocky's name, which led, as we all know, to the end of the Soviet Union.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:17 AM on September 25, 2010 [3 favorites]


billyfleetwood, I'm sorry, but as we all know, Rocky 4 is the best Rocky film.

All fine arguments, and in my mind, 3 and 4 are pretty much tied on the awesome-meter, except for one thing. Eye of the Tiger is a far better song than Livin' In America.
posted by billyfleetwood at 2:45 AM on September 25, 2010 [1 favorite]


Eye of the Tiger is a far better song than Livin' In America.

When I was a young lad, and skates had four wheels like a car as God intended, they gave a Karate demonstration at the skating rink. I assume it was to promote people to join this guy's classes. I'm standing there in my roller skates playing pinball, bummed that they're skipping slow songs for this thing, and then I hear the karate instructor shout, "Enough talk! I will show you what you can learn to do!" He nods at the DJ, who starts Eye of the Tiger.

It fills the room. The instructor moves from some form practices to breaking boards. It's precisely choreographed, and his little assistants are running back and forth with next props in his act. He's dripping sweat, and his "KYA!" shouts are getting louder and louder as we get deeper into the song. The whole mad show crescendos until he is tossed a pair of nun-chucks. He's a one man wrecking crew, breaking boards, shouting like mad, and then his little assistants start pulling the props away from him. At this point, even the old ladies who poured soda had stopped in the middle of what they were doing. Girls, mid-chew in their Bubblelicious, leave their mouths ajar.

The instructor is a blur. He has become one with his nun-chucks. And then he starts shouting at the DJ. "Faster!"

The DJ shakes his head.

The instructor shouts again, "Faster!"

The DJ shouts back, "It's a CD!"

The instructor doesn't understand. "You have to play it faster!"

The DJ shouts again, "I can't, dude! It's a CD!"

The instructor stops, heaving and sweating, at no point in particular. The song plays to the empty stage while he angrily shuffles off the rink. His army of proteges quietly grab everything, and the DJ comes on the mic. "All skate!"

I'm not sure what year it was exactly, but somehow I knew that I had just witnessed the end of era. The eighties battled valiantly, but in the end, the cold realism of the new digital age had triumphed. Within a year, I was listening to Nirvana, trying desperately to learn how to smoke, and you would've had to murder me to get my body into another skating rink.
posted by notion at 6:48 AM on September 25, 2010 [28 favorites]


Vanity was just pure sexiness

Gorgeous woman. It was strange to learn years later what a coked-up mess she was at the time. When she eventually found Jesus, she discarded all her career memorabilia and even stopped accepting royalties.

Fortunately, it looks like the planned remake with Samuel L. Jackson petered out. But it's testimony to how great the late Julius Carry was as Mr. 'Nuff to think that here is a role for which Samuel L. Jackson is insufficiently badass.
posted by Joe Beese at 7:13 AM on September 25, 2010 [6 favorites]


Man I loved this movie so much.
posted by empath at 7:19 AM on September 25, 2010


Gorgeous woman.

Sure. But talk about burning out quickly—here's an interview with her at her career peak and she's just goooone.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2010


I agree.

One of my all time favorite scenes is in the pizza parlor. Sho'Nuff is trying to say something threatening, only to be interrupted by the music video on the television behind him... so he kicks backwards, destroying it, while bellowing "SHUT UP, BITCH!"

....it's just the way he does it. It's hilarious.
posted by ELF Radio at 10:17 AM on September 25, 2010 [2 favorites]


I remember this movie mostly for 1) being in the weird position of a blaxploitation movie which had one of the meekest protagonists ever, kind of the polar opposite of most blaxploitation heroes, and 2) in a decade that had more than a few catchy bubblegum pop songs, this had the catchiest, most bubblegummy song of them all. (I'm not at all surprised to find out that it was written by Diane Warren.) As for the tribute site, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't throw in a screen shot of William H. Macy.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2010 [1 favorite]


Catches *bullets* with his *teeth*?
posted by electroboy at 5:05 AM on September 26, 2010


notion: "I'm not sure what year it was exactly, but somehow I knew that I had just witnessed the end of era. The eighties battled valiantly, but in the end, the cold realism of the new digital age had triumphed. Within a year, I was listening to Nirvana, trying desperately to learn how to smoke, and you would've had to murder me to get my body into another skating rink."

Your comment should be sidebarred. That was brilliant.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:42 PM on September 26, 2010


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