My Thoughts on "The Furious" (2025)
Well, I just got out of watching The Furious (2025). Okay, I didn’t just get out of it. I went to Walmart first to get my dad some groceries and now I’m here with my grandma at the Mac’s Steak in the Rough on Menaul in Albuquerque. It’s that that drive-in one, it’s kind of like Sonic, but it’s Steak in the Rough, and they serve all the usual food that they serve at Steak in the Rough. I’ll be out there long before I ever finish this and before it ever goes. But you know what I mean. Before you ask, no, this movie is not tied to the Fast & Furious franchise. For those that don’t know, who haven’t seen the trailer or the advertisements on YouTube, The Furious (2025) is a Hong Kong martial arts movie 🇭🇰🥋. It was directed by a guy ♂︎ named Kenji Tanigaki, who was a Japanese fight choreographer and stunt performer 🇯🇵 prior to becoming a director. I mean, he's still Japanese 🇯🇵, but you know what I mean, he used to be a fight choreographer and stunt performer prior to becoming a director. I mean, he's still probably both of those things too, but he's also a director. I’ve never heard of him before, this is my first time I’ve seen anything from him as far as I know. It stars Xie Miao and Joe Taslim, both of whom are martial artists 🥋. I’m pretty familiar with Joe Taslim from The Raid: Redemption, The Night Comes for Us, which I reviewed on the blog already, and the two 2020s live action Mortal Kombat 🐉 movies.
I’ve reviewed the second one on the blog a few weeks ago back in May, and I haven’t written a full review of the first one either on the blog or on DeviantART, which I return to every once in a while. I don’t go back as often as I used to because I’m all in on this blog and my YouTube channels, which I’ve just being reuploading old videos that I had in my possession that got deleted off of YouTube for whatever reason and I want to preserve. And I post Community Posts to give updates on my blog and provide links 🔗 to my latest posts. Plus, DeviantART recently imposed a limit on the amount of photos you can download off the website. You’re limited to just 10 downloads per week if you’re using the free version, and you have to buy the premium membership (which is basically a subscription service) to get more downloads. I know, it’s bullshit 😑. How dare they take a feature that had been free and unlimited for most of the website’s existence, and then put a cap on it and put the rest of it behind a payroll just to get you to buy their bullshit subscription service. You don’t entice people to pay for your subscription service by taking away a feature that was already free and came with a standard free account, you entice them with features that they don’t already have.
DeviantART has no idea how to advertise their premium memberships and they don’t know how to get people to pay real money 💵 to buy it and keep paying for it every month. Because of this limit on the number of downloads per week, there are only certain photos I can download in any given week and I can download every so often. And because I kind of stay away from the website nowadays. As much I don’t like to jump on hate bandwagons when it comes to websites or services I use, I do have to agree with the general sentiment among DeviantART users that the website is getting worse, and is becoming less fun and attractive to use. Especially since the website is getting flooded with AI slop, which the DeviantART admins are encouraging since they rolled out their own AI image generator.
It’s driving people away from the site. People who were on the platform for years are now quietly leaving, ensuring DeviantART will die a slow and quiet death. YouTube is gearing to roll out their own AI video generator sometime in the future, and I guarantee when that happens the site will become even more flooded with AI slop than it is, and it will become attractive to use. But unlike DeviantART, YouTube is able to get away with it because it owns a near monopoly on the video sharing and content creation market. Every time there’s an alternative to YouTube that emerges, it immediately shuts down or it gets cooped by political extremists. Usually far-right extremists. That’s what happened to BitChute and that’s what happened to Rumble.
In fact, I think Rumble was always meant for right-wing extremists, since that’s where all the far-right content creators who got kicked off of YouTube go to post their hatred. So if you aren’t a right-wing extremist, if you’re more on the Left or if you’re in the center, YouTube’s pretty much all you got. A viable alternative to YouTube has yet to materialize. And no TikTok doesn’t count. As big as TikTok is, as much as it has dominated the news and the conversation and as much as people insist that it is the future of news and political discourse, it’s still dwarfed by YouTube by a significant margin. It’s not going to replace YouTube, not anytime soon. But, it doesn’t matter, there’s nothing that will get me to start using TikTok or its alternative, RedNote and making short form content. I never use TikTok or RedNote. I don’t care. YouTube could go under tomorrow and I still wouldn’t download either app on my phone 📱. The world can go on without DeviantART, but it can’t go on without YouTube, including movie studios because it’s where they post all of their trailers. That’s where Lionsgate uploaded the trailer to this movie. Though I didn’t see the trailer on YouTube the first time, I saw it in the movie theater when I went to go see Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026). Since, it’s an R rated martial arts movie 🥋 as well. The kind of people who went to see that would probably go see this one as well, and they probably will if they haven’t already.
It was also produced by Bill Kong, a Hong Kong producer 🇭🇰 known for producing such hit films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 🐅🐉, the wuxia film directed by Ang Lee and starring Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh, as well as Hero (2002) directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Jet Li, House of Flying Daggers 🗡️, Curse of the Golden Flower 🌼, and Lust, Caution ⚠️, another Ang Lee film. I also heard from an interview he did while on the press tour for this movie, I think it was on Jet Li’s podcast 🎙️, So Bet It, or it was on another podcast 🎙️, that he produced Fearless (2006), another wushu movie starring Jet Li, but the Wikipedia page doesn’t say anything about that, so I can’t confirm the veracity of that claim.
Point is, he likes producing Asian movies that actually appeal to western audiences. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 🐅🐉 was a huge hit when it came out, especially for a movie of its type back then, and it loved by critics and audiences alike. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard great things about it. I know my parents and my grandma like, or at least my mom and my grandma like it. I don’t know if my dad likes it. I wonder though, how many people know that movie was directed by the same guy ♂︎ who directed Hulk (2003). I bet a lot of the people who like Sense and Sensibility (1995) don’t know that it was directed by the same guy ♂︎ who directed Hulk (2003). I bet in some cases, this guy ♂︎ directed a mom and a big sister's favorite movie and a little brother's favorite movie.
Ang Lee also directed Brokeback Mountain ⛰️, which is probably the movie he's best known for besides Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 🐅🐉, Hulk (2003), and maybe Life of Pi, and won him a lot of favors with the LGBTQ+ community 🏳️🌈. He directed another LGBTQ+ classic 🏳️🌈, The Wedding Banquet, which focused on the Taiwanese gay scene 🇹🇼⚣, specifically a couple of Taiwanese gay men 🇹🇼⚣ (or rather one Taiwanese gay man 🇹🇼⚣ and one American gay man 🇺🇸⚣), since you know, Ang Lee is Taiwanese 🇹🇼. He can do it all. You better believe that they used the fact that it was produced by the same person who produced Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 🐅🐉 in the movie’s marketing. At least on the poster.
It’s basically about this guy ♂︎ named Wang Wei, who works as a handyman in an unnamed city in an unnamed Southeast Asian country, and he's trying to rescue his daughter, Rainy after she gets kidnapped by these human traffickers in broad daylight, and he ends up having to team up with a chain-smoking journalist 🚬 named Navin who’s hot on the trail of those responsible for this whole operation, and is also trying to find his missing wife, Matia Pham, who was the real one trying to expose this human trafficking operation, in this unspecified city in this unspecified Southeast Asian country. He just continued his work, wrapped it in with his search for her. All while they both fight and kill those responsible and those who are in their way of finding these trafficked children and rescuing them including Wang’s daughter. Though a lot of the people they fight in this don’t die, and take a lot to actually kill, like the big bald guy ♂︎ in the overalls known simply as Ho. It takes a lot to actually kill him, he is just durable as fuck for no reason other than they wanted him to fight in the movie’s climax, which is a five way fight between him, Wang, Navin, Paklung, and Tak. Inside of a police station. Where they're all just trying to kill each other, it's a free-for-all. I still can’t Yayan Ruhian’s character’s name in this is Tak. It just makes me think of Tak and the Power of Juju.
