‘Jiu Jitsu’ Trailer: Nicolas Cage Battles Alien Invaders Searching for… Fistfights?
What does Jiu Jitsu and Nicolas Cage have in common? In short, aliens! Both are crucial keys to unlock humanity’s most primitive strategy to drive off alien invaders — punching them at their faces or slash past their high-tech armors with a sword. I might sound a little sus, but I swear that I am not making up all these, because Nicolas Cage, martial arts and alien invasions are exactly what director Dimitri Logothetis has envisioned for his upcoming film, Jiu Jitsu.
In Jiu Jitsu, a mysterious portal opens every six years, and earth is greeted by visitor(s) from a distant galaxy. Why six years, you asked? I have no idea, perhaps that alien race are having their own Olympics every six years, or because their own Hunger Games committee said so.
But in Jiu Jitsu, the aliens do not come with their motherships and tripods. They come dressed in Halo’esque suits, and instead of looking for valuable minerals to sustain their home planet, they are coming to engage in fistfights with us, humans. Yeah, something along the line of Alien vs. Predator (2004). But why though? We all do not have corrosive blood flowing inside of us.
We do not have retractable second jaws that are full of razor-sharp teeth. As humans, we brawl because we got an offer from Vince MacMahon, when alcohol got the better of us, or simply because we need to make our stands on whether or not we need to wear a face mask, that’s all. Maybe by just showing them a couple of Youtube videos, the invaders in Jiu Jitsu would leave earth for good.
Okay, enough of all the ramblings. Check out the released trailer of Jiu Jitsu, here:
“After we successfully reintroduced the Kickboxer franchise to a new generation of martial arts fans with the sixth and seventh entries in the series, we set out to up the ante with a sci-fi martial arts franchise that could bring the same kind of intensity and longevity to a new arena,” said Logothetis, in regards to Jiu Jitsu.
I assume that by saying “to up the ante”, he actually meant going full bonkers, because from that trailer, Jiu Jitsu looks exactly like the film that you will get when you mash-up Predator and Mortal Kombat, and season it with a little The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010). All in all, the movie seems to be openly ridiculous, and though I can’t say for sure that I will love or hate the film at this juncture, I will definitely catch up with Jiu Jitsu whenever possible.
Logothetis certainly needed a lot of helping hands when he tried to brew this unstable concoction of sci-fi and martial arts, and as such, he was aided by a team of ass-kicking stars -Alain Moussi, Frank Grillo, Juju Chan and Tony Jaa. Moussi leads the cast as a Jiu-Jitsu master, Jake Barnes — and not Nic Cage -, and I will not be surprised if Cage’s character disappears after the first 20 minutes. Grillo seems to be a natural cast for Jiu Jitsu, because the recent film that he was in, Beyond Skyline (2017) has an equally ludicrous and almost similar concept of humans fending off aliens with punches and kicks. Martial arts has certainly come a long way since the invention of gyms and fitness tracking apps.
Jaa is set to appear alongside Milla Jovovich on Paul W. S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter, which displays a similar obsession with swords and spears in the way that Jiu Jitsu has for martial arts. Well, if Monster Hunter suggests that military grade weapons are useless for its gigantic monsters as compared to giant swords, then fighting off aliens with your bare fists doesn’t sound like a bad idea, right?
Jiu Jitsu will be unCaged for public viewing on 20th November this year, via theatrical and digital release. And in case the trailer’s Cagey narration is not good enough, here is the full serving of Jiu Jitsu’s synopsis for you:
Every six years, an ancient order of expert Jiu Jitsu fighters faces a vicious race of alien invaders in a battle for Earth. For thousands of years, the fighters that protect Earth have won…until now. When celebrated war hero Jake Barnes (Alain Moussi) is defeated by Brax, the indomitable leader of the invaders, the future of humanity hangs in the balance. Injured and suffering from amnesia, Jake is rescued by Wylie (Nicolas Cage), Keung and his team of fellow Jiu Jitsu fighters. They must help Jake to regain his strength in order to band together and defeat Brax in an epic battle that will once again determine the fate of mankind.
Originally published at https://www.thefilmaddict.com on October 14, 2020.
