The Quest is a 1996 American martial arts adventure film starring and directed by Jean-Claude Van Damme, in his directorial debut. It co-stars Roger Moore, James Remar and Janet Gunn. The plot, set in 1925, follows New York thief Chris Dubois (Van Damme) who is sold into slavery by Lord Edgar Dobbs (Moore) and, after receiving Muay Thai training in Siam, enters an ancestral martial arts tournament in Tibet to win a Golden Dragon.
The Quest premiered in Turkey on April 19, 1996, and was released in the United States on April 26, 1996. It was the last of a five-picture deal between Van Damme and Universal, and the actor continued his career at Columbia. Hyped as Van Damme's be-all end-all martial arts film, it had a complex development and was the subject of several grievances by the star's former friend, Frank Dux. The latter succeeded in obtaining a story credit from the Writers Guild of America, but failed to prove in a court of law that his contributions had been improperly compensated. The film, though it under-performed domestically at the box-office, did better internationally and was a commercial success.
Plot Late at night, in an empty bar in the present day (the mid-1990s), an old man enters and awaits service. Not long after, a group of thugs arrives and attempts to rob the till. The old man defeats them easily, one by one, with hand-to-hand combat. Amazed, the bartender asks how he learned to fight. The old man replies, "It was long ago..." The story flashes back to Christopher Dubois, a pickpocket in his mid-twenties, living in 1925 New York City. Orphaned as a child, Dubois looks after many young orphans by performing cons and stealing. After stealing a large sum of money from a group of gangsters, Dubois and the children are found by the gangsters. Dubois subdues the gangsters, but the struggle draws the attention of the police.
After promising to return to the children, Dubois escapes the police by stowing away on a boat. He is found out and imprisoned by gun smugglers and pirates and forced into physical labor. Eventually, the crew decides Dubois is no longer needed, but before he can be killed, the pirate ship is attacked and boarded by a mercenary Englishman, Lord Edgar Dobbs. After saving each other's lives, Dobbs agrees to help Dubois return home but deceives him and sells Dubois into slavery on an island off the coast of Siam, where Dubois is trained in Muay Thai fighting.
Six months later, Dobbs and his partner Harry Smythe find Dubois fighting in a Muay Thai match and see that he has become a skilled fighter. Dobbs later assists (and exploits) Dubois, buying his freedom so the now-expert fighter can represent the U.S. in a Kumite-like tournament called the Ghang-gheng, held in the Lost City of Tibet. There, representatives of Germany, Soviet Union, Scotland, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, Korea, Siam, Greece, France, China, Japan, Okinawa, Africa and Mongolia fight in elimination bouts. The tournament winner receives a valuable statue made of solid gold, the Golden Dragon. Along for the journey are American reporter Carrie Newton and heavyweight boxing champion Maxie Devine.
Dubois ultimately wins the tournament by defeating Khan, the representative of Mongolia, and he is given a medal and proclaimed the greatest fighter, but does not accept the Golden Dragon. Instead, he trades it for the lives of Dobbs and his comrade Harry, who were sentenced to death for previously trying to steal the Golden Dragon. In the bar, Dubois explains he returned to New York and helped the children get off the streets. Devine helped to train many great fighters, while Dobbs and Harry opened a trading post deep in the Amazon. In the final scene, a book closes, revealing its title and author: The Quest by Carrie Newton.
The Ghang-gheng
Although Okinawa was annexed by Japan in 1879, it was given a separate spot in the tournament due to its historic role in the development of martial arts.
Cast
Production Van Damme presented the project as his farewell to the genre that had made him famous via films like Bloodsport and Lionheart, and aimed to mix the secret tournament concept of the former with the cachet of classic adventure movies. On several occasions, the film was referred to as "the Ben-Hur of martial arts films" by an enthusiastic Van Damme, a reference to its Oscar record. Another inspiration was the famous Belgian comic The Adventures of Tintin. A new title also presented the advantage of not having to share a cut of the profits with Bloodsport producer Mark DiSalle.
The film started life at Epic Productions, an outfit co-founded by Double Impact producer Moshe Diamant, where it was most commonly known as Enter the New Dragon and slated to get underway in 1993. After Diamant lost control of Epic in a power struggle with his lenders Crédit Lyonnais, it was phased out in favor of a very similar project at Diamant's follow-up company Signature Films. Introduced at the 1993 Cannes Film Market, the new film was called The Quest. A planned publicity stunt would have seen Van Damme fly above the French city in a Quest-branded hot air balloon, mirroring his exploits in the then-current script, but it had to be called off due to bad weather. Due to the deep connections between Epic and its distribution partner Vision International, the latter was also affected by the Crédit Lyonnais dispute, and Vision president Mark Damon left to launch a new company of his own, MDP Worldwide. The Quest international distribution rights followed him from Vision to MDP. Universal retained domestic and U.K. rights. The Quest was scheduled to begin filming at the end of 1993 for a Christmas 1994 release, but it was delayed and Sudden Death, another Quintano script that had peaked Van Damme's interest, was made first.