Now like I said, I first heard of this movie after I watched the trailer to Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026). I even mentioned that in my review of that movie. It looked like something that I would actually like and would want to go see in theaters. I couldn't see In the Grey, Guy Ritchie's release for this year, so I might as well see this movie. It made me think of The Night Comes for Us. Not just because it had Joe Taslim in it as one of the leads, the protagonists, but it was also a martial arts action movie 🥋 that had to do with crime, that was heavily involved in the criminal underworld, and was very bloody and violent 🩸. And it heavily involves protecting a little kid, or trying to save a little kid in this case. A little girl ♀︎. Even the names of the girls ♀︎ in each movie are similar. Reina in The Night Comes for Us and Rainy in The Furious (2025). Not only that, but the girl ♀︎ even participates in the action a little bit. Like, the girl ♀︎ in The Night Comes for Us picks up a pocket knife and stabs one of the bad guys as he’s trying to grab her, and in this movie, the girl ♀︎ helps her dad rescue these other trafficked children from this scary looking, this really shady or seedy building where the human traffickers keep all the children they’ve kidnapped and where they “invite” all the pedophiles to do their dirty work 🤮. She even wacks one of the bad guys with a pipe.
Even at the end when Rainy is with that boy ♂︎ with the limp, her father is unconscious on the street, and Paklung is right there looking over them, ready to kill them, I thought she was going to start fighting him next. Use all that kung fu 🥋 she learned from her dad. That would’ve taken this movie up to a whole other level of ridiculous, which the filmmakers were clearly not willing to do. As many unrealistic things there are in this movie, as much of a heightened reality this takes place in, they still wanted it to be gritty and be somewhat grounded in reality, even though this movie really isn’t as grounded in reality as you would think just by watching the trailer. And having a kid not only fight the main bad guy, but actually win is just way too silly at least for them. Before I saw the movie, I kept seeing people compare this movie to The Raid, like that was only comparison everyone wanted to make, or the only comparison they could make, that it was like the Raid movies. One comment I saw on the trailer just straight up said that this was the closest thing to a Raid 3 that we might ever get.
But again, despite featuring both Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian, this movie isn’t really like The Raid or The Raid 2: Berandal, at least to me. It’s more like The Night Comes for Us, which stars Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais, the main star of the Raid movies, but doesn’t feature Yayan Ruhian. Tonally, subject matter wise, violence wise, and temperamentally, it’s much more The Night Comes for Us than The Raid. The Night Comes for Us is a very angry and aggressive film, even more so than The Raid 2, which was also a lot angrier and aggressive than the first film. It’s also very raw, and this movie has a lot of that same anger, aggression, and rawness. Which is fitting since it’s about a father trying to get his daughter back from these human traffickers who took her, and he’s angry 😡 and he just wants to kill them all. Any parent would feel that way, and I feel like a lot of parents would go on the same journey that Wang goes on, and would go to the same lengths that Wang goes to save his daughter. And I’m sure any angry parent 😡 trying to rescue their child from human traffickers would want to kill every last one of them before, after, or while they were trying to rescue their child. They would just want to murder every last one of these vile people.
Like I’m sure the parents of any of the Epstein victims who caught Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell or one of their underlings in the act trying to kidnap their daughter, they would want to just murder their asses to get her back. So, Wang’s rage 😡 throughout is understandable, the movie manages his temperament. It makes him instantly identifiable, especially for any parent, and makes him easily to root for him. You are on his side the entire time. Any movie that can get you to sympathize and empathize with its protagonist and root for them and want them to succeed against all odds has done its job. Even the title, The Furious, fits into this. A parent's fury. I even posted a comment on the alternate trailer that Regal posted on their own channel, to counteract all the Raid comparisons by making a Night Comes for Us comparison. By saying that this is the closest thing a Night Comes for Us sequel that we’re probably going to get until Timo Tjahjanto finally gets the chance to make one. Which he claims will focus on the Operator character played by Julie Estelle, the one who kind of stole the show from Joe Taslim’s character Ito and Iko Uwais’s character Arian, and really everyone else in the film, and quickly became a fan favorite because of how badass and mysterious she is. So sorry, no more Ito. I guess he really did die at the end there.
I have noticed that about the movies I’ve seen Joe Taslim in. He always plays characters that end up dying. His character in The Raid died, his character in The Night Comes for Us is presumed to dead until we’re told or shown otherwise, and of course his character in Mortal Kombat 🐉 (2021) died and was brought back in Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026) only to die again. And unfortunately, in this movie, his character Navin dies at the end. He's like the Sean Bean of martial arts stars 🥋. And if you somehow don't know who Sean Bean is, or why I'm even making that comparison, he's a British actor 🇬🇧 who's most famous for almost always taking roles where he ends up dying. Like, whenever you see Sean Bean in a movie, there's a good chance he'll end up dying by the end.
Like, the two roles he's best known for, Boromir in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Alec Trevelyan AKA 006 (pronounced "Double-O 6") in GoldenEye (1995), he dies. In the case of Boromir, that was a heroic sacrifice, although he didn't chose to sacrifice himself. He just died in the line of battle, getting shot by multiple arrows. And in the case of Trevelyan, he was the main villain, so he had to die. A role he’s less known for, Dr. Merrick in The Island 🏝️ (2005), the Michael Bay movie that everyone forgets even exists. He was the main villain in that movie, and of course, being that he was the main villain, he had to die. It wouldn’t be a proper sci-fi action movie from the 2000s, directed by Michael Bay no less, if the villain didn’t die at all. So, if you cast Sean Bean in a villain role, chances are he’ll die. Maybe that’s why he often takes villain roles because he knows he’ll die by the end.
The only ones I can presumably think of where Sean Bean didn't die were National Treasure , Jupiter Ascending, The Martian (2015), and maybe Pixels (2015), but don't quote me on that. I haven't seen that movie, but there is still a good chance that he still died in that movie. The interesting thing about National Treasure is that even though he’s the main villain in that, he doesn’t die by the end. He just gets arrested and thrown in prison. Maybe because it’s Disney, they didn’t want to give him a signature Sean Bean death. But, they killed off Ed Harris’s character at the end of the second movie, National Treasure: Book of Secrets 📖, so I don’t know what the big deal was about not killing off Sean Bean’s character in the first movie. But those movies were the except. The rule is that Sean Bean has to die in the movie. If you cast Sean Bean in your movie, you gotta cast him in a role where he dies.
For some reason, Joe Taslim is very much the same. He's died in pretty much movie I've seen him in so far, including this one. That’s only thing kind of resembling a complaint or nitpick about this movie, I wish he survived until the end. Especially since this was his big rematch with Yayan Ruhian, who he previously fought in The Raid and lost. He technically won, but at a cost. It’s kind of like they both lost. They both died together, right next to each other. I guess they did it like that to protect Yayan’s dignity by not having a clear winner. Even though this is just a movie and these are just roles and not the real actors fighting. Or it was to not piss off any of the fans of either of the two actors, the two martial artists 🥋.
But, once his wife was dead, there was no where for him to go. He had nothing left. The only thing he was fighting for was gone. But, he also had nothing to lose, which is he was so willing to kill Tak after that. He wasn’t just stopping this guy ♂︎ from killing these two kids, now it was personal, now it was revenge. Maybe one day, he’ll pick a role where he doesn’t die and gets to live until the end. I do wish that this wife survived, and that we got to see her fight alongside him, especially since we do see her fight at the beginning. She knows some moves too. She’s the female Thai martial artist 🇹🇭🥋♀︎ that’s in the cast, Jeeja Yanin AKA Yanin Vismitananda. She was in the martial arts action movie 🥋, Chocolate 🍫 (2008), which is the only other thing I know her from besides this and I haven’t even seen the movie yet. I didn’t realize it was the actress until after I saw the Wikipedia page for this movie while doing a forward/inverted edit of the trailer, and looked into her Wikipedia page. I know this because she’s the only woman ♀︎ that we see doing martial arts 🥋 in this entire movie, that actually has a dedicated fight scene all to herself and is fighting the bad guys. If you’re going to kill her off, at least do it on screen, and have her die fighting. Pull a Julia from Cowboy Bebop (1998) and have Navin find her, have them fight alongside each other, and then have her die right in front of him.
