Picture: Netflix
The newest Netflix animated function, The Monkey King, is now streaming, however must you give it a watch?
Inspired by an epic Chinese story from the novel “Journey to the West”, The Monkey King is an action-packed household comedy that follows the charismatic Monkey and his magical preventing stick on an epic quest for victory over 100 demons, an eccentric Dragon King, and Monkey’s best foe of all – his personal ego! Along the way in which, a younger village lady challenges his self-centered angle and reveals him that even the smallest pebble can have a giant impact on the world.
Announced by Netflix in May 2021, the movie was chosen because the closing movie on the twenty second New York Asian Film Festival, the place it had its world premiere on July 30, 2023.
Directed by veteran storyboard & visible results artist turned director Anthony Stacchi (Oscar-nominated The Boxtrolls, Open Season), The Monkey King is backed by such illustrious producers as Over The Moon producer Peilin Chou and legendary Chinese actor/director Stephen Chow, who made a reputation for himself globally together with his motion comedies Kung Fu Hustle & Shaolin Soccer earlier than making a movie model of Journey to the West again in 2013.
The movie additionally options a powerful forged of voice actors, together with SNL’s Bowen Yang, comic Jo Koy, Oscar-nominated actress Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Law & Order: SVU & Jurassic Park franchise staple B.D. Wong, Watchmen’s Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, & Silicon Valley & Netflix’s Love Hard comedic standout Jimmy O. Yang as The Monkey King himself.
THE MONKEY KING – (L-R) MONKEY KING (Jimmy O. Yang) and LIN (voiced by Jolie Hoang-Rappaport). Cr: Netflix © 2023
With expertise abound, particularly within the realm of animation, it ought to come as no shock that the character & manufacturing design are essentially the most spectacular items of the challenge. When you’ve gotten a boundless egomaniac lead bouncing actually by way of Hell and again, the world-building alongside his legendary journey should pop off the display screen. Reel FX Animation, who beforehand labored for Netflix on 2021’s Back to the Outback, took over the challenge from Tangent Animation after they shut down in the summertime of 2021.
Of course, while you consider the work of producer Stephen Chow, you additionally consider the frenetic pacing, kinetic power, and sarcastic wit of his characters. This movie is not any completely different as was the intention of director Anthony Stacchi and his collaboration with Chow himself.
“Even from the beginning, we saw the Monkey King character as an anti-hero at the core of the story,” Stacchi notes in a Q&A supplied by Netflix. “That is something people love about Stephen Chow movies like Kung Fu Hustle, where his main characters are somewhat unlikable for a lot of the movie, but you are with them and rooting for them because you know why they are the way they are, and you’re hoping that they redeem themselves before the end of the movie. Stephen Chow always wanted our Monkey King to be true to that, and sometimes we had to find a less jerky compromise!”
While there are some issues to admire from The Monkey King’s visible attraction and distinctive supply materials, the distillation of the bigger novel right into a “lost chapter” summation of kinds makes this a extra confounding last product.
Picture: Netflix
In this story, the Monkey King ascends with reckless abandon and unchecked hubris that largely by no means hurts him or his large ego. His ascension can be aided by his trusty stick that he flat-out steals from the grasp of the ocean, The Dragon King, with none thought or care. He defies anybody who tries to rein him in or train him humility and many individuals endure the results of his actions. Monkey lastly meets his match in his confrontation with Buddha and eventually learns there’s something extra highly effective than him within the universe. However, as a result of this is just one piece of the Monkey King story, the movie doesn’t flesh out the teachings of this confrontation like the unique legend. In truth, there’s little to be gained from Monkey’s character arc because the movie performs out like a petulant baby continually getting his manner till he’s put in day out after which by no means really has a dialogue on his actions. He at all times has his stick and he by no means turns into spiritually totally shaped.
Stacchi states within the beforehand talked about Q&A that essentially the most difficult a part of the manufacturing was “the push and pull between being authentic to the original Chinese folk tale, and the rich cultural importance of this story in China and Asia, and still making it comprehensible for a Western audience … Monkey King has meant something different for every generation of Chinese people, and Stephen Chow definitely wanted authenticity for the tone of certain things, especially the notion of keeping it a spiritual journey, and never losing Monkey’s complex anti-hero – rebellious and sometimes a jerk, but beloved hero-of-the-people – personality! We had to find the right balance on both of those fronts.”
THE MONKEY KING – (L-R) MONKEY KING (Jimmy O. Yang) and WANGMU (voiced by Jodi Long). Cr: Netflix © 2023
Unfortunately, I believe the movie loses this problem in portraying Monkey’s journey. The steadiness of anti-hero and religious enlightenment by no means appear to work and the notion of him as a hero to the folks will get misplaced when his downfall is met with applause from the native villagers and buoys the standing of his duplicitous sidekick of kinds, Lin. No one appears to have an ethical compass and what appears to occur to Lin and considerably to Monkey by the top of the movie appears compelled with little character improvement of their arcs to promote in any other case. Yes, Monkey is simply an outcast who took his emotions of abandonment out into the world and by no means stopped preventing for recognition. He deserves love like anybody else, however he additionally spit within the face of anybody who tried to offer him some steerage. The movie offers a last-ditch try at what it thought it may go on within the last moments between Monkey and Lin, nevertheless it was too little, too late, and largely unearned.
THE MONKEY KING – (L-R) MONKEY KING (Jimmy O. Yang) and DRAGON KING (voiced by Bowen Yang). Cr: Netflix © 2023
Overall, The Monkey King is a visible delight with extremely gifted performers and animators, however the shrunken-down model of the volumes and volumes of the legendary Chinese story it derives from by no means measures up. With skinny messaging, compelled friendships, and contrived enlightenment, the movie wanted extra concentrate on its takeaways to fill the souls of its international viewers.
Watch The Monkey King on Netflix If You Liked
- Kung Fu Panda
- The Boxtrolls
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Over The Moon
MVP of Netflix’s The Monkey King
Jo Koy & Ron Yuan as Benbo and Babbo
A not-so-dynamic duo of fish minions, Benbo and Babbo are the Dragon King’s most-trusted but impossibly silly henchmen. They are the Dragon King’s largest followers, they usually share in his dream of world water-domination in order that they’ll be shut private associates with essentially the most well-known villain of all time. Koy & Yuan convey out lots of the a lot wanted humor beats of their conversations with the over-the-top Dragon King and appear to have a good time doing it. Their promote job on the Peaches of Immortality could be the very best gag in the entire film with a name again on the finish as well.
PLAY, PAUSE, OR STOP?
PAUSE.
With the impressive roster of animated options that Netflix has produced through the years, you will discover ones with stronger tales and character arcs than this one.