Ne Zha 2: An Impressive if Convoluted Global Feat

Hollywood has never not dominated the worldwide box office. Decade after decade it has been the titan of commercial cinema around the globe with few genuine competitors. More recent times have shown industries in India and China as having a scale to match though not the same reach. But there are signs the tides may be changing, that Hollywood’s foothold is not quite so durable, and it is astonishing that the most dramatic evidence is coming with the movie Ne Zha 2.

Ne Zha 2 is an epic animated fantasy-comedy film  based on figures from Chinese mythology directed by Jiaozi (only his second feature film after the first Ne Zha from 2019). Starring a manic little kid, it appears to be a broad action comedy for children equivalent to something from Illumination Studios in the west. And yet, released domestically at the Chinese New Year, this movie has broken several box office records in seemingly one fell swoop. Raking in more than 2.2 billion dollars it is not merely the highest-grossing movie of the year, but the highest-grossing Chinese movie, highest-grossing non-English language movie, and highest-grossing animated film period. Currently it sits as the fifth highest-grossing movie of all time, and while the bulk of that certainly comes from its Chinese box office (where it has become an unmatched sensation), it has also performed extraordinarily well in other eastern markets and even western ones. After a limited American engagement earlier this year, its international success and acclaim prompted A24 of all studios to bankroll an English dub and wide release in the U.S. and Canada. And while this second run is struggling in North America, that’s a mere pittance to such a confirmed juggernaut.

All of this naturally peaks one’s curiosity, and given it has been so sparse a year for quality American animated movies I felt especially obliged to give it a watch -albeit in what I believe is a more lacklustre form in its dubbing. Notwithstanding, it is a monster of a movie.

And that begins in its premise intensely steeped in Taoist lore. A prologue explains the gist of the first movie for those of us who haven't seen it -that Ne Zha, meant to be the reincarnation of the heavenly Spirit Pearl, was made instead the vessel for the Demon Orb -its polar opposite- by a wicked immortal. Destined to bring ruin to the world, he faced off against the Spirit Pearl's incarnation Ao Bing only for the two to become friends. Their bodies were destroyed in the prior film, so at the beginning of this one they have been recently regenerated, Ne Zha back in the form of an impish child. Their refuge, the Chentang Pass, is attacked by Ao Bing's dragon father Ao Guang and in its defence, Ao Bing's body is once again destroyed. In order to grow a new one, he will have to share Ne Zha's body through a quest to complete a set of trials to become an immortal -all while Ne Zha hides his demon nature- whereby they will win a potion to restore Ao Bing's body. In the background of this however are a series of machinations between the immortals, the dragons, and the demons that will determine the fate of Ne Zha.

It is a hero's journey essentially, coloured by an identity conflict for Ne Zha -torn between his own moral compass and what is expected of him as a demon, a class the immortals seek to destroy. A relatively simple basis for an underdog animated movie. However it is filtered through a very dense membrane, at least to a western audience -though I suspect it's not all entirely common knowledge to Chinese viewers either, given the reams of exposition that follow virtually every godlike act or plot device. And the fact that the film moves at a very swift pace makes the details of the plot, especially through the first half, hard to keep track of -overwhelming, like some of the more lore-heavy animes. It comes at the expense of much of the character drama -specifically the relationships between Ne Zha and Ao Bing and Ne Zha with his parents, both of which ultimately prove substantively important to the climax. The dependence on extolling the mythos of these figures may well also come down to a strict preoccupation with fidelity, something that often harms filmed retellings of Christian and Jewish canon as well.

And yet, Jiaozi is more than happy to offset this with wildly silly and slapstick humour, some of which translates, some of which doesn't -and the efforts at translation only render the beats more awkward (one routine between a rock goddess and her magic mirror come to mind). It is also quite guilty of pandering to its kid audience with fart jokes and juvenile gross-out humour for a time. As much as these sort of things effectively subvert some of the gravity of the figures depicted, they are also quite dramatically contrasted by the tensions and tone elsewhere in the film -particularly after Ne Zha (with Ao Bing's help) gets through the immortal trials -which is only the halfway point of the movie.

This is a five-act rather than a three-act movie, and it is in the last two where things genuinely coalesce into something quite good, with considerably less focus on world-building and comic relief, and more on a central, universally resonating conflict between pious deities and mortal creatures with an emotionally compromised demigod in the middle. The storytelling not only becomes clearer, but richer, the thematic core of Ne Zha's journey towards autonomy and defiance of his preordained role comes across with starker surety. And the animation really rises to the occasion too.

While there are some moments of expressive awkwardness -primarily concentrated in the comic relief characters, which does include Ne Zha himself, the animation quality for even the tougher parts of the film is equal to anything an American studio might produce. In some sectors, and especially where the action and grand visual effects are concerned, it exceeds many of them. The film does some very compelling things visually with its rendering of fire and water, there are a lot of very smooth transition effects, and the fight scenes are creative and engaging. Real thought was put into how each character moves and reacts. The fights are bold and dynamic, and though magic is a factor it is never a distraction. This is true tenfold in the climactic sequences, for as big and ridiculous as they wind up getting. The animation is also excellent in a couple tender moments -there's some real beauty especially to one scene between Ne Zha and his mother, and the detail on creatures, from the majestic dragons to a cult of gopher demons, is really superb. There's a wonderful sense of scale to the earth-shaking stakes, in moments of great triumph and destruction alike. Weirdly enough, I was reminded of How to Train Your Dragon 2 and some of the stronger set-pieces from that film, though this one goes a lot further.

Perhaps the biggest hindrance to this presentation though is the dubbing. Certainly a chunk of detail, context, and humour would be lost in any translation, but the way it is relayed by this dub is particularly unwieldy. None of the actors, including Michelle Yeoh as Ne Zha's mom -the sole celebrity of the voice cast, are at fault for delivering as best they can the level of fast, cumbersome dialogue required to communicate in English an idea that takes less effort in Chinese. There is also the fact that unlike in anime, where the animation around mouth movement is often broad enough that any language can be substituted organically, the 3D animation here is specifically tailored to its native dialect. And we as audiences are not used to watching detailed sophisticated mouth movements that clearly run against the dialogue we are hearing -the character Taiyi, Ne Zha's goofy immortal mentor comes off the worst for this, with a performance and animation that are equally obnoxious but never in a cohesive way. For A24 the dub feels like an unusually cheap and shallow marketing ploy, and the experience is lessened as a result.

Ne Zha 2 is an outlier among the ranks of ultra-successful movies and not just because it is Chinese and animated. The density of its world and influence outmatches anything else on the list, Avatar included. Its dramatic tonal shifts are likewise distinct, and (unlike the Hollywood films in its company) its complete disinterest in compromising itself to be accessible outside of China and the Chinese diaspora. The fact that it clearly has been is as much a shock as anything. By default, Ne Zha 2 is the best animated film I've yet seen this year even if it is rather messy in construction and translation. And it is perhaps even vaguely revolutionary in some of the anti-authority themes Jiaozi manages to sneak in there under the guise of state-sanctioned adulation of Chinese cultural identity. The movie is being celebrated in corners of the world if only for its triumph over American cultural hegemony, and that is a good thing -both for world cinema, which could be galvanized by it, and Hollywood itself, which could be put on the back-foot and forced to reconsider approaches that clearly are beginning to wear. The Moment of Ne Zha 2 may be more important than the movie itself, but it's not a bad movie. See it with subs.

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