Speaking of Cowboy Bebop (1998), I am still rewatching that show, I finished watching the first two discs 💿 and I’ll be on the third disc 💿, hopefully sometime this week. And then once that’s done, I’ll start writing the series portion of the review before I jump into the movie, and then the video game. I still haven’t finished watching the longplay of that game. I haven’t gotten that far, just the part where Spike meets Steve, the music producer trying to find “Pearls,” the long song by Priscilla A., and then meets the two brother and sister rookie bounty hunters, and then walks away from them after they get distracted arguing with each other like a bunch of amateurs. Letting their bounty get away, and mistaking Spike for a bounty head. But I will try to step it up, and finish watching it so I can write the video game portion of the review after I’m done writing the movie portion. But I’m writing this review and other reviews to hold you over until then because this will take awhile. This is a huge project that I’ve gotten myself into, and it’s not going to be done in a week I can tell you that. I did call that though, after I saw the trailer and rewatched it several times, that the wife would either die or already be dead and only the other guy ♂︎’s daughter would survive and they’d get to have a happy ending. I didn’t predict that the journalist guy ♂︎ would also die and that the main guy ♂︎ and his daughter would take in that boy ♂︎ that lured her in to get kidnapped by the human traffickers.
I just went into this wanted to watch a kick ass action movie, and that’s exactly what I got. This is a kick ass action movie. It’s my kind of movie. I was a bit worried that people were hyping it up too much, and that marketing was hyping it up too much, by featuring quotes that called it the greatest action movie of the decade, and even Joe Taslim saying in interviews that it was going to change the way people view action movies and change how people make action movies, and the movie wasn’t going to live up to the hype, and I was going to be a bit disappointed. But I wasn’t. It was definitely worth the hype, it’s deserving of all the hype. It is definitely one of the better action movies of the decade so far, we’re already halfway through it. 2025 was the halfway point of the 2020s, and now we’re entering the late 2020s, though I consider 2026 to still be the mid 2020s. The late 2020s don’t start until 2027, next year. And keep in mind, I’m not a hater of any of the action movies I’ve seen so far. I liked the two Jason Statham movies I’ve seen so far this decade, The Beekeeper 🐝 and A Working Man ♂︎, I liked The Killer’s Game, I liked Shadow Force (2025), I liked Boy Kills World, and I liked Nobody (2021).
I still plan on watching the Jason Statham movie that came out in January called Shelter (2026) and I plan on watching the other one coming out this year, Mutiny (2026), which is also about fighting human traffickers. And I still plan on watching Nobody 2, I want to watch that movie so bad, and Bob Odenkirk’s action movie this year, Normal, which technically came out last year in 2025 on the film festival circuit, but just barely got a wide theatrical release this year in April. That’s why I refer to it as Normal (2025) as opposed to Normal (2026). It’s the same story with this movie. It was released on the film festival circuit, which is where all those early reviews and review quotes they used in the trailer came from, as well as in Hong Kong movie theaters 🇭🇰. But it’s just barely got an American theatrical release 🇺🇸 last week on Friday June 12, 2026. So, even though this year is when most Americans 🇺🇸 will finally get to see this movie, I’m still referring to this movie as The Furious (2025).
I didn’t even know that Xie Miao’s character, Wang was mute 🤐 until I saw one of the interviews Joe Taslim did in the lead up to this film’s American theatrical release 🇺🇸, but after watching the movie, I think it works. It works as a nice contrast between him and Joe Taslim’s character Navin, who talks pretty much throughout this entire movie. He’s one of the few characters that speaks English and speaks English throughout, in nearly all of their screen time. Him and Joey Iwanaga as Paklung are the two actors/characters in the movie that speak English in nearly all of their scenes. And Wang being mute 🤐 provides him obstacles in the way of him finding his daughter since he can only communicate through either sign language 🤟 or by writing things down on a piece of paper 📝. He can’t just tell people what he thinks or how he’s feeling.
If they don’t understand sign language 🤟 and they can’t speak it, they either have to guess, or they have to read what he writes down on notes 📝. It makes seem a bit more vulnerable and easier to root for. But really, I think the reason why they made him mute in this movie is that he can’t speak English. He can only speak Mandarin as far as I can tell. That’s a common tactic with a lot of foreign actors who can’t speak English or speak English very well. They just have them play silent characters. Even if they were super talkative and expressive in their native language. That’s so many martial arts stars 🥋 we got used to see in the 1990s and 2000s, except for Jackie Chan, played silent tough guys ♂︎. This movie even calls out that archetype, since Navin assumes that Wang is just a silent tough guy ♂︎ act not to dissimilar to a lot of Jet Li’s characters in American 🇺🇸 or English-speaking movies.
Even Chow Yun-fat, who's very expressive and talkative in his Hong Kong movies 🇭🇰 (especially the ones by John Woo), even he got this treatment in his first American film 🇺🇸, The Replacement Killers, which also happens to be Antoine Fuqua's directorial debut. For those that don't know, Antoine Fuqua's the guy ♂︎ that directed Training Day, Tears of the Sun 😭☀️, Brooklyn's Finest, Shooter (2007), the Equalizer movies starring Denzel Washington, and the Michael Jackson movie that everyone's raving about and is a huge hit. You know it's a huge hit because they're letting it play in theaters for longer than one month. They only let a movie play in theaters for more than one month if it's really successful, which is why Obsession (2025) is still playing in theaters even though it came out in May. And yes, Obsession (2025) is yet another movie that got released on the film festival circuit and is just barely getting a wide release the following year 😒.
And this movie’s connection to Jet Li runs deeper than just the producer since Xie Miao is somewhat of a protégé of Jet Li. He co-starred in both My Father Is A Hero (better known as The Enforcer in the US 🇺🇸) and The New Legend of Shaolin, alongside Jet Li, where he played his son in both movies. So, him being in this movie is like him graduating in a way 👨🎓, he’s finally come into his own and is no longer in Jet Li’s shadow. He’s no longer just the guy ♂︎ who played his son in a couple of his movies. I mean, it seems that Xie is somewhat well known in China 🇨🇳, but this is his first big role in a movie that played for an American audience 🇺🇸. This is a lot of Americans’ 🇺🇸 introduction to him. Even the ones who saw My Father Is A Hero and The New Legend of Shaolin probably didn’t realize it was him until much later.
I kind of see that cage fight in the MMA place as an homage to the scene in Cradle 2 the Grave, where Jet Li’s character, Su fights a bunch of guys ♂︎ in a cage in a similar MMA place. Only this movie took it to the next level by having Wang use a hammer to beat these guys ♂︎ up, breaking legs, breaking knees, leaving bruises all over their bodies, and bashing their heads in until blood 🩸 comes out. As Chris Bumbray pointed out in his review for JoBlo, this does feel a lot like a movie Jet Li would’ve done in the 2000s. Chris specifically said in his prime but I say in the 2000s because I don’t know if the 2000s would be considered Jet Li in his prime when he was doing this kind of movies. English speaking movies for an English speaking audience. Only it’s a lot bloodier and gorier 🩸 than a movie Jet Li would’ve done in the 2000s.
I wasn’t sure how violent this movie would get based on the trailer and the clips they released before the movie came out here in the United States 🇺🇸, but let me tell ya, it gets pretty violent. It gets pretty bloody and gory 🩸. They saved all the best bloody and gory bits 🩸 for the movie, you have to see the movie for yourself to see all the blood and gore 🩸. Some people may have a problem with this, with how bloody and gory 🩸 this movie gets, but I didn’t. This is how I like my action scenes, bloody and gory 🩸. In fact, I wish more R rated action movies were this bloody and gory 🩸. A lot of R rated action movies are not actually that violent. A lot of them are pretty tame and probably would’ve been PG-13 had they not had a blood splatter 🩸 here, or a bleeding wound 🩸 here, blood 🩸 coming out of the mouth here, or the extra swearing with lots of F bombs. There’s not even a lot of sex or nudity, no boobs, butts, or even penises and vaginas. Some movies have really graphic nudity where you can see the person’s genitalia, you can see their bush if they have hair down there. And if they are shaven down there 🪒, you can see some shlong and cameltoe.
