Paraglider survives being accidentally pulled 28,000 feet into air without oxygen
A paraglider in China has survived an unexpected climb to 28,208 feet in the air without oxygen after being caught in a powerful updraft, according to an account told to Chinese Central Television (CCTV).
Peng Yujiang, an experienced paraglider, said he had been conducting a routine test of equipment just under 10,000 feet above the sea in northwest China's Gansu Province.
"After a while, the wind suddenly picked up and lifted me into the air. I tried to land as soon as possible, but I failed," Peng told CCTV
The 55-year-old man had found himself trapped inside a cumulonimbus cloud system, in a phenomenon described as "cloud suck", where strong updraft currents carry paragliders to dramatically high altitudes.
Peng Yujiang was covered in ice during the incident which saw him lifted more than 28,000 feet into the air without oxygen
CCTV
"It was terrifying -- everything around me was white. I thought I was flying straight, but in reality, I was spinning," Peng told CCTV.
He climbed to an altitude of 28,208 feet, which is nearly as high as Mount Everest, the highest mountain above sea level in the world.
Footage from the flight's 360-degree camera shows the paraglider flying through thick clouds as ice forms around his exposed face and equipment. Although Peng appears calm in the video, he admitted in an interview with CCTV that the episode was deeply frightening.
"It's still frightening to think about. I'm not sure about the future, but for now I definitely won't fly for a while," he said.
He was handed a six-month flight suspension, as the flight site and airspace had not been approved in advance.
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‘Karate Kid: Legends' Director Jonathan Entwistle on Navigating ‘Cobra Kai' and the Test Screening-Inspired Epilogue
On the heels of Cobra Kai's 65-episode run, Karate Kid: Legends director Jonathan Entwistle strived to restore the cinematic identity of the beloved franchise. The British filmmaker — who's most known for helming idiosyncratic streaming series such as End of the F***ing World and I Am Not Okay With This — designed his feature directorial debut to unite Karate Kid and Cobra Kai fans from every generation. That included those viewers who were raised on Jackie Chan's 2010 standalone remake of The Karate Kid. To pull off this creative merger, Entwistle and screenwriter Rob Lieber realized that they could utilize the Miyagi family dojo scene from John G. Avildsen's The Karate Kid Part II (1986) to connect Chan's story with the Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita-led mothership franchise. 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'[The Part II] piece had been the inspiration for the entirely different team back in 2010. They crafted that movie's concept using this beat or this notion of the Hans and the Miyagis,' Entwistle tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Karate Kid: Legends' May 30 theatrical release. 'So we went back into the vault and into the archives to find all the scraps of film from that [Karate Kid Part II] sequence.' Entwistle's film is set three years after the events of the franchise's hit Netflix series, Cobra Kai, as Chan's Mr. Han asks Macchio's original 'Karate Kid,' Daniel LaRusso, to help train his great-nephew, Li Fong (Ben Wang), for a New York City-set karate tournament. However, the film was originally going to hit theaters before the show's February 2025 series finale. Thus, Macchio soon became adamant that the film should delay itself for the sake of the Cobra Kai audience, and Entwistle is ultimately glad that the studio didn't risk any confusion. 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'The movie ended, solidly ended, on a freeze frame for such a long time until we started to preview it and realized that people wanted a flavor of, 'Well, where's Jackie? Where is everybody?'' Entwistle shares. 'But we still wanted to maintain the ending with the freeze frame. And it indeed remains in the movie, albeit with the logo that plays afterwards [until the coda].' Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Entwistle also discusses the tall order of casting a Peter Parker or Miles Morales-like Li Fong. *** How did the guy behind pitch black comedy series like and end up making a movie? It was me following a dream to make a real theatrical motion picture. That should really be every director's end goal. I was enticed by the idea of being able to make a big theatrical movie and bringing my tone, my craft and my team. 