The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior

This 2008 movie focuses around a young man by the name of Mathayus (played by Michael Copon) and how he is seeking revenge for his father after witnessing his death, which he knew was set up by Sargon, the king, even though it was never proven.  After the incident, Mathayus made a vow with himself that he will go into training and become the best Scorpion Warrior soldier to get revenge for his father.  The story was fast forwarded and brought up to the time when he successfully became a warrior.  From there, he was acknowledged by Sargon with his talented skills and was asked to meet him in his palace for a promotional discussion.  In the palace, Mathayus decided to take this chance to assassinate Sargon but failed to with the surprise of Sargon's hidden dark magic power given to him by Astarte, goddess of fertility, beauty, war, and love.  It was then obvious that Mathayus was a wanted runaway and his mission was now to steal Astarte's legendary sword that is the only weapon that can destroy Sargon.  Mathayus ended up going on the journey along with his childhood friend Layla and later on picked up on a Greek named Ari as well as other accomplices Mathayus' father knew before his death.  They underwent many obstacles which required courage as well as wisdom in the underworld.  They eventually arrived to Astarte's lair and ended up trying to buy time by mocking and discriminating her.  That resulted with Layla battling her a non magic fight but after Astarte decided to cheat, Mathayus came into the picture and used his flirtatious tone to try to extend the time of finding the sword as well as saving Layla.  They finally found the sword and decided to run back to the human world.  Once they returned, they discovered that Sargon's greed for power risked the lives of all the townspeople.  

Layla and one of the Chinese accomplices named Fong went to the location which the sacrifice was about to occur while Mathayus decided to invade the palace to fight Sargon.  As a result, Sargon ended up dying and the townspeople were saved by Layla and Fong.   In the end, a new king was appointed and Mathayus finally kissed Layla as a sybolical meaning of his love and care for her.

In this b-genre movie, it depicts leading character Michael Copon with a hyper-masculinity trait as an Filipino American.  Not only was he playing a leading role but he was able to save the a huge society (the townspeople), but he was also able to obtain the "kissing role" that is not very much seen within the mainstream movies/films.  This basically demonstrates the racial barrier being broken out of this paradigm that is not very much seen in American films.  However, it does not erase the fact that the movie was still categorized as a low budget film.  From my perspective, it indirectly degraded the Filipino American within the entertainment industry because of the concept of this "glass ceiling".  Michael Copon has been very well known within the Filipino and Filipino American society but has not been very much exposed to the general American society.  This movie has been shown here in America as well as in the Philippines.  It is a fairly well known movie that creates this fantasy world for the Filipinos in the Philippines.