In other words, a lot of R rated action movies are soft R movies, wouldn’t qualify as R rated movies without that extra bit of blood 🩸 or swearing. But this, this is a hard R movie. They go all out with the violence and the blood and gore 🩸. It’s even bloodier and gorier than even Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026) is, say for a few select parts. I'm actually surprised that they weren't able to go as far with the blood and gore 🩸 as they did considering that this is a Hong Kong movie 🇭🇰 and Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is currently apart of China 🇨🇳, and they're a lot more under the direct control of the mainland government in Beijing these days. And China 🇨🇳 famously has pretty strict censorship laws. Like, they haven't allowed any of the recent Ghostbusters movies to be played because the strongly disapprove of anything supernatural. And of course any movie that has LGBTQ+ characters or themes 🏳️🌈 is either heavily censored or just banned entirely.
From what I understand, it's largely the same story when it comes to violence. That's why the Mortal Kombat 🐉 games and probably the recent Mortal Kombat 🐉 movies have had difficulties getting approved to be released in China 🇨🇳. So how or why was this movie able to get made and play in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 when it has a whole bunch of blood and gore 🩸 and is pretty damn violent. Like, it matches a lot of the Indonesian martial arts action movies 🇮🇩🥋 that Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian have done in terms of violence. Is Hong Kong 🇭🇰 under a different set of rules when it comes to censorship of entertainment media than the the rest of China 🇨🇳 because it's a Special Administrative Region (SAR)? Are the Chinese censors 🇨🇳 more lenient on this movie because it is technically a Hong Kong movie 🇭🇰 and not a Chinese movie 🇨🇳, and it's more of a pan-Asian thing as opposed to a strictly Chinese thing 🇨🇳?
I'm really not sure, but if it's the latter, then the Chinese censors 🇨🇳 are unknowingly acknowledging and agreeing with the sentiment that Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is a separate and distinct place from China 🇨🇳, and it can and should be treated as such. Maybe, it's a sort of thing where the movie can played in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and perhaps even Macau 🇲🇴, but it can't be played in China 🇨🇳 proper. But again, if so, the Chinese censors 🇨🇳 are kind of unknowingly lending credence to the idea that Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is a distinct place from China 🇨🇳 and not a full part of China 🇨🇳, it's not simply a Chinese city 🇨🇳 or a Chinese island 🇨🇳🏝️ (since Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is part city and part island 🏝️), which the Beijing government definitely does not want to do. It wants people to think Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is a full part of China 🇨🇳 and to not think otherwise. That's why they went to such effort to crush the protests 🪧 in 2019 and 2020, and to silence any dissent, and dismiss any concerns about Hong Kong 🇭🇰 losing its democratic freedoms or civil liberties like free speech or free press.
They also don't want to give the rest of China 🇨🇳 any ideas about democracy, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press. They already almost had that problem with the 1989 protests 🪧 in Tiananmen Square and they barely crushed those, and faced international condemnation for doing so. They've been trying to erase the memory of that event ever since. That's why they invest so heavily in the Great Firewall, to the block the flow of information in or out of China 🇨🇳 through the Internet 🛜, and prevent younger generations from learning about the Tiananmen Square massacre and being possibly inspired by it to rise against the government. But, by only playing this movie in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and not the rest of China 🇨🇳 for the reasons that it's violent and the mainland government doesn't allow violent movies to be played in the mainland, the Chinese censors 🇨🇳 are unknowingly lending credence to the notion that Hong Kong 🇭🇰 is a separate and distinct place from China 🇨🇳, and it should be allowed to operate fully autonomously and not be subject to the same rules as the rest of China 🇨🇳.
I also wonder this because there was another martial arts action movie 🥋 that came in 2024 that fewer people have seen and fewer people know about and didn't get any of the pre-release hype that The Furious (2025) has gotten so far, especially in the West. It was called The Prosecutor, it starred Donnie Yen, where played a detective turned public prosecutor who just happened to know martial arts 🥋, who just happens to know kung fu 🥋. It was even directed and co-produced by Donnie Yen, so he had a lot of creative control over it. And while that movie is violent, at least from what I've seen, it's still no where near as violent as The Furious (2025). It's no where near as bloody and gory 🩸 and doesn't go as hard as The Furious (2025). Maybe it's because Donnie Yen just doesn't like excessive amounts of graphic violence and blood and gore 🩸 and it's all down to his personal tastes as a filmmaker, an actor and stunt performer, and an audience member (what he would and wouldn't like to see in a movie of this type), or maybe it's because the Chinese censors 🇨🇳 restricted him on what he could show or how violent he could make it. If that's the case, then what changed?
Why was The Prosecutor restricted and censored while The Furious (2025) was not? It's only a one year difference, these movies didn't come out far apart from each other. Unless, the version that played in Hong Kong theaters 🇭🇰 was censored, but the version we got here in America 🇺🇸 was not. It was the full uncensored version that they had made, that they had shot and edited, and it is the closest to the director's true vision. I don't know, I won't know the answer to this unless someone who saw the movie in Hong Kong 🇭🇰 or knows a thing or two about the Chinese censorship system 🇨🇳 and how it works in relation to Hong Kong 🇭🇰 and Hong Kong cinema 🇭🇰 reads this and comments on it. Come on, don't be shy, leave a comment, I'd like to read it.
Maybe Huey Li would know since he's from China 🇨🇳, but I doubt he would answer my question considering he doesn't typically reply to comments on his YouTube channel unless it's a video response and part of a larger topic that he already wanted to discuss, and I doubt he'd want to talk to me anyway if he read the post I wrote about him and what I said about him in the update I wrote after the fact explaining why I unsubscribed from his channel. He'd probably just ask an AI chatbot if he didn't already know the answer, and that to me is intellectual laziness. You're hurting human creators and created content on the Internet 🛜 by doing that, relying on an AI chatbot for all your answers. It's why I have the AI disabled on DuckDuckGo. I'd rather find my own answers made by real human beings instead of by an AI chatbot scouring the Internet 🛜, sifting through data, and generating an answer based on things that it stole from websites made by actual human creators. I know Huey really believes in this "lesser evil" thing and believes in the notion that everything we do is evil to some degree and is hurting someone else, but using AI in any capacity is where I draw the line. It's where I drew the line with him once I realized he kept AI for everything. Answering questions that he personally couldn't think of the answers to, and didn't want to actually look up anything made by an actual human. Because he's intellectually lazy like that.
In fact, speaking of Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026) for a moment, as much as I liked that movie and thought it was an improvement over the first one, I think the action in this movie, the fight scenes are even better. This is a master class in action and fight choreography. Easily surpasses anything that you see in any of the Mortal Kombat 🐉 movies, even the ones in 1990s. And I’m not one to compare Asian action movies to American ones 🇺🇸 and try to argue that the Asian ones are better than the American ones 🇺🇸, and the American ones 🇺🇸 aren’t any good, or that there aren’t any good American action movies 🇺🇸, this movie did at least surpass a few. The ones based off video games.
One day, we will have a Mortal Kombat 🐉 movie, or even Street Fighter movie, or a Tekken movie, or a Dead or Alive movie, or a Virtua Fighter movie, or a Fatal Fury movie, or a King of Fighters movie, or even a Tao Feng or Kakuto Chojin movie that has fight scenes that genuinely match the quality of fight scenes you’d see in these more recent martial arts action movies 🥋 coming out of Asia. Especially Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia is killing it when it comes to martial arts action movies 🥋. There’s no mistaking when you’re watching this movie that you’re watching an R rated movie and that this movie should be R rated. It earned it. This is a hardcore movie for adults, and I like it. Though I’m sure plenty of kids will still probably watch this. Whether it’s through parents taking their kids to watch it or kids seeking it out on their own. Either way, kids will find a way to watch this, even if they’re way too young to be watching it. I mean, I started watching R rated movies at a pretty young age too and I turned out just fine.