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And when was it realized that 's Miyagi family dojo scene could be retconned in order to fold Jackie Chan's 2010 standalone reboot into the mothership? It was when we realized that [the Part II] piece had been the inspiration for the entirely different team back in 2010. They crafted that movie's concept using this beat or this notion of the Hans and the Miyagis. So we went back into the vault and into the archives to find all the scraps of film from that [The Karate Kid Part II] sequence. There were so many different iterations. There were pieces of a Blu-ray and some television versions that had been scanned at some point. So there were all these different kinds of pieces of how the movie was made, and it was fun to be able to put all that together. takes place three years after 's series finale, but was anything off limits with regard to ? For example, if your movie wanted to use Cobra Kai for the villain's dojo, would that have caused all sorts of problems? We could use anything that's in the movies. We could have used and touched on any concept that was in the original movies. So we could always use Daniel and Miyagi, but any elements that are Cobra Kai-specific are not a Columbia Pictures property. So you could've gone with Cobra Kai for the villain's dojo, but would that East Coast expansion have required too much exposition? Yeah, I think so, for sure. Cobra Kai had also ended its run, and we knew very much that we were in tandem with the end of that piece. Cobra Kai is Johnny Lawrence's story, which is one of the things that makes it so fun and so good. And that having wrapped up, I was just like, 'Well, that exists. I have that show. It's there. I can always watch it.' And then I was like, 'Let's just keep going with another novel in the long sequence.' That allowed us to connect back to the big screen after living on television for a very, very long time. I was like, 'What's a 90-minute version of this story that we can do on the big screen for all the audiences?' There's really three audiences: the Karate Kid audience, the Cobra Kai audience and the moviegoing audience, which is actually a huge, huge piece. So it was very important for me to be audience-first and make this a great experience in the theater. I enjoyed the show, don't get me wrong, but I definitely missed the cinematic flourishes of the films. That cliffside helicopter shot in is one of the most beautiful shots ever put to screen, and then there's the indelible Bill Conti score. So it sounds like you were glad to bring some of those qualities back. A hundred percent. I wanted all the elements to not just feel theatrical, but also cinematic, and we got that opportunity to do that. We built lots of sets. The large pieces of New York are set builds, such as the pizza shop and the neighboring alleyway. 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's final season and filmed at roughly the same time, so I figured that you killed two birds with one stone and shot the Miyagi house scenes on the show's Atlanta set. But you actually built your own set in Montreal? Yeah, we rebuilt the Miyagi house in Montreal. [Cobra Kai] was shooting at the same time, and their [Miyagi house] is a Cobra Kai set. For the motion picture, we went back to the original version of Miyagi's house [in The Karate Kid] and where it would be today. Sadly, the original house [in Canoga Park] is now gone. It was lost in a fire. [The next question contains spoilers for ' mid-credit scene.] The Miyagi house-set coda featuring Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William 'Billy' Zabka) is why I initially assumed you utilized 's infrastructure. How did that cameo come together? It was just the perfect way to round everything out. It became quite clear that we were putting all of the pieces together and that Cobra Kai would have ended by the time audiences see this. And like I said, that's Johnny's story. So to bring the two of them together to round that out just felt really perfect. Billy came [to set], and a lot of it was improv. A lot of that was just Ralph and Billy. After so many years of working together, they could just do their thing together. So we just wanted to capture that, and we wanted to put that at the end of the movie. This is by no means the end of Daniel LaRusso's story at all. But this movie was an opportunity to round out that piece and to physically hand over something from Daniel to Li Fong, but also Ralph to Ben [Wang]. They had a real relationship that I think was very, very sweet. So shooting those guys in the original Miyagi house, albeit the rebuilt version, was really quite special. [Spoiler talk for ' has now concluded.] The original plan was to release in 2024 for the 40th anniversary of , but the strikes got in the way. Ralph then felt passionately about it releasing after 's February 2025 finale, especially since takes place three years later. Do you like where you ultimately ended up, release date-wise? I think it's very important to piece out the stories in the correct way. We are not a Cobra Kai movie in any way, shape, or form, and that was never the intention. Cobra Kai is so important within the overall gamut that it was only right to let it have its absolute air to breathe. So I saw no point in confusing [the audience] with a Karate Kid movie that sits right next to the end of Cobra Kai. So it was really, really good, certainly as a Cobra Kai fan, that it had its moment and was allowed to finish. And now it's like, 'Hey guys, we've got a different story over here. Let's just keep going.' It's nothing but a positive addition to the overall world. Ben Wang's casting feels like a needle in a haystack, and as one of your producers said, he really does have a Michael J. Fox quality about him. You apparently auditioned 10,000 candidates for the role of Li Fong. Were you looking more for actors who you could teach kung fu? Or martial artists who you could train to act? I was looking for the person who could do it all. We needed a native Mandarin speaker and someone who understood what it was to live in America, but also someone who was a fantastic actor and could do the martial arts. For me, the Li character was very much a Peter Parker or Miles Morales-like character. So that was really important for me, both in terms of the martial arts and the tone of the performance. And when I first saw Ben, I was like, 'Well, there's a Marty McFly.' I joke that I wanted Morty from Rick and Morty in the way that he is like Michael J. Fox. 