The Myth (Chinese: 神話) is a 2005 Jackie Chan Wuxia film featuring an impressively international cast, including Chan himself in dual roles as the heroes Jack/Meng Yi, Korean actress Kim Hee Sun as Ok-Soo, Indian actress Mallika Sherawat as Samantha, frequent Jackie Chan co-star Yu Rong-guang, and Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung Ka-fai as William.
Inspired a TV miniseries spinoff on the Mainland China's CCTV-8. This time around, Yi Xiao Chuan and Gao Yao, archeology graduate students, get blasted back to the Qin Dynasty by an Ancient Artifact found in the tomb of an ancient Qin princess. In addition to the TV series, The Myth also spawned two feature-length sequels, Kung Fu Yoga (2017) and A Legend (2024). Kung Fu Yoga follows the archaeologist Jack in a standalone adventure, while A Legend as a film is even more standalone, being more of a Spiritual Successor with similar themes and plot rather than a sequel (though officially marketed as such), and featuring completely different characters.
The Myth provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Jack is an archaeologist (and he's very insistent that he's not a tomb raider).
- Advertised Extra: Mallika Sherawat, being a huge star in her native India, was prominently featured in promotional materials. She's in the film for a fraction of the runtime and absent outside of the India scenes.
- Atop a Mountain of Corpses: The aftermath of Meng Yi's Last Stand has him doing the standing version of this during his You Shall Not Pass! scene. Unfortunately, he goes beyond his limits before he could kill the last of the attacking rebels and he falls unconscious while standing, allowing one of the remaining rebels to climb up the mountain of corpses and cut off his head.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite being stuck in the wilderness exposed to the harsh elements for weeks probably months, Ok-soo is as beautiful as ever.
- Betty and Veronica: Jack's primary Love Interests are the Proper Lady and literal princess Ok-soo (Betty) and the sultry Action Girl Samantha (Veronica).
- Cave Behind the Falls: Not just a cave, but a massive burial tomb as well.
- Chivalrous Shirt: Jackie and Samantha, on the run from enemy mooks, gets into a fight within a factory that makes sticky mouse-traps, inevitably leading to Jackie, Samantha, and a few of their pursuers landing on a conveyer belt coated with glue. A fight scene with plenty of Giving Them the Strip ensues until Jackie and Samantha managed to escape, Samantha becoming topless in the process; luckily Jackie is still wearing a t-shirt that he quickly removes for her to put on.
- Chroma Key: The scenes in the Mausoleum are all shot in front of a green screen.
- Cool Horse: Black Wind, Meng Yi's impossibly durable war horse.
- Decoy Protagonist: Meng Yi is prominently placed in the posters and the film actually opens with him, but his reincarnation Jack is the actual protagonist. And while the film has Rotating Arcs of past and present storylines in which Meng Yi is The Hero of the former, Jack's adventures are more focused on.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Twice. In the past, General Meng Yi and Princess Ok-soo/Concubine Li fell in love but the General was slain in battle and both the Princess and the General's Number Two are rendered immortal for drinking the Elixir of Youth not long after. Meng Yi is then reincarnated as Jack and is eventually reunited with Ok-soo, but once she finally realizes that he's essentially a different person now, she decides to stay at the collapsing mausoleum while he is forced to escape..
- Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Ok-soo treats Jack as if he's still Meng Yi upon meeting him. She's utterly heartbroken once she finally realizes that he's literally a different person now.
- Downer Ending: Ok-Soo catches on pretty quick that Jack is not her beloved, and she floats back into the tomb to die. Oh, and Jack's friend gets killed, too.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: General Meng Yi dies in battle, but he made sure he took at least 40 enemies with him, with his Last Stand have him Atop a Mountain of Corpses.
- Ethereal White Dress: Ok-soo is clad in an Ivory gown once she appears in the present day.
- First-Person Dying Perspective: General Meng's Last Stand ends with his execution via Off with His Head! by the enemy commandant; as Meng's cranium flies off the audience sees everything from Meng's POV before hitting the floor and closing his eyes while looking at his own headless corpse.
- Four-Star Badass: Meng Yi, a lone soldier, kills about 100 guys before finally being killed, simply because he wasn't shot full of arrows at the start. Also he puts a spear straight through a guy while flying through the air and pulls it out the other side! And he is defeated only because one of his enemies pretended to be surrendering before swiftly attacking him off guard.
- His enemy wasn't pretending to surrender. By that time of the battle, Meng Yi was already so battered that he might as well be dead already. The enemy general walked up to him, bow to him as one last gesture of respect as a fellow warrior before killing him.
- Also the other generals, but not as badass.