Yayan Ruhian and Joey Iwanaga were both pretty good as the main villain. Yayan does play villains a lot in movies, in fact he pretty much only plays villains. Even in Boy Kills World where it seemed like he was going to be a good guy, they had to make him a twist villain and have him fight Boy and his sister June 27 in a two-on-one fight, pretty much kick their asses. Even though he’s way shorter than Bill Skarsgård and Bill Skarsgård makes him look tiny by comparison, he still whooped his ass. He put up one hell of a fight against a guy ♂︎ three times his size. That should send a message to all the short kings out there. Just because you’re short and someone else is tall, doesn’t mean you can’t beat them in a fight. You can take their size advantage and turn it into a weakness, and take your size disadvantage and turn it into a strength. Especially if you’re a skilled martial artist 🥋 like Yayan Ruhian. He for sure mopped the floor with June 27, that girl ♀︎ stood no chance. He head butted her and knocked her out while she was wearing a helmet, a helmet with an LED display built into it that displayed text and showed what she was feeling at any given time. It's the best fight scene in that entire movie, and it's pretty much the only scene people talk about or remember from that movie. But you know, he just naturally has a villain look, which is why they always cast him as bad guy, even though he’s probably nicest, sweetest guy ♂︎ you can imagine. He can just flip that switch and become the most terrifying and creepy bad guy you can imagine.
I liked his character Tak in this movie, he was really badass and scary. I liked how he mainly used a bow and arrow 🏹. You really don’t see those kinds of weapons get used in a movie like this. It really set him apart, and it just looked cool. People compared him to Hawkeye, well he's the evil Hawkeye. And he scored way more kills with that bow and arrow 🏹 than Hawkeye ever did in any of the Avengers movies, or even in his own streaming show. He even kills a kid at the beginning of the movie, and you see it. You see that arrow through that boy ♂︎'s chest and instantly kill him. I think this first time I ever heard him speak English, because he barely talked in Boy Kills World when he played the Shaman, in fact I don’t think he talked at all. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched that movie all the way through. But when he does speak English, as this character, it's really terrifying and creepy. It's enough to send shivers down your spine. Especially with how he describes how he killed Navin's wife right to his face. But, Joey Iwanaga as Paklung is the real stand out of this movie. He's the real scary bad guy. Which is fitting since he's the real mastermind behind this whole human trafficking ring that took Wang's daughter and all those other kids, and claimed the life of Navin's wife. You have to be a special kind of morally reprehensible to start a human trafficking ring just to make money 💵 and impress your in-laws.
The scene where he gets called by his father-in-law and the other leaders of this criminal organization after all the children are freed from the Snake Pit 🐍 (which is what they call the building where they keep all the children) to be reprimanded by them, and then he just kills them all in sheer anger 😡 at being scolded by them and not being accepted or taken seriously by them despite being married to the lead guy’s daughter was a great way of showing what a violent psycho he is. It also shows what a threat he is, and he is not a guy who want to get on his bad side, because he will kill you. He doesn’t care if you’re an in-law,or an ally, or partner, if you’re even in the vicinity of him when he’s having his murderous temper tantrum, you’re done for.
Like, he kills the crooked police chief, even though he really had nothing to do with the internal family drama and politics that Paklung was angry 😡 about. He just killed him because he was there. He even tries to tell him that he’s a cop and not to kill him, but in that state, he didn’t care. You’re someone there, he will kill you. You’re just meat for him take his anger 😡 out on. I guess you could argue he killed the police chief because he failed to prevent Wang and Navin from freeing the kids from the Snake Pit 🐍 and is the reason he was called to be scolded by the bosses of this criminal organization including by father-in-law, who never truly accepted him as one of his own, who really accepted him as family despite being married to his daughter. If it wasn’t for his fuck-up, he wouldn’t be there.
Of course, bites the one guy’s finger ☝️ off, the one who’s always pointing at him 🫵 and getting in his face, and he finally had enough and just bit that guy’s finger ☝️ off and then just pulled it out of his mouth and put it on a drink table. Him biting the guy’s finger ☝️ off is what kicks off this murder spree, this massacre of the top leadership of this crime family. They showed that part in the trailer, the red band trailer, but trust me, it gets a lot bloodier and gorier 🩸 than that. Like he kills people with broken bottles, an ice pick, and then uses a sword to kill his father-in-law. His rage 😡 is palpable in this scene, his violent rage 😡. It’s another reason why it’s The Furious, everyone’s mad 😡 about something in this movie, even the main villain. But the real shocking moment is when he kills his pregnant wife 🤰, specifically stabbing her in the belly where their baby was, killing the baby instantly and killing the wife not so long.
In a fit of rage 😡, he killed the one person that he truly loved ❤️, the one person who kept him going and gave him something to work towards. The reason why he was doing all this. It was gone. Guess it’s a lesson to anyone watching not to let your anger 😡 get the better of you and lash out violently otherwise you might destroy something you truly care about. But really, had she lived, had he not accidentally killed her, she would just be asking questions about what happened to her father, why her father and his friends and associates, and even her uncles probably are dead, and Paklung would have to lie about it. Because if he told her the truth, she’d probably leave him, and then he would just kill her anyway. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy ♂︎ that would take rejection well, that would take a call for a divorce all that well, and he would just kill his wife and unborn baby in a fit of rage 😡, at being “betrayed.” He’s that kind of psycho.
With nothing to lose, Paklung decides to get his revenge of Wang by going to the police station with Tak, and killing his daughter because he blames him for why everything went for him. Which, he’s not wrong, Wang contributed majorly to destroying Paklung’s operation, and exposing the corruption of the police chief, who was instrumental to keeping this under wraps and preventing anything from actually getting done about the child kidnapping problem. But he wasn’t the only one since he really got as far as he did with Navin’s help, his investigative skills, and of course his own prowess as a martial artist 🥋. I’m surprised they didn’t give Navin a line about him not being famous enough to get on Paklung’s bad side. There is one thing that confused me and my grandma when we saw this movie 😕. When Ho shows up to avenge his cowboy hat wearing “father” 🤠, Mr. Song, Paklung is perplexed 😕 and asks him why he would go out of his way to avenge him when he’s not really his father. At first neither of us understood what he meant since they don’t go out of their way to explain it to us what he means by that, but I think I figured it out. Mr. Song and his “sons” were not really related. They were just related in the criminal sense. You know, like a crime family. Just because it’s called a crime family doesn’t mean that they’re literally a family. That could be the case, like Paklung’s family, the family he married into 💍, but it’s always the case. In fact, most of time, it’s not the case. And that could be the case with Mr. Song and the boys ♂︎ he calls his “sons.”
Another possibility is that Mr. Song’s “sons” are not really his biological sons, but rather are boys ♂︎ that he kidnapped and convinced were his sons. Mr. Song seemed a pretty sleazy guy ♂︎ before he was asked to be the middle man in Paklung’s human trafficking operation, so this seems like something he would. Take children away from their parents and raise them to be his henchmen to do his dirty work and keep the system going. It’s that Ho really believed this, he really bought into the idea that Mr. Song was his father. His real father. When really, he was no such thing. The implication that Ho is not very smart. He’s just a dumb meathead. He’s there to be muscle 💪, not to think. And he seemed genuinely content in his role as being one of Mr. Song’s enforcers and one of the people in charge of the kidnapping part of the human trafficking operation. He seemed like he was having fun putting Rainy in a trash bag and stuffing her in the back of that truck, and then he seemed to have fun fighting Wang. But, by the time he gets to the police station, he’s angry 😡 and he’s out for blood 🩸. To kill both Paklung and Tak for killing his supposed father and kill Wang and Navin for being in his way and being his enemies.
It’s hard to feel sorry for Ho, because he’s just as vile as the rest of them. He’s a human trafficker, the guy ♂︎ can go fuck himself, and I did have some satisfaction seeing Paklung actually kill him at least, since he was so difficult to kill and he refused to go down and stand down. Jeremy Jahns compared this movie to a video game in his review, and he said a lot of the fights in the movie feel like boss battles. Well, the part where Paklung kills Ho is like one boss kills another boss in a video game. Oh, and another thing, I saw comments on a couple of reviews of The Furious, and the guy ♂︎ played Ho in this movie, Brian Le was actually in Everything Everywhere All at Once. He was the security guard that put that phallic-shaped trophy 🏆 up his ass because it was a jumping pad for him to travel to different universes or whatever. It's been awhile since I've seen that movie. But, he was in, that was him. I just thought I would mention that before anyone in the comment tells me that he's the bald security guard 👨🦲 from Everything Everywhere All at Once.
