With Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings breaking box office records for Marvel Studios yet again, Awfully Good Movies is looking back at another mystical martial arts flick that tried and failed to launch its own franchise back in 1997…Warriors of Virtue!
In a decade where kids played with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers, four Chinese-American brothers/doctors decided to trade in their scalpels for screenwriting and create a movie around their own idea for a merchandise-worthy team of kung-fu fighters: a quintet of anthropomorphic kangaroos whose derive power from both nature’s elements and moral virtues to protect their land of Tao from the tyrannical Komodo, along with help from an imaginative boy who’s been magically transported to Tao thanks to a magical book in his backpack. But even with the Law Brothers hiring future Bride of Chucky/Freddy vs Jason director Ronny Yu to stylize the film, the Warriors of Virtue quickly hopped their tails out of the box office while their action figures rotted in the bargain bin of KB Toys.
However, Warriors of Virtue still has plenty to offer as a prime piece of Awfully Good-ness, with a checklist of cliches from 90s family movies/Saturday morning TV shows, and a villainous performance from Braveheart‘s Angus Macfayden that camps it up to 11. It’s almost enough of a nostalgic sugar rush to make you wish these kung-fu kangaroos were fighting alongside Shang-Chi in the MCU, but I think Loki and Sylvie have opened the door to enough strange shit in the Marvel-verse as it stands.
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