The Jeeja Yanin Worship Thread

[Hamilcar]

This is my fantasy wifey (who bears a strong resemblance to my RL wifey, they even share the same birthday) Jeeja "The Female Tony Jaa" Yanin.



She's been my crush since her debut in Chocolate.  She plays a girl who learns how to fight by watching kungfu movies and playing fighter games.  In her very first scene she KOs a guy once with a twisted kick and then again with a jumping twist kick:



I was tempted to show every fight scene from this movie to illustrate what they are doing with it (first is her imitating and upstaging Jackie Chan with prop fights, then Bruce Lee with straight up Taekwondo [she is a 4th Dan in Taekwondo and only learned Thai for the movies], then weapon fights, then a total upstaging of Tony Jaa with insane aerial moves in the last big fight scene.) But screw it, just watch a youtube compilation:




Unfortunately, the fight choreographer for this movie (Tony Jaa's) died soon after.  So, she will never look the same again in her later outings.  A real statement as to how no matter how skilled the fighter is, you still need a decent director and choreographer team to make them look good.  It's much more than just pointing a camera in her direction.

She's still had impressive fight scenes afterwards, but nothing like Chocolate ever again.

I will continue to post more about her and her career, here.




(This fight scene doesn't get enough love in the youtube videos.)

[CDF47G-MMA Rankings]

Pretty slick videos

[Hamilcar]

Jeeja's next movie was Raging Phoenix.



This next movie was billed to have fight scenes more in tune with Jeeja's talants and fighting style, which unfortunatly did not mean more Taekwondo.  What it instead meant was a more flamboyent fighting style.  In the in-movie lore, she learns to fight in a drunken muay thai style, which on-screen is more of a b-boy fighting style.  She does, in-fact, pull this off amazingly well.



One of the great things about this movie is the other fighters.  The male lead is a parkour practioner (which makes the ending a bit terrible where

Spoiler:

as well as a breakdancer.  The Mantis Style guy is very awesome as well and probably should be doing his own movies.

My favorite part of this movie is that you get to see the great strength that she posseses.  






These are not exactly easy to do.  This movie takes full advantage of her small size, too.  Not only in having her do these calisthenic feats, (in one promo she did, she also pulls off a planche) but also in allowing the guys to swing her around in fights as a weapon.  

This is an underrated movie of Jeeja's.  It is actually pretty good, even in the story, and the way that her and the leads dance-partner-fight style emphasizes their relationship (though they are not love interests, in this movie, like the last, she plays as a teen).  Jeeja gets alot of dialogue in here too, unlike in Chocolate where she was practically a mute, and displays the full range of emotion.  She is actually a pretty decent actress, something that is really only used in these first two movies.

Next is her third movie.




For some reason this movie gets alot of hate for supposedly using wires.  The only instance where I believe they used wires to assist her is in the final fight where she impossibly spins around a rock pillar.  Other than that, no, she can really do all of this.  No wires.  She even broke her neck in a fall during filming.  This is why I like her demos: You can see that her moves are all real. No movie magic.

[CDF47G-MMA Rankings]

Jeeja's next movie was Raging Phoenix.



This next movie was billed to have fight scenes more in tune with Jeeja's talants and fighting style, which unfortunatly did not mean more Taekwondo.  What it instead meant was a more flamboyent fighting style.  In the in-movie lore, she learns to fight in a drunken muay thai style, which on-screen is more of a b-boy fighting style.  She does, in-fact, pull this off amazingly well.



One of the great things about this movie is the other fighters.  The male lead is a parkour practioner (which makes the ending a bit terrible where

Spoiler:

as well as a breakdancer.  The Mantis Style guy is very awesome as well and probably should be doing his own movies.

My favorite part of this movie is that you get to see the great strength that she posseses.  






These are not exactly easy to do.  This movie takes full advantage of her small size, too.  Not only in having her do these calisthenic feats, (in one promo she did, she also pulls off a planche) but also in allowing the guys to swing her around in fights as a weapon.  

This is an underrated movie of Jeeja's.  It is actually pretty good, even in the story, and the way that her and the leads dance-partner-fight style emphasizes their relationship (though they are not love interests, in this movie, like the last, she plays as a teen).  Jeeja gets alot of dialogue in here too, unlike in Chocolate where she was practically a mute, and displays the full range of emotion.  She is actually a pretty decent actress, something that is really only used in these first two movies.

Next is her third movie.




For some reason this movie gets alot of hate for supposedly using wires.  The only instance where I believe they used wires to assist her is in the final fight where she impossibly spins around a rock pillar.  Other than that, no, she can really do all of this.  No wires.  She even broke her neck in a fall during filming.  This is why I like her demos: You can see that her moves are all real. No movie magic.

Nice

[Hamilcar]

Jakkalan/This Girl is Bad Ass is, unfortunately, the start of Jeeja's less than stellar movies.



The movie is an action comedy that was, said by the makers, to expand Jeeja's acting repertoire sourcing her nigh-mute role in Chocolate as an inspiration, ignoring or forgetting her better role in Raging Phoenix.

The movie likes to emphasize the fact that she is a cute girl that can beat people up.  Which is fine, because it is true.  But, it also features her fighting while hanging onto a bike.


https://youtu.be/fkm1U_adfGo
Some people like it, I don't.  I think it severely cramps her style and holds her back from doing what we want to see her do.  It is mainly in the movie, and her character as a bike messenger, because this type of bike was a fad at the time (I cannot find the name of the bike type anymore, but like, these bikes could actually go in reverse.  They were pretty cool.).