I did kind of think the final battle went on for a little long, and I was getting a bit exhausted, and I was wondering when it was going to end, especially when it got the part on the street with Wang and Paklung are fighting with literal bicycles 🚲. It was like, “Okay, let’s start wrapping this up now.” But it was still cool, it was a cool final fight. You just know that people are going to upload this entire scene on YouTube when the movie’s available on digital and home video, as well as all the other action scenes in the movie. But, the police station fight scene goes on for so long that it would have to be uploaded in two parts. And you bet all the movie reactors are going to do reactions to this movie when it’s available on YouTube. Their fans are going to demand that they do it.
And you know there are going to be a bunch of video essays talking about how this one of the greatest action movies of the decades, and perhaps of all time, and it crafted the “perfect”opening scene, or the “perfect” final fight, or how it tells a story and builds character through its action scenes, or it makes you “feel” the action while you’re watching. I’ve seen a couple such video essays, and the movie’s still in theaters. Imagine how many more there’ll be when the movie comes out on digital and physical media. I’m not going to dispute that this is the greatest action movie of 2026 (so far), or even that it’s one of the greatest action movies of the decade, because this movie is awesome and fully deserves every bit of hype it has gotten so far. But, I think you all agree that these film essayists can talk it a little too far with how they praise certain movies that they like, and just come across as very pretentious. Even when they’re just talking about a crowd-pleasing martial arts action movie 🥋 (from Asia no less) like this.
Like, when once it went on the streets and Paklung and Wang started fighting with bicycles 🚲, that was the moment is finally time to start wrapping things up. And I think the filmmakers realized that too since the fight just kind of stops with Wang being knocked out unconscious, Rainy and that boy ♂︎ with the limp thinking he's dead, and Paklung finally succumbing to his many wounds and dropping dead after he decides to spare the kids and walk away. He clearly wasn't thinking straight. He wasn't in a clear state of mind. He was delirious. And he just died, with blood coming out of his ears 👂, his nose 👃, and I think even his eyes 👁️👁️. And then there's a time skip to about 6 months later, and that's when we get our epilogue where Wang is revealed to still be alive, and him, Rainy, and the boy ♂︎ dump Navin's ashes and scatter them to the wind, saying their final goodbye to him, since without them, they wouldn't have been succeeded. Wang and Rainy wouldn't have been reunited and the boy ♂︎ wouldn't finally be free.)
When Joe Taslim said that the goal of this movie was to create the ultimate action movie, I would say they succeeded. As an action movie, it’s fantastic. You can’t get action better than this. If you enjoyed the Raid movies, or The Night Comes for Us, you’ll definitely enjoy this movie as well. This movie feels like an acceleration and an evolution of what those movies did. I’m honestly surprised my grandma liked this movie considering that she’s always complaining about action movies having too much fighting. It’s why she didn’t like John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, that and she thought the IMAX theater was too loud. Joe Taslim was absolutely right when he said that this movie would change the way people view action movies and change the way people would make them.
I know I felt inspired while watching this movie, and watching the action scenes in this movie. I was coming up with action scenes in my head that were sort of similar to ones in this movie. Like, I would like to do an action scene involving a hammer, only mine would have a claw hammer 🔨. The way would be bloodier 🩸 than the cage fight in this movie. And I would love to do a massacre scene just like the one where Paklung kills all the bosses of that crime family and the corrupt police chief, and just have a villain that just kills everyone in sight with no remorse or discrimination. Everyone’s dead. I just like angry brutality 😡 like that. And of course, the final fight in the police station was a huge inspiration. I’d like to do an action scene like that, a final fight like that.
If there’s ever a live action Black Lagoon movie, I hope the action scenes are just like this. Although, Black Lagoon puts a lot emphasis on guns and gunplay, rather than martial arts 🥋, so the action scenes would have to have a lot of gunplay. But there’s some martial arts 🥋 in Black Lagoon, it has some blade work. Especially with the character Shenhua, who uses kukris attached to ropes. And the character Sawyer, who uses a chainsaw. But if there’s ever a live action Black Lagoon movie, I would want it to be this violent. It should have this level of violence, blood 🩸, and gore. I would actually want to do a Fighting Force movie with this kind of action. For those that don’t know, Fighting Force is an action beat ‘em up game from the 64 bit era or fifth generation of gaming. It was available on the original PlayStation and the Nintendo 64, and it’s been recently made available on modern consoles, or at least the PS5 was a digital only release. So if you own a PS5, you can play this relic from the fifth generation of gaming if you never got the chance to play it when it originally came out. It’s not a particularly well liked game, it got mixed reviews when it originally came out despite all the pre-release hype due to being published by Eidos, the same studio behind the PS1 era Tomb Raider games. Okay, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness wasn’t a PS1 game, it was a PS2 game, but you know what I mean.
But, just seeing the gameplay, reading what the plot is, and seeing the characters, I feel like Fighting Force would make for a good movie. You could make an awesome action movie out of this game. You could kick off a franchise with it if it’s actually any good and successful. The only thing is that the game was rated T for Teen, and there would be a question about either to make it PG-13 or R rated. You don’t have to make it R rated, you can make it PG-13 since it wasn’t an M rated game in the first place. But the game had blood 🩸 in it, there was blood 🩸 whenever you punched 🤜 or kicked an enemy 🦵, and the only way for a movie to be PG-13 nowadays is for there to be no blood 🩸. So, if you were to be accurate to the game and have blood 🩸, it would be rated R.
So, if it’s going to rated R anyway, you might as well go all the way, and make it really bloody and gory 🩸. Just like this movie. I also wonder if it should take place in the current time or if it should be a period piece. Because the whole plot of the game is that the main villain, Dr. Dex Zeng is trying to destroy the world because he’s upset that Y2K didn’t happen, and the main heroes of course are trying to stop him from doing that. It’s the kind of plot people could’ve only done in 1999 when the game originally came out. Y2K is very tied to the game’s plot. So, I don’t know how you would change that, what you substitute Y2K for, because so far there hasn’t been any big end of the world prediction this decade, other than maybe the Rapture last year in 2025. I would just set it in the game’s original time period of the early 2000s, specifically the year 2000. To think the original game technically took place in the future when it came out, by one year ☝️. Now it’s in the past.
I did miss some parts when I watched this movie, because I had to go to the bathroom, but I can always catch the parts I missed when the movie comes out on Blu-Ray 💿 and 4K 💿…hopefully. Hopefully it doesn’t just come out on DVD 📀 like Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die did. That would be bullshit right there 😠. I also spilt my popcorn 🍿 while trying to put my soda 🥤 back in the cup holder. That was a bit frustrating, I can’t believe I did that. But, it’s okay because I only had a little bit in there, I already ate most of the popcorn 🍿 in the bag. I was sharing with my grandma, but she only ate a little bit, I ended up eating most of it. I can eat a whole large popcorn 🍿 by myself if I need to. Like, if I was seeing a movie by myself and I got myself a large popcorn 🍿, I would easily finish it by myself. I’m that big of an eater. I guess that’s why I’m overweight. Plus, I just really like popcorn 🍿. My dad doesn’t like popcorn 🍿, but I do.
It was hard for me to completely concentrate on the movie and fully take it in, not just because I had to pee again after I went to the bathroom the first time and I held in my second pee for the rest of the movie, but also because I kept thinking about what happened earlier before we went to the movie. You see, to kill time, we went this store called Bath and Body Works, which sells shampoos, body washes, lotions 🧴, and fragrances for men ♂︎ and women ♀︎, and my grandma had asked if I wanted to buy anything. I wasn’t really looking to buy anything, but I figured guess I could get something. Something that I would like. I remember these cherry blossom 🌸 scented products that we got for my cousin’s girlfriend for Mother’s Day. I really liked that scent, so I thought I would get one of those products. I was going to get the lotion 🧴 but I already had lotion 🧴, I didn’t get the shampoo or the body wash because I already have shampoo and body wash. So the only option left was for me to get the fragrance, the perfume basically.
My grandma was shocked 😧 when I said I wanted it for me, after we bought it and after we got back in the Jeep, she straight up asked if I was gay ⚣. And then she said, she has no problem with it if I was, whatever made me happy she was okay with it. I was admittedly offended by her even asking that because just because I liked a certain scent and I wanted to buy it and use it and just because it’s labeled as “for women ♀︎,” using it automatically made me gay ⚣. Or she just went straight to the gay assumption ⚣. I just like smelling good, I don’t care if it’s feminine or masculine. I grew up living with just my mom and my two older sisters for so long, I got used to using hygiene products that would considered “feminine.” Men ♂︎ and women ♀︎ are restricted to certain scents, society restricts them to certain scents.