- Giving Them the Strip: When Jack and Samantha are pursued by the police during his misadventures in India, they run into a glue factory and got stuck on a conveyor belt of glue. Cue Jack and the police officers removing their shoes just to not get stuck on glue of a conveyor belt heading for a glue cutter, with predictable results for Samantha.
- Goofy Print Underwear: Jackie wears boxers with a "Have a Nice Day" Smile over the crotch, as seen after losing his trousers in the glue factory struggle.
- Intimate Healing: Jack was an Imperial soldier in a past life who nearly drowns, and gets dragged to safety by Ok-Soo, who does this to revive him.
- I Should Write a Book About This: Jack's character has written a book of the same name at the end of the movie, and it is dedicated to his Dead Sidekick.
- I Will Wait for You: Ok Soo waits for 2200 years for the return of General Meng Yi.
- Last Stand: Meng Yi, the loyal General, and his men are ambushed by an army of rebels. All of his men are killed, leaving Meng Yi as the only survivor. His response is to slaughter dozens of horsemen and probably a hundred infantrymen, before getting shot with an arrow through the knee. He then props himself up with a spear on top of a ten-foot pile of his victims so that he will remain standing, even after being decapitated.
- Lost Technology / No Gravity for You: The anti-gravity field coming from the meteorite the Qin Emperor's floating underground burial tomb was built on.
- Love at First Sight: Meng Yi falls for Ok-Soo as soon as he lays eyes on her.
- Love Transcends Spacetime: Sadly subverted. Jack is not really Meng Yi, and the princess who had been waiting for Meng Yi, floats away from him to die in the tomb.
- Mystical India: The scenes in India include an elephant, snake-charming, sword-fighting, and levitating holy men.
- Musicalis Interruptus: The song Endless Love plays as Jack and Ok Soo waltzes through the anti-gravity field, which is abruptly halted as General Nangong suddenly ambushes Jack.
- Oh, Crap!: The rebel general's face while he watches one guy slaughter his army says it all.
- One-Man Army: Meng-yi takes on an entire army, and holds his own killing one enemy after another. He almost made it too...
- Past-Life Memories: Jack has dreams of his life as General Meng Yi.
- Pet the Dog: Jack is considerate enough to turn off the conveyor belt of the glue factory to spare the poor police officers from being sliced by the glue cutter.
- Reincarnation Romance: Meng Yi/Jack and Ok-Soo. Except it doesn't work.
- Rescue Romance: Meng Yi and Ok-soo fell in-love after he rescues her from falling in ravine which was caused of trying to protect her from an ambush attack done by traitorous soldiers from her kingdom.
- Rotating Arcs: The film's focus alternates between two storylines; the present day storyline of Jack searching for the anti-gravity mineral, and the past with Meng Yi delivering Ok-soo to The Emperor and then searching for the Elixir of Life.
- Self-Surgery: In the Ancient China scenes, after General Meng-yi and the princess escapes from enemy raiders with Meng-yi suffering a nasty slash, the princess managed to stitch up his wounds using her hair as improvised threads.
- The Slow Path: Ok-Soo and General Nangong are rendered immortal and imprisoned for 2,000 years in the Qin Emperor's underground floating tomb.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Ok-Soo is the emperor's concubine. Meng Yi is the emperor's loyal general. They are in love but are unable to be together, ever.
- Stealth Sequel: The 2017 movie Kung Fu Yoga is stated by Chan himself to be The Myth 2. A painting of Ok Soo can be seen in the background at some point in Kung Fu Yoga.
- Sticky Situation: This happens when Jack and Samantha are trying to escape from some thugs and end up in a chase sequence in a Rat Glue factory's Conveyor Belt o' Doom that is sticky and gets their clothes stuck in it. A lot of Clothing Damage ensues for everyone via either Giving Them the Strip or Stripping Snag, with poor Samantha ending up having a Naked Freak-Out when she's rendered topless and Jack ending up in in just his boxers.
- Taking You with Me: Before Professor Koo finishes climbing up the stairs leading to the vault containing the elixir of immortality as the tomb collapses, General Yangong drags his legs down into the void.
- Uncertain Doom: Ok-Soo and General Nangong are both The Ageless and possibly immortal. They are last seen being left behind (in Ok-soo's case, willingly) in the collapsing tomb.
- Visions of Another Self: Half the movie is Jack flashing back to his previous incarnation as General Meng Yi.
- We Have Reserves: Just how many Mooks the rebel general had to throw at freaking Meng Yi!?
- Wire Fu: To create the effect of the anti-gravity field. One of the first Jackie Chan movies to feature this technique.