The rise and rise of the Chinese animation Ne Zha 2 is mythically impressive. Directed by Jiao Zi — a former adman with a degree in pharmacy who taught himself animation — it has rapidly and unstoppably become the biggest film ever made in China, and the biggest animated film anywhere in the world, toppling Inside Out 2’s record within six months. The original Ne Zha barely made a dent in the West — it earned just under $4 million in the US, and about £50,000 in the UK — yet this sequel is now the fifth highest-grossing film of all time, sweeping up over $2 billion in China alone. It is an ecstatic, superlative, firework-powered phenomenon.
So, what is all the fuss about? If you’ve not seen the first film — not currently available on streaming services in the UK — then this epic sequel does its level best to catch you up at the start, with a frantically dense opening exposition: much talk of the “wrath of heaven” and a “sacred lotus flower” and the “third son of Li Jing”. For those who have not grown up on these myths — the story is partly based on the 16th-century book Investiture Of The Gods — much of this might feel like playing breathless catch-up. This is a story of gods and demons and immortals, dealing in lore like the “elixir reparo”, the “sky-splitting thunder whip”, the “spirit pearl reincarnation”, and a giant divine conspiracy. There are ancient armies, dragon kings, marauding giant turtles, sword-wielding squids, and an armoured shark. One demon has a cat head.
For the uninitiated, it can be a bewildering, dizzying affair. It wins no points for coherence or economy of storytelling; this is maximalist cinema at its most maximalist, throwing everything and the chúfáng shuǐcáo (Chinese for ‘kitchen sink’) at the screen. But if you surrender yourself to it — and accept that you might not understand entirely everything going on — there are pleasures to be had.
For one thing, the titular Ne Zha (Lü Yanting) makes for a hugely engaging protagonist, a super-powered demon who is also an impulsive, cheeky pre-teen boy. The wrinkle this time around is that — having been struck by heavenly lightning at the end of the first film (it’s a whole thing) — Ne Zha unhelpfully now finds himself without a physical body. His mentor, the immortal master Taiyi Zhenren (Zhang Jiaming), comes up with a temporary solution: he must share his body with his frenemy from the first film, the elegant dragon prince Ao Bing (Han Mo), the two characters constantly wrestling for control of the same skin, in a surreal spin on the buddy-comedy.
Operates on a tremendous scale which even Hollywood studios dare not attempt.
Ne Zha is the key to unlocking the film’s eccentric sense of humour, which walks a tonal tightrope between high-fantasy pomposity and wacky hijinks: at one point Ne Zha contemplates drinking his own puke, for reasons too ridiculous to explain, while in another early scene a flying pig openly farts in another character’s face.
Yet it is also operating on a tremendous scale, the kind of which even Hollywood studios dare not attempt. There is the odd influence from Western animation here – the characters’ cartoonish big-eyed character design, for one thing, or a moment where one character asks a magic mirror who is “the fairest within ten miles or more” — but on the whole, this is film that feels distinctly Chinese, rooted in its wuxia traditions and the country’s appetite for grand spectacle.
The sheer size of the endeavour is quite something to witness. (The animation studio, Chengdu Coco Cartoon, reportedly hired over 4,000 workers to produce it.) There are more epic battles and acrobatic superpowered skirmishes than you could possibly count, playing out almost like extremely high-level Dungeons & Dragons combat, mind-boggling spells going up against seemingly limitless celestial weaponry. At one point Ne Zha beats up an entire mountain. Another fight takes place entirely on bamboo suspended over water — the kind of wire-work a live-action filmmaker like Zhang Yimou could only dream of. The grand climactic showdown, meanwhile, sees dragons, demons and gods alike go to war alongside vast, churning clouds of millions-strong levitating armies, atop a giant city-sized cauldron.
So, it’s a lot. Even if you are a Chinese speaker, it’s not clear that everything completely makes sense. Your eyeballs and understanding are constantly pummelled. The vast, precipitous exhibitionism of it all might feel a bit exhausting, especially over a two-and-half-hour runtime. But this is the country’s biggest film ever, and it’s only getting bigger. As they (maybe) say in China: Yào ma zuò dà, yào ma huí jiā. (Go big, or go home.)