The comedy is extremely Thai.  So much so, that the American release of the DVD deleted many comedic scenes because they made no sense to the Western taste in comedy.  They either fell flat, were unnoticeable or so out in WTF field that they might as well be deleted.  They recognized that we were only watching the movie for Jeeja and not that Thai comedian who somehow appears in all of these movies.  So, they changed the title to "This Girl is Bad Ass."  And she still is in this movie.



Nothing like her first two movies, but still pretty good, especially for a comedy.  You can see that she is clearly holding back in her punches and kicks and some don't even actually land (they just use movie magic to make it look like they are).  I can't help but wonder if this because they got actors and extras instead of actual stuntmen for her to fight.
Further, in this movie, she is not playing as a martial artist. Just a cute girl who can beat up people. So, they have her swinging out objects to hit people with, rather than let her show off her advanced martial arts skills. Disappointing. But, it's still Jeeja.

Unfortunately, this, so far, has been the last time she has played a lead role in a movie.

[CDF47G-MMA Rankings]

Ronda vs. Yanin

[Hamilcar]

Ronda vs. Yanin

Yanin by elbow and knee trauma to Ronda's head in 16 seconds.  She would be in the Atomweight division, though.  She's literally only about a hundred pounds.  

I'll get to her MMA stuff, soon.

[Hamilcar]

I'm going to level with you. The Kick is the only one of Jeeja's non-cameo movies I haven't watched.



This was a Thai-Korean collab movie that is mostly a Taekwondo showcase. From what I have seen, most of the fights are pretty decent. Jeeja plays Wawa in this movie, a Thai girl and thus a Muay Thai fighter in this movie. Which is unfortunate, because Jeeja is a 3rd dan in Taekwondo and I would love to see her do some 540 kicks like the other characters get to do in this movie.

Anyway, she doesn't get too much screen time in this movie and her fights are highly stylistic rather than hard-hitting like I would rather see. But, they are okay.



One of these days, I'll get around to seeing the whole movie so that I can see some more of her acting.


Next up will be her collab with Tony Jaa.

[CDF47G-MMA Rankings]

Ronda vs. Yanin

Yanin by elbow elbow and knee trauma to Ronda's head in 16 seconds.  She would be in the Atomweight division, though.  She's literally only about a hundred pounds.  

I'll get to her MMA stuff, soon.

LOL. Would be cool to see her in MMA.

[Hamilcar]

It finally happened.  Tony Jaa and Jeeja "The Female Tony Jaa" Yanin teamed up!!!



Only it didn't look nearly as awesome as this.  They gave Jeeja an ugly bowl cut and an identical twin to make every scene with her confusing.  Oh, and both of them fight with an electric plug.



Oh, and instead of teaming up and being an unstoppable force, Jeeja is pretty much useless except for KOing a few mooks and getting thrown around.



Yeah.  I didn't like this movie at all.  Looking at the fights again, all I can say is that the movie makers are lucky that the 'Jaas are really, really, really good at what they do.  It looks like alot of people thought this movie was pretty cool, but I am a Jeeja fanboy, and this movie was not at all what it was hyped up to be for her.

But at least we got these out of it:

[Hamilcar]

Okay.  Now we get up to date with her.  Jeeja has only been doing cameos lately, other than her work on Halfworlds 2 which I cannot seem to find any information on which is a shame because she is probably fighting ghosts and monsters in it. This video might be from it, though.  I don't know where it is from otherwise, so I guess it is from Halfworlds.


Her first cameo was in the latest Never Back Down.  For this, she went through extensive MMA training.





Including some ground work.



Here's her scene.  Watch for the downward elbow strike on the thigh and the punch to the thigh. Awesome.


And her she is in Hard Target 2. (At 1:50:00.  YouTube is not coperating with me.  Just a few seconds before where it is linked she appears.)


She shows up looking her old self in Raging Phoenix throws a few kicks and Mr. Protagonist gets to knock her out with the aid of shaky camera work that doesn't let us see what's going on (to hide how much Mr. Protagonist sucks at martial arts).  Everyone knew Jeeja was going to show up in this movie, and she doesn't even get to look like a mini-boss.  Come on.  They even gave her a bit of a build up with her looking cool and being down-played by the guy.  She should've had a minute or two of one-one fighting before she got KO-ed for being with the baddies.

Anyway, that does it for now.  Next up, it looks like she got some bigger roles in her upcoming movies which I will showcase next.

[imnotliberal]

nice post dude. I can see you like asian cultures.

[Hamilcar]

She has an upcoming movie where she stars alongside Tony Jaa, Tiger Chen, and some UFC fighter named Michael Bisping.
Triple Threat


I don't know much about this one, but unfortunately it looks like she plays a small role again (her character's name is even Mook) and she plays with guns again. But, I'll be sure to catch it anyway.

[CDF47G-MMA Rankings]

Nice

[RIZINAdmin]

[Hamilcar]

A bit of an old video, but you get to see her training in this video.

[Hamilcar]

Youtube isn't being friendly with showing clips of her new cameos. For now, here's her fighting the Chinese dude. I love how genuine his Chinese gong fu is. The dude even does the head-kipup. It keeps this as a true style-vs-style fight.

[CDF47G-MMA Rankings]

A bit of an old video, but you get to see her training in this video.

She looked great in that video.

[Hamilcar]

Jeeja starred in Season 2 of Halfworlds. And you can see plenty of her being awesome and badass in the trailer (I've seen so much of her I can recognize her just from her kiai, lol).

[lamarclark09]

Wow nice one.

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