By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter
Movie Review
Ne Zha 2
Directed by Yang Yu
NE ZHA 2 is a Chinese animated blockbuster and the second installment of the trials and tribulations of the titular character, the demon child Ne Zha. It picks up where the first film left off — the souls of him and his friend Ao Bing preserved after their physical bodies have been destroyed.
To backtrack a bit, Ne Zha and Ao Bing are reincarnations of the Spirit Seed and the Demon Pill, fating the former to become a hero and the latter to become the devil incarnate. But their fates were switched at birth, so Ne Zha becomes a demon child and Ao Bing a hero. The two, defying all odds, become friends.
People all over the world are talking about Ne Zha 2 today because of its record-breaking box office numbers. It topped $2 billion in just its home market, knocking Inside Out 2 down a peg to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time. All this despite being primarily watched in just one market, China.
March marks the film’s release globally, which means its income continues to grow despite its domestic box office already solidifying its place in film history. And so, many people around the world will be seeing the film without ever seeing the first one, which didn’t leave much of an impact outside of China.
Thus, Ne Zha 2, starting with the jovial mentor Tai Yi Zhen Ren using a powerful lotus to reshape Ne Zha and Ao Bing’s destroyed physical forms, immediately thrusts one into an elaborate, magical world that is overwhelming at first. As the film goes on, the eyes acclimate and the rules, wonders, and slapstick humor of this spiritual, ancient China come to paint a full picture of what’s going on.
This is, first and foremost, a blockbuster spectacle, but the artistry is undeniable — from droplets of water making remarkable giant waves and embers of vibrant flames engulfing the corners of the screen, to the texture of a wooden staff expanded to take root across the sky. Elements of each frame contort and blossom with every movement, and the sound design matches it all perfectly. To sum it up, the animation is beautifully stunning.
While Chinese fantasy epics tend to display the same old tropes and stereotypes (takes on their mythology and modern-day design preferences), Ne Zha 2 presents the best and most flawless of this style of action and animation. This adaptation of the 16th-century Chinese novel Investiture of the Gods is filled with intricate battle sequences, sweeping background pieces, and lovable character designs, all impeccably and meticulously put together to make up a truly awesome experience in the cinema.
Themes of creation and destruction make this a spiritual experience, too, as Ne Zha and Ao Bing carve a path towards immortality and find that it is rife with contradictions and hidden agendas that consume those with blinding power. It turns into a (clearly anti-capitalist) love letter to the youth who have the idealism and fearlessness to stand up to the systems in place that make the world a hell to live in. Clocking in at over two hours, its length can be felt at times, especially in the extended humorous bits, but it packs so much heart along with the punch that you’ll be glad to just be on this wild ride.
Honestly, by the end of it, my eyes and brain felt utterly fried, in a similar way as after watching Sony’s two phenomenal Spider-Verse films. The sheer level of stimuli that can be achieved in animation these days is unbelievable; a mesh of extended action sequences and witty gags now required to hold attention and really induce the wow factor and the fun factor (which can be tiring if you’re older than Gen Z). It’s also very telling that, if you watch this on a small screen, it’ll come across as video game-like, but it undeniably pops and electrifies on the big screen. It’s no wonder that this achieved record-breaking status.
(While the timing may be purely coincidental, I can’t help but feel disheartened by how Ne Zha 2’s admirable burst of nationalistic pride, told with enthusiasm and artistry, is hitting Philippine cinemas while at the same time the Filipino documentary Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea, which tells the stories of those in the West Philippine Sea fighting for our national sovereignty, has been pulled from the CinePanalo Film Festival. The films have no direct connection [except for China being a key player in both], as they are totally different genres operating on separate film circuits, but the timing is ironic.)
From a global perspective, this Chinese animated blockbuster dethroning Disney’s Inside Out 2 in the charts — and annihilating Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World throughout February — represents a clash of world powers on the cinematic stage. Akin to geopolitics, the rest of the world can only watch as America and China butt heads to dominate the global box office, China this time coming out on top.
Ne Zha 2 is a beacon of hope for animators all over the world for its marriage of grand, stimulating visuals and culturally attentive, detailed artistry. It is akin to the wondrous scale of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, but more attuned to what the youth these days find eye-catching and awe-inspiring, like Sony’s Spider-Verse films.
It represents the current nexus point of what the medium of animation has to offer, capturing audiences with shifting preferences. The end goal doesn’t have to be to break records, but the challenge for countries like America is not to equate big budget blockbusters with mind-numbing slop, and for countries like the Philippines, with more limited resources, to spark a similar sense of national pride and try to uplift what is ours.
