During the promotion of the movie Little Big Soldier, Jackie Chan talked about his motivation for making his 100th film as the lead role, “Armour of God III: Chinese Zodiac”. According to Chan, he wanted to work on the movie that deals with recovering the national treasures of the Chinese people including the last four lost items of the Gardens of Perfect Clarity’s 12 Head Statues of Chinese Zodiac.
Through the movie, Jackie wanted to show the injustice of Chinese artifacts being held in other places in the world. He said “I once saw a Chinese Zodiac animal bust being auctioned in a foreign country, I was immensely stirred, why do we keep losing our national treasures to other countries? Last year, two more busts were auctioned, re-igniting my will to shoot the movie Chinese Zodiac. Why does such and such museum have so many Chinese national treasures? These are loots. Many big countries are saying those are world legacies, and they’re safekeeping them, but in reality, they just want to possess them.”
He also added, “Once, I set aside US$30m, intending to quietly buy back an animal bust for China. However, the final bid was US$100m, it was far too high, beyond what I could afford, and I had to give up. I had thought of making use of my kung fu skills, sneak into those museums, and get back all those lost national treasures one by one. But, their security was too high. But I believe, all these artifacts will gradually be returned by and by.”
Jackie wanted all the bases covered in the movie by allotting another 70 million yuan for a major action scene. Jackie said, “have been hesitant about this for a long time, many told me it is too extravagant, and advised me against it. But eventually, I still go for it. This film will contain many vigorous action scenes, I’d almost be fighting throughout the film, but my most demanding action scenes will stop at this movie.”