‘Ne Zha 2’ review: Energetic Chinese sequel is the highest grossing animated film of all time

Dir: Jiaozi. China. 2025. 144mins

An unruly pre-adolescent demon spawned from the Chaos Pearl and his new-found buddy battle off vengeful dragons from 4 seas and their despotic immortal ruler in Ne Zha 2, author and director Jiaozi’s animated Chinese language blockbuster. Concurrently recent and enlightening (for non-Chinese language audiences) however acquainted – in each unfavourable and optimistic methods – Ne Zha 2 is a definite fantasy epic and a technical achievement that stands as much as the perfect that Disney, DreamWorks, Aardman or Studio Ghibli can supply, even when it incessantly provides in to the identical proclivities for extra as its friends.

The dense story is wrapped in impeccable paintings

This bloated sequel to Jiaozi’s (in any other case is aware of as Yang Yu) 2019 shock hit Ne Zha is now the very best grossing animated movie of all time, incomes US$2bn in ticket gross sales since its Lunar New 12 months launch in late January, and placing the two-time function director in elite firm alongside James Cameron, the Russos and JJ Abrams. Primarily based on Xu Zhonglin’s sixteenth century epic Investiture of the Gods (on which the opposite huge vacation launch, Creation of the Gods II: Demon Pressure, was additionally primarily based), the story is as acquainted to Chinese language audiences because the legend of King Arthur is to these within the West, and its humour (at instances on the bathroom facet) and resonant core values made the movie a straightforward promote.

Ne Zha 2 opened within the US in February and has now secured distribution within the UK, Eire and throughout Europe, however past China is unlikely to pose a risk to the reigning non-English language field workplace champion, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (at the moment US$130m to US$32m worldwide). Because it rolls out into extra territories, it may simply catch Amélie and Pan’s Labyrinth due to its healthful household messaging delivered in a comparatively authentic package deal. Streamers seeking to make the most of repeat viewers might be a secondary platform, however Ne Zha 2 was made for the large display screen.

There’s an excessive amount of narrative in Ne Zha 2, generally an excessive amount of, although anybody who missed the primary movie ought to nonetheless be capable to comply with the motion, which begins instantly after that movie’s last battle between two brothers born of the heavenly Chaos Pearl. One is the Spirit Pearl, or Ao Bing (voiced by Han Mo), who was adopted by the Dragon King, Ao Guang (Li Nan). The opposite is the Demon Orb, or Ne Zha (Lü Yanting in a nimble efficiency), adopted by Li Jing (Chen Hao) and Girl Yin (Lü Qi), the guardians of Chentang Go.

Not like the extra passive Ao Bing, Ne Zha is loud, vulgar and sometimes uncontrolled and his wrestle to regulate his otherworldly powers was the principle thrust of the primary movie. When his immortal teacher Taiyi Zhenren (Zhang Jiaming) is unable to reconstitute a corporeal vessel for Ao Bing, they share Ne Zha’s and head out to search out the elixir that can save him. The search takes them to Yu Xu Palace the place they need to full three trials for Grasp Wuliang (Wang Deshun).

That’s simply the set-up in an usually unwieldy narrative that manages to include offended dragons, magic water fountains, lengthy misplaced siblings, warrior rodents, warrior sea creatures and several other conspiracies – not all the time successfully. The movie is slowed down by frantic enhancing and egregious movement for the sake of movement, the form of overly kinetic visualising widespread in Kung Fu Panda or Encanto. Like so many sequels Ne Zha 2 repeats what labored the primary time round and easily does it louder and for longer.

As artistic because the script is with its themes, the second act sags below the burden of repetition – a martial arts battle with the rodent warriors needn’t have 4 endings – and, paradoxically, underwriting. For all of the lead as much as Ne Zha and Ao Bing’s trials, there’s no rationalization of what they’re. A protracted finale overstuffs the display screen with nameless copy-paste characters and a requisite post-credit sequence is a whole scene, not a 30-second stinger.

To its credit score, Ne Zha 2 teems with creativeness – the underwater world is especially vivid – and stays trustworthy to its fantastical, and really Chinese language, supply materials. Jiaozi’s script is its power; assured in its identification however common in its ideas. Although the bonds of household, parental sacrifice and unconditional love buoy the movie general, it additionally delicately trades in themes of duality as personified in Ao Bing and Ne Zha: of nature versus nurture, future versus selection, and the well timed (and quietly subversive) notion of rise up versus capitulation to deprave energy. The dense story is wrapped in impeccable paintings that has a vibrancy surpassing Ne Zha’s scrappier aesthetic, and demonstrates China’s growing confidence in its homegrown artists and technicians.