The whole monkey thing

At Paper Cuts, Michael Chabon meets Yuen Wo-Ping:

The biggest bump came when he suddenly said that he doesn’t want there to be a monkey, that the character of Dr. Ha can’t “turn into” a monkey, no monkey, the whole monkey thing is very, very bad. Why? Because — I don’t really get it, but — because of “Iron Monkey.” Because more monkeys will detract from that film, or he has some special relationship with that film and its monkey (even though I can’t remember an actual monkey in that film) — I don’t know.