20 Reasons Why You Rock: Five Element Ninjas
People (me included) tend to do the same things year in and year out. Every Christmas we watch Home Alone and Home Alone 2 at my house. Each November I sit down and do a re-watch of Band of Brothers (and contemplate re-enlisting), and at least once a year I get really drunk and watch Five Element Ninjas. It has become one of my favorite yearly traditions and one that I hope to someday pass on to my children. Let’s just hope that they love kung fu and booze as much as I do. Maybe this post will help to nurture that love and adoration. This is 20 Reasons Why you Rock: Five Element Ninjas.
#1. The movie has a bomb ass opening credits. Just two schools fighting each other for kung fu supremacy. That Shaw Bros logo is all you have to see at the beginning to know that you’re about to be immersed in some awesome kung fu action!
#2. Ninjas are mysterious and badass again. MNGA (Make ninjas great again) campaign must have won out.
#3. The losing kung fu school gets their asses handled so mightily that they hire a clan of ninjas to come in and take out their opponents. Talk about a heel move. They even throw the winning master a sharp ring that he catches. It pierces his skin and poisons him. Mega heel move!
#4. There are some epically awesome ninja specialties. The ninjas are based on the five elements (gold, wood, water, fire, earth). Each of them carry wildly different weapons for killing in their own ways. It would have made for some amazing toys back in the 80’s.
#5. Gold ninjas have super shiny hats with blades that shoot out of them. They use their shininess to blind people before hacking them to death.
#6. Wood ninjas might be the most hilarious. They hide in big hollowed out trees with their arms in branches. If you get close enough to them they use the lesser-respected bear hug to defeat you. Cat claws for the win!
#7. The water ninjas have to be the easiest to defeat. JUST STAY OUT OF THE WATER! But, they do wear cute little blue uniforms and paddle around in little tubes.
#8. Let me tell you something, the fire ninjas would have fit right in with me as a kid. Every fourth of July we would load up on smoke bombs, roman candles, and bottle rockets. Then we’d go near the road and blast those things at cars down the highway. Just good clean fun….But these fire ninjas have added in the slashing and slicing of limbs and I guess that is what differentiates them from myself when I was 11.
#9. Earth, man…..these ninjas have some sort of underground tunneling ability and jam their blades upward into the taint area of one of our heroes. To say that his grundle is a little worse for wear after a few stabs would be a massive understatement. He continues to fight, however, and it isn’t until he steps on his own nutsack that he finally succumbs to their dastardly ways. Straight baller.
#10. Our first female character finally appears and you just know that she is gonna be a low-down, dirty ninja lover! Bad women have been trying to ruin good kung fu schools for far too long and it’s about time someone did something about it!
#11. This movie moves so fast from fight scene to fight scene that even Michael Bay had to pause it for a minute to catch his breath.
#12. Tien-Chi Cheng has incredible bangs.
#13. Cheng turns out to be the ultimate hero and only survivor of the “we all wear white” clan but he is captured by the ninjas after the conniving lady stops them from killing him. Big mistake!
#14. If you’ve ever thought about what you would do if tied up with ropes and left alone in a room, then you better start studying that “fallen petals” technique. It’s guaranteed to get you free and it’s a damn good string of luck that Cheng’s Shao Tien-hao happened upon a guy who taught it to him.
#15. Hey bro. I found this random key. Maybe it will come in handy someday.
#16. Cheng’s character finds the dude who taught him the rope trick and learns all sorts of ways to kick the hell out of ninjas. He has some new brothers, too. That will come in handy when he soon will wage war against the ninja clan that wiped out his old brothers.
#17. The pesky ninjas show up and get paid by the dudes who brought them over to China. It’s all smiles and patting on the back until the ninja leader decides to stay and control everything. If you can’t trust mercenary ninjas then who can you trust?
#18. The elemental ninjas soon find themselves getting their ninja asses whooped. Shao Tien-hao and his new brothers know the tricks up their sleeves and have been preparing (via montage, no doubt) to put them in their place.
#19. There are some insanely brutal kills throughout the entire film but you have to love how Shao and his new bros start killing these ninjas. Tree trunk body dismemberment, trapping people in nets, and walking around on stilt spears sound like anything you’ve ever seen in a ninja movie before?
#20. The ninja leader proves that isn’t just a punk who lets his colored ninja friends do all the work. He has one of the most excellent final fights with all four of the brothers and the fight ends up paying off on many things we’ve seen in the film. The only thing I feel like I need to know is where on earth did Shao get his hair done?