Men ♂︎ are supposed to smell a certain way and women ♀︎ are supposed to smell another way. You can’t deviate from that in either direction, especially if you’re a man like me. The problem is these scents are gendered, and it’s only socially acceptable for women ♀︎ to use them. If you’re a man ♂︎ you start using them, people automatically assume that you’re gay ⚣. That’s what Old Spice’s current marketing strategy is about, it’s showing how it’s not socially acceptable for men ♂︎ to use these more flowery scents, and to take care of their skin. It’s womanly ♀︎ to care about your appearance like that. And Old Spice sought to create those type of products for men ♂︎. Shampoos, body washes, deodorants, and body sprays with these more flowery scents that would otherwise be perceived as “feminine” if it wasn’t an explicitly male centric grooming and hygiene brand ♂︎ pushing it.
I told my grandma this in the store before we actually went to the counter to buy it, she still went to the gay question ⚣. I guess I should’ve told her about living with my mom and my sisters and how that influenced me. That was my mistake. But, since she brought up, I told her a little bit about my sexuality. While we were in another store, Nordstrom Rack right next door, I told her that truthful, I really don’t know what I mean. I told her I used to think I was bisexual, but after thinking it over and thinking about who I’d actually want to date, I realized that label didn’t really fit me. I told her the label I currently use for myself is heteroflexible, meaning I’m mostly straight ⚤, I’m most attracted to women ♀︎, but I do find certain men ♂︎ attractive. I am mostly into penises and the idea of blowjobs and seeing blowjobs, and ejaculations (cum), but I couldn’t really say that her now could I? I couldn’t tell her that I watch porn 🔞 and that I often watch gay porn ⚣🔞 as well as straight porn ⚤🔞. I guess I’m still trying to figure myself, and what my limits are, and how flexible I really am when it comes to my sexuality. Or if I just fully bisexual. I guess you could say that I’m bi-curious, but I’m not fully sure if that label applies to me either. Heteroflexible is the one that I’m currently comfortable with. If I ever find myself dating men ♂︎, I guess I’ll know I’m fully bisexual. But, even if that wasn’t the case, even I was completely straight ⚤, I still wouldn’t have problems using that scent. For the reasons I laid out before.
I don’t think men ♂︎ and women ♀︎ should be restricted just using the scents are correspond with their gender. If they want to experiment and try something new, they can. If a man ♂︎ wants to use “feminine” scents he can, if a woman ♀︎ wants to use “masculine” scents she can. It should be allowed either way, and if a man ♂︎ or woman ♀︎ chooses one of these alternate paths, they shouldn’t be shamed or ridiculed for it. They should just be accepted. These are grown adults making their own decisions, you have no control over them. I don’t really think she understood what I was talking about or what I meant, she stopped asking about it after that, and we just continued about our day. But that wasn’t the part I was worried about, I was so worried about what my grandma thinks of me, I was worried about what my dad would think if he knew I bought this product. Because I get the sense he doesn’t want me doing anything that’s too “girlie ♀︎,” or would be perceived as “girlie ♀︎.” Like he scoffed at the idea of me possibly shaving my legs 🪒🦵 because hey, only women ♀︎ shave their legs 🪒🦵right 🙄?
So, imagine how he would feel if he knew that I basically bought a perfume. If he did find out, and he made an issue out of it, I would tell him that I’m 27 years old, I’m fully grown adult, and that he can’t control my life and control how I smell, what fragrances I use, and how I choose to express myself. It’s not like I’m wearing dresses, or skirts, or panties, or painting my nails 💅, or wearing makeup 💄. Although I have been tempted to wear panties a few times, and I still have that desire to wear panties. I still dress fairly masculine. I am a cisgendered man ♂︎, and I for the most part, present myself as a man ♂︎ because that’s what I’m most comfortable as. It’s I like to occasionally use conditioners, lotions, and now fragrances are deemed “feminine” by companies and by society. If he has a problem with that, then he’s overreacting in my eyes. But, I feel like my dad has some insecurities of his own because my grandma told me one time that she caught him stealing some of her panties, and he admitted to wearing them, and he’s ashamed of that aspect of himself and he likes to keep it hidden.
Plus, on more than occasion, we’ve found sex toys that he’s made out of cucumber 🥒 that he presumably puts inside of his butthole, lying around his room and even in the bathroom one time. So he’s into some freaky sex stuff too. Which isn’t a problem, if that’s what he’s into that’s what he’s into. But there is somewhat of a stigma against guys ♂︎ who like it in the butt. Even if they’re receiving from a woman ♀︎ (wearing a strap-on) or they’re doing it to themselves (masturbation with sex toys), and I feel he’s probably repressed in some ways. He is in no position to judge me, though I suppose he doesn’t want me to be like him and wearing panties or using homemade sex toys. I don’t know. I’ll just live my life however I want to live it, regardless of what he says or thinks. I really hope Blogger doesn’t age restrict this with all the sex stuff I brought up here. Blogger team, if you’re reading this, I am not breaking the rules. I did not link any adult websites 🔗, I didn’t mention any name, I did not describe any sex acts in detail, and I am not showing any porn 🔞 in this post. Plus do not age restrict this. If it does get age restricted, I’ll just delete this whole entire section, and hopefully that will work and get the age restricted lifted. If it doesn’t, then I won’t have to do anything.
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Update (Tuesday June 23, 2026):
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There is one more thing I could've said to smooth things over with my grandma about buying the perfume. I could've told her that I was doing it to attract women ♀︎, which is 100% true. It's not like I would be lying to her or lying to myself if I said. I did make that consideration when I decided to buy it. I figure women ♀︎ might be more attracted to me if I had a more, let's say, flowery scent than if I had an overly "manly ♂︎" scent. It would smell better to them, and it would make them feel safer if they're around a scent that's more associated with them. If they're around a more feminine scent rather than masculine scent. It would let their guard down, make less defensive, and not perceive me as a potential threat, if they know that I'm using a scent that's marketed to women ♀︎, that I'm willing to embrace my feminine side somewhat, and that I'm willing to learn more about women ♀︎ by going to the source, I guess.
Women ♀︎ always complain about men ♂︎ not knowing anything about women ♀︎, and they do tend to like men ♂︎ who are willing to actually learn more about women ♀︎ from the actual source. Because men ♂︎ who know more about women ♀︎ and have genuine understanding from them, and are willing to listen to them, and don't try to talk down to them or look down on them tend to be better partners. It's better to immerse yourself in the female world ♀︎ first before you try to make friends with women ♀︎ or try to date women ♀︎. I mean, women ♀︎ are always having to immerse themselves in our world, and embrace more masculine things to try to get closer to us, and make us feel more comfortable and heard. The least we can do as men ♂︎ is meet them halfway.
You don’t have to paint your nails 💅, or wear makeup, or dresses, or skirts, or pantyhose/stockings, or high heels 👠, or even panties, I'm not asking you to become a crossdresser, but you could at least try using a perfume or even using those scented lotions 🧴 that you thought were too “girlie ♀︎.” When it comes to the perfume, you can just spray it on your balls if you don't feel comfortable spraying on the rest of your body. Trust me, it does make your balls and your dick smell a lot better. Depending on which scent you use of course. I use that cherry blossom perfume 🌸 I talked about in the review, and it does the trick. It has a good enough scent to make my private parts smell good. Or if you don’t want to do that, try watching some of those chick flicks ♀︎ that you dismissed because they weren’t made for men ♂︎. Or if you don’t even want to do that, just learn more about women ♀︎’s rights, feminism ♀︎, and women ♀︎’s history, and learn about their historical struggles of trying to gain real equality and real rights. Just learning about women ♀︎’s history and showing a genuine interest would be enough to show that you care. For me, I like writing stories with female protagonists ♀︎. That’s my way of showing that I care, and I want to include women ♀︎ rather than exclude them.
