SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen last week’s episode of Lost and don’t want to know what happened, skip the text.

When the television series Lost premiered six years ago, there was a fair amount of criticism from some in the Asian American community about the way Jin and Sun, the Korean couple played by Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim, were portrayed. Jin seemed to be little more than the stereotypical domineering Korean male while Sun was meek and submissive. I remember Daniel telling me at the time that he hoped people would give the show and the characters a chance to evolve. The audience did and the characters did change—eventually becoming the romantic heart of the show and providing something all too rare in Hollywood: a real love story between an Asian man and an Asian woman.

So when Jin and Sun met their deaths last week, there was shock, outrage and grief—an outpouring of genuine emotion for what may have arguably been one of the series’ most moving moments. As we countdown this month to Lost’s final episode, Offender David and I pay tribute to one of the great small screen romances by imagining Jin/Daniel and Sun/Yunjin as the leads in six of cinema’s most memorable romantic films.
–Philip

TITANIC (1997)
(Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet)

You may think this choice came from the fact that a watery death figures prominently both here and in Lost, but it’s also an opportunity to address a historical fact that very few people are aware of—that there were Asians aboard the Titanic. Records are spotty concerning all who were on the ill-fated ship, but we know there was a group of Chinese sailing to meet up with a ship named the Annetta in New York. The premise wouldn’t need to change too much—Daniel could still be a low-class stowaway who falls for Yunjin’s regal beauty who’s betrothed to marry some Chinese royal who’s a prick. Hey, if people can believe Tom Cruise was Japan’s last samurai, is this really that much more of a stretch?

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)
(Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan)

The story of a man and woman who remain platonic best friends for years before finally realizing they are meant for each other? Hell, this is already an Asian American story! Throw in Ken Jeong and Margaret Cho as the witty best friends, change the setting from New York to San Francisco (I love NY, but I think SF is America’s most romantic city and an Asian American romantic comedy just needs to take place there) and you’ve got yourselves a movie.

CASABLANCA (1942)
(Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman)

Fade in: Shanghai on the eve of the Japanese occupation. Daniel is a cynical Korean ex-pat club owner trying to escape his painful past with booze and all the decadence Shanghai provides in abundance. Until that past walks into his bar in the form of Yunjin, his ex-lover now married to a Korean independence fighter who must escape to the U.S. before the Japanese get him, and only Daniel can help them. Romance, intrigue and sacrifice ensue. “We’ll always have Seoul.”

THE FLY (1986)
(Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis)

David Cronenberg’s remake of the Vincent Price-starring B-movie classic brought the story of a scientist who slowly finds himself turning into a fly into the modern era—it was a metaphor for a then-new disease called AIDS and showed that romantic tragedy had as much place in the horror genre as it did in more “prestigious” genres. But why remake it with Daniel and Yunjin? First, it’d just be awesome to see a cool horror flick with two Asian American leads, but I think the story also lends itself to an interesting metaphor about the complicated relationship between Asian American men and women—what’s an Asian woman supposed to do when her once-virile man is reduced to an image of an unattractive monster by forces beyond his control?

DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
(Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck)

Daniel is an insurance salesman who goes to see a client (an old white dude) about renewing his lapsed policy and instead runs into the guy’s beautiful Korean trophy wife in a cheap platinum blonde wig a.k.a. Yunjin. She seduces and convinces Daniel that what they need to do instead is take out a life insurance policy on her husband, kill him and live happily ever after with the insurance money they will collect. They commit the crime, but when it looks like the law is closing in, all sorts of betrayal and double crossing take place. Just tell me you wouldn’t watch that film.

CHINATOWN (1974)
(Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway)

How about this for an idea—a movie titled Chinatown that stars Asians. Like Nicholson’s character in the original, Daniel is a private dick who used to be a cop in Chinatown until he was forced out by corruption. Yunjin is the hapa daughter of Noah Cross (Anthony Hopkins filling in for the original John Huston), a wealthy water baron, and his Chinese mistress. Of course, Daniel and the audience will learn that Yunjin is much more than that (watch the original Chinatown if you don’t know what I’m referring to). “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

From Offenders David (images) and Philip (text)