At an early stage, Van Damme expressed interest in hiring Andrei Konchalovsky to direct. Although the announcement was not strictly official, the Belgian acknowledged that he was likely to direct when the project was re-announced at Cannes '93. According to Lettich, he was invited to co-direct the film with Van Damme, but turned it down to quash false assumptions that the Belgian had ghost-directed their previous collaborations, and because he did not want to work with producer Moshe Diamant. The actor eventually took sole directorial credit and chose Peter MacDonald, who had helmed second unit and reshoots on Nowhere to Run, to support him as second unit director. MacDonald also helped storyboard the entire film for Van Damme, and received an executive producer credit. Nowhere to Run cinematographer David Gribble, an Australian like much of the technical crew, was brought back as well. Early on, it was announced that Double Impact John Jay Moore would return as production designer. The final film was instead designed by Steve Spence, a veteran of many Thailand-based movies, including the Moshe Diamant-backed Men of War.
During its Cannes announcement, The Quest provisional budget was pegged at $30 million, which remained the most frequently quoted estimate as pre-production was ramping up in late 1994. Numbers as high as $35 or 40 million were sometimes bandied about, as Van Damme claimed that a six-month shoot would be needed to bring his vision to life. However, the star later told Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas that only $12 million had actually gone into the production. There are indications that its biggest setpiece, a large-scale horseback battle planned for the halfway point, was cut at the behest of producer Moshe Diamant.
Writing Credits According to longtime Van Damme associate Sheldon Lettich, he was offered to co-write, but was busy with other projects and only pitched a few ideas. While by then, there were many doubts about Dux's martial arts credentials, Van Damme and Lettich still found some merit to his narrative ideas. They asked Diamant to hire him and, given his inexperience, paired him with Ed Khmara, who had authored the original draft for Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. Circa 1992, amidst the transition between Epic and Diamant's new company Signature, Van Damme and the producer severed their relationship with Dux and assigned the project to one of Diamant's regular writers, Gene Quintano. This ultimately led to a lawsuit from Dux .
Late into pre-production in spring 1995, the script was credited to Quintano and Lettich, despite the latter's reportedly limited involvement. The final screenplay was credited to Paul Mones and Steven Klein, the latter a pseudonym for Quintano who opted not to be credited. According to Lettich, Khmara also opted out of his writing credit. Khmara's later resume credited him with a producer role on The Quest, although this does not appear in the finished picture. Such credits are sometimes negotiated by writers who cannot be mentioned in their actual capacity for regulatory or other reasons.
After Dux made his case to the WGA , the organization recommended the unusual credit "Story by Jean-Claude Van Damme and Jean-Claude Van Damme & Frank Dux", which first recognized the star's solo creation of the story of The Quest, then his co-authorship (with Dux) of the story of its precursor, Enter The New Dragon. This was broadly similar to the double screenplay credit received by Jeffrey Boam for Lethal Weapon 3. However, Van Damme asked for one of his two-story credits to be deleted from the finished film "so that it would look more equal".
Drafts Although Lettich only had minimal input, he does claim to have come up with the idea of setting the film in the past. This further pushed it into the adventure genre, as the tournament's remote location could not be accessed by modern transportation, and each combatant would have to embark on a journey to get there. In 1991, Van Damme described the film as taking place circa 1930, with China's Shaolin Temples and Forbidden City as marquee locations, and another part set in Tibet. Malaysia was an alternate option thanks to its Buddhist temples. The idea of a mountaintop castle built especially for the shoot was already present. The beefy, 150-page script featured a party of four characters, including a child raised by a Japanese family in China, and a balloonist from France. Early versions went by the name The Big Fight, Enter The New Dragon and The Kumite: Enter the New Dragon. The main character was already named Dubois.
When it was reintroduced as The Quest in 1993, the film was now set in 1860. Paris or Prague would be a major shooting location, although the pirate abduction was present and the remainder of the film would take place in Tibet and China, with the Forbidden City again mentioned as a possible backdrop. The new script was not shown to buyers at that time, and it was still being worked on by Quintano. One source states that the hero's name was temporarily changed to Deleau in that version. By 1994, the general storyline seemed to be in place, with the slavery subplot and the stops in New York, Thailand and China all accounted for. However, it was quoted as taking place in 1902, and Van Damme expressed interest in making his character a boxer from Marseille, bearing some similarities with the premise of 1998's Legionnaire.
Casting Roger Moore was pursued aggressively by Van Damme for the role of Lord Dobbs, and did not initially have second thoughts about the Belgian directing the film. He thought it would be a good occasion to spend time in an exotic locale with his girlfriend Christina Tholstrup. In her autobiography, Tatum O'Neal claims that the Belgian courted her for the part of journalist Carrie Newton, assuring her she was his number one choice. The two ended up having a brief romance, but Van Damme later reconsidered his offer and Janet Gunn was hired.