Plus, I think, from my "research" (on YouTube), I think women ♀︎, at least some women ♀︎, tend to like men ♂︎ who are more in touch with their feminine side and are not afraid or ashamed to embrace it. Even just a little bit. And some women ♀︎ like men ♂︎ who do look more “girlie ♀︎,” or look more pretty rather than having that rugged masculinity that we associate with being manly ♂︎. Like, think male KPop stars 🇰🇷♂︎. A lot of male KPop stars 🇰🇷♂︎ look pretty, they look very well groomed and have soft and even shiny skin, and do sort of have a more feminine look. They’re pretty boys ♂︎ rather than rough and tumble men ♂︎ who like they work in the fields, or work on an oil rig, or work on a construction site 🏗️. Some might even accuse them of being gay ⚣ at a first glance. And yet, a lot of women ♀︎ love them 😍. There’s a lot of women ♀︎ who go absolutely crazy for these male KPop stars 🇰🇷♂︎ 🤩😍. Why is that? Because clearly, they embrace their more feminine side and have a slightly more feminine appearance. I don’t know if there’s any science to back any of this up, but it makes sense to me.
Oh, and one more thing ☝️, Double Toasted 🍞 did end up reviewing The Furious (2025). I know I said in my Community Post on YouTube linking this review 🔗 that Double Toasted 🍞 wasn't going to review the movie, or it seemed that way, but to their credit they did. They only did after receiving after all kinds of viewer requests, a bunch of their fans telling them to review it. Even I told them to review it in a comment I left on their video about that one UFC fighter at the White House UFC event who called Michelle Obama a man ♂︎ after winning a fight. They probably would've never covered this movie if they didn't get a bunch of requests for it first. Which is sad, but that's how they run their channel. They only like covering popular movies, and doing videos they know will get views. So they often ignore movies like this even if they come out in the theater unless they get a bunch of requests to review it from their fans.
Korey's the only one who actually saw it, Martin and that other guy ♂︎ they've bringing on lately were just sitting there listening to him talk about the movie. Which is becoming more and more common in these reviews, where Korey's the only one who actually watches it, and Martin and the other guest is just sitting there at that table listening to talk about it. Why is that? If you're going to co-host this show with him, you should at the very least have the courtesy to watch the movie too so that you know what he's talking about and you can actually review it with him instead of just being a passive listener. And like most of the time, Martin was very dismissive of the movie, and kept talking about how it was doing things that other movies had done before. Like he talked about the hammer scene where Wang fights a bunch of dudes in a fighting cage with a hammer, and he was like "Oh, well Oldboy ♂︎ already did that. Why did this movie have to have a hammer? All these action movies with hammers, they're just copying Oldboy ♂︎."
I did see comments on the trailer comparing the movie to Oldboy ♂︎. A lot of them said it was Oldboy ♂︎ meets The Raid. But if you read the review, you know how I feel about the Raid comparisons. It's paying homage to Oldboy ♂︎ if anything else. It took that, it took the hammer action in that movie to another level. It's not copying it. Or maybe they weren't influenced by Oldboy ♂︎ at all. Maybe they just came up with it on their own and thought it would cool. That's always possible. I did find it weird how I kept noticing action movies use cheese graters during action scenes, since Tenet had a cheese grater scene, Boy Kills World had a cheese grater scene, and Weekend in Taipei had a cheese grater scene. In the span of 4 years, we that three action movies that had action scenes that involved cheese graters.
But you never once read me accuse these movies of copying the other ☝️, not once ☝️. Because I don't think like that. More than likely, the people who made these movies came up with the idea of using a cheese grater in an action scene independently of each other, and weren't necessarily influenced by the other. And it's probably the same story with all these action movies and incorporating hammers into action scenes. Besides, it's a fucking hammer. It's not copyrighted ©, it's not trademarked ™, there's nothing anywhere that says that an action movie can't use a hammer. Any action movie can use a hammer, it's not a big deal. So shut your face, Martin 😠🫵! Of course, this gets into this whole other conversation about how no movie is completely original and that every movie was influenced by something else. Something that critics like Martin clearly do not understand. Because if they did, they wouldn't be sitting there and constantly complaining about movies doing things that have already done before in other movies, and acting as if they're above the material. I mean, life is unoriginal. The same things keep happening over and over throughout history, and people keep doing the same things other people are doing. Martin is just a regular ol snobby critic. A grumpy old curmudgeon.
Him being dismissive of this movie and practically rolling his eyes 🙄 as Korey excitedly describes it, just makes me think of this review of the movie I saw a day ago, it was a podcast dedicated to talking about martial arts action movies 🥋, where these two dipshits who claim to be martial arts fans 🥋 kept complaining about the movie. They not only described the fight choreography as just "fine," and kept complaining about the editing and the cinematography. They said it had "too many cuts" for their liking, and they said that movie felt like it had too cooks in the kitchen because it mixed different fight choreography and editing styles instead of sticking to one, and they complained about the story, and used the fact that everyone's gushing about the fight scenes and not really talking about the story must mean the story's bad 🙄. And this is apparently them having "standards," as if martial arts fans 🥋 don't have standards, and they have refined taste. Please 😒. And the worst part of all this is that they had the gall, the GALL to title their review "If you're a martial arts fan, The Furious is required watching," or "If you're a martial arts fans, The Furious is a must-see" or whatever the hell it was called. I forgot, and I really don't care to remember. I don't want to support these guys ♂︎ in any way by giving them my view, or putting a link 🔗 to their review in my review.
You spent most of your review complaining about the movie and pretty much saying that it's not worth the hype, and you still told people to go watch it and they're not "real" martial arts fans 🥋 if they don't? What kind of two-faced bullshit is that?! It's like, what more do you want? A bunch of picky eaters, never satisfied with anything that they're given 😠. A bunch of buzzkills. Just be glad a movie that this got a theatrical release here in the United States 🇺🇸 and that at least some people outside of Hong Kong 🇭🇰 are actually watching it and loving it. As long as people enjoy it, who cares? Also, one of them made a pretty crude and crass sexual reference when talking about how they like good action movie with good action and a good story. Like they compared watching a good action movie that's the whole package to having really good sex, sort of like Double Toasted 🍞's "Better than Sex" rating, only a lot more graphic. Like he was describing the sex act in detail, on what he would want and how that compares to watching a really good action movie. Fucking nasty ass. Now I no longer feel bad about making sexual references in my reviews or any other posts. Could've easily have made a food comparison/analogy and still got the point across. To Martin and these so-called "martial arts fans 🥋" who are running this bullshit podcast screw you 🖕! Actually no, I'm not gonna say "screw you 🖕," I'm gonna to say, "smoke you 🖕" like in The Fifth Element instead, since Martin hates The Fifth Element. Smoke you 🖕!
I was glad most of the comments on their video were calling them out on their bullshit, saying that they don't like what they're given, they're never satisfied, they're ungrateful, and "what more do you want?" And they don't know what they're talking about, the movie's a masterpiece, and it's one of the best action movies they've ever seen. One person defended them, which is why I saw that quote about them having "standards," which also pissed me off 😠! They also said that action movies aren't evolving, and it's with guys ♂︎ like them raising these issues who action movies finally evolve. Again, more bullshit to boost these guys' ♂︎ fragile egos. Like, what do they mean action movies aren't evolving? In what way you do want them to evolve? What do you want to do, oh high and mighty 🙄?
Them complaining about the movie over the stupidest and pettiest shit (shit that most people won't notice or care about when deciding they like a movie or not, even martial arts fans 🥋) is not them having standards, it's them being nitpicky. Nitpicky little assholes, who don't know what they actually want, and change what they want on a moment's notice. Depending on what the current topic of the day, what the current talking point is. This is why people don't like critics, or even fucking podcasters masquerading as critics. They're never satisfied with anything they're given, they're incapable of having a good time, and they look down on general audiences for liking a movie that they don't like, rather than just accept that they have different opinion than them, and then call that having "standards." Even though those standards can change on a whim, depending on which direction the wind is blowing 💨. Not all critics or podcasters are like this, not all of them are this snobbish, or even elitist, but a lot of them are. And the ones that are can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned. To Korey's credit, he did like the movie. He spent almost the entire thing praising it. You can tell he had a great time watching it. at least he appreciated this movie for what it was, even if some of his contemporaries won't or don't.
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