In honor of the new Harry Potter movie, rotten tomatoes did a list of the ten best wizards in film. I can't quibble with Gandalf at #1, the dude is pretty cool. However, David Lo-Pan is clearly several spots too low on their list.
8. Lo-Pan (Big Trouble in Little China)
Wizened and wheelchair-bound one minute, 10 feet tall and shooting laser beams out of his eyes the next, the ancient Chinese warlord Lo-Pan (James Hong) -- a.k.a. David Lo-Pan, CEO of the Wing Kong Import-Export Trading Company -- overcame a somewhat conflicted relationship with the mortal plane to wield a stack of fearsome powers that included a trio of weather-themed martial artists, championship-level hologram thumb-wrestling skills, and the ability to send people to the Hell of Upside-Down Sinners. He is also, so far as we know, the only wizard ever to utter the immortal words, "Now this really p---es me off to no end." But the best thing about Lo-Pan has to be his raison d'être: For all his insults, kidnapping, and murdering, all he really wanted was a wife. Sure, he was a little picky -- she had to have green eyes, a rather uncommon attribute in Chinese girls -- but he kept trying for centuries, and who among us can't respect that kind of tenacity?
Wizened and wheelchair-bound one minute, 10 feet tall and shooting laser beams out of his eyes the next, the ancient Chinese warlord Lo-Pan (James Hong) -- a.k.a. David Lo-Pan, CEO of the Wing Kong Import-Export Trading Company -- overcame a somewhat conflicted relationship with the mortal plane to wield a stack of fearsome powers that included a trio of weather-themed martial artists, championship-level hologram thumb-wrestling skills, and the ability to send people to the Hell of Upside-Down Sinners. He is also, so far as we know, the only wizard ever to utter the immortal words, "Now this really p---es me off to no end." But the best thing about Lo-Pan has to be his raison d'être: For all his insults, kidnapping, and murdering, all he really wanted was a wife. Sure, he was a little picky -- she had to have green eyes, a rather uncommon attribute in Chinese girls -- but he kept trying for centuries, and who among us can't respect that kind of tenacity?
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