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Take a dose of the original Karate Kid tetralogy, add some elements from the 2010 remake, finish it off with a soupçon of the Netflix series Cobra Kai, and you have the Frankenstein's monster of a franchise continuation that is Karate Kid: Legends. While no one could begrudge the seemingly ageless Ralph Macchio and beloved action star Jackie Chan the opportunity to reprise their roles of Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Han, respectively, this latest addition to an apparently unkillable franchise adds nothing original to the formula. It's a formula that works, to be sure, making for a pleasant enough time filler. But that's about it. With Daniel and Mr. Han relegated to the outskirts of the story for long stretches before the final act, the Jonathan Entwistle-directed film mainly revolves around Li Fong (a very appealing Ben Wang, American Born Chinese), a young kung fu prodigy still traumatized by seeing his beloved older brother murdered right in front of him. His mother (Ming-Na Wen), a doctor, doesn't approve of his continuing to study martial arts under the guidance of his teacher Mr. Han. When she suddenly decides to move with Li to New York City for a new job, she gives him one rule: 'No fighting.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes: Jackie Chan's 'The Shadow's Edge' Sells Wide Jackie Chan to Receive Locarno Film Festival Lifetime Honor Why Joshua Jackson Is Comparing His 'Dawson's Creek' Audition to 'The Hunger Games' It's not hard to guess that rule is going to be broken quickly. Shortly after arriving in town, Li strikes up a budding romance with Mia (Sadie Stanley), the daughter of the owner of a pizza shop around the corner. This doesn't sit well with Mia's very jealous ex-boyfriend Connor (Aramis Knight, oozing villainy as if to the Karate Kid manor born), who gives Li a black eye with a vicious sucker punch. But that's not the only thing forcing Li to break his mother's decree. Mia's father Victor (Joshua Jackson, coming off like he prepared for his role by watching old Bowery Boys movies), a former championship boxer, is in serious hock to the sensei at the martial arts academy where Connor trains. When a trio of thugs show up to violently collect, Li reveals his skills by fighting them off. This impresses Victor so much that he decides the only way he can pay off his debt is to return to the ring, with Li as his unlikely trainer. Yes, the karate kid is now the teacher, at least for a while — cuing the inevitable quirky training montage with Li putting Victor through his paces in what are apparently the least crowded subway cars in all of New York City. When Victor's opponent cheats and nearly kills him in the ring (it's a given that all of the opponents in this series are dastardly), Li decides that the only way he can help him pay off his debt is to enter a citywide tournament with a $50,000 cash prize. This is when Mr. Han shows up out of the blue to train Li. Except that since his specialty is kung fu, not karate, he takes a detour to California and recruits Daniel to help, using their mutual friendship with the late Mr. Miyagi as inducement. Cue the second quirky training montage, much of it taking place on a rooftop garden with a view of the Chrysler Building, with the two Karate Kid veterans putting Li through such exercises as (in a nod to the 1984 original) 'jacket on, jacket off.' It's a lot for a movie coming in at 94 minutes, including credits. And the plot is just awful, crammed with so many cliches that you're barely done chuckling at one before another kicks you in the head. By the time the film reaches its climactic bout in yet another open-air rooftop with an even more impressive skyline view (thankfully, it never rains in New York City), the goodwill generated by the performers has long since worn off. True to its title, Karate Kid: Legends dutifully pays homage to its predecessors, even starting off with a clip from 1986's The Karate Kid Part II featuring a young Macchio and Pat Morita. There are numerous callbacks to past installments, and the end credits feature a cameo by one more franchise veteran. At one point, Daniel comments of his late mentor, 'Every time I have a chance to pass on a piece of his legacy, it's never the wrong choice.' The studio executives who greenlit this project would certainly agree. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
