Taking a look at a list of the 10 highest-grossing films worldwide of all-time, the suspects are usual: James Cameron sits there thrice, as does Marvel. Pixar and Universal squeak their way in with a sequel each, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens makes a nearly obligatory appearance as a stand-in for the goodwill the franchise had built over 40 years. There are many reasons why a movie might become a success like those on the list, but there’s one thing connecting them all: they’re Hollywood movies. Yet couched directly in the center of that list at fifth, elbowing its way north of $2.2 billion since January, is the upstart Chinese animated movie Ne Zha 2.
It’s almost prankish for A24 to drop the English dub of the highest-grossing animated movie ever into American theaters during the time of year when blockbusters are usually considered to be at an ebb because it reminds us how slim our pickings are. It remains to be seen how much Ne Zha 2 will add to its earnings, but the precise number doesn’t really matter. What matters is that writer/director Yang Yu, better known professionally as Jiaozi, has beaten Hollywood at its own game: Ne Zha 2 is remarkable precisely for how unremarkable it is. For someone going into it who isn’t already a fan of international cinema, a fair expectation might be cognitive dissonance, culture shock, or a sense of the uncanny, but there’s none of that… at all. Ne Zha 2 subsumes the Hollywood blockbuster in toto, including the things that don’t work about it, and regurgitates it with the competent crowd-pleasing thrills our studios now largely refuse to offer. It’s a phenomenon worth paying attention to.
Based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Investiture of the Gods — and we thought American IP-mining was out of control — Ne Zha 2 is a sequel to the 2019 original about the titular Ne Zha, a young boy born as the physical incarnation of the Demon Orb, a sentient energy paired with the Spirit Pearl. The Spirit Pearl finds its own manifestation in Ao Bing, the son of the evil Dragon King. At the end of the first movie, the two team up to defy fate and keep Ne Zha’s spirit alive, which was cursed to die when Ne Zha reached the age of three. The second film meets them trying to return their spirits to new bodies, an attempt that goes haywire because the Dragon King commands an attack on Chentang Pass, Ne Zha’s beloved home. After the attack, Ao Bing’s new body fails him, and so he has to share space with Ne Zha in his. But they only have a week to cohabitate because the Dragon King threatens to destroy Chentang Pass completely if Ao Bing doesn’t get his own body back. Thus, our heroes embark on a journey to obtain an elixir that will return Ao Bing’s corporeal form back from the brink.
If that all sounds needlessly busy, it is — Ne Zha 2 stops routinely to dump heavy exposition. It’s a major departure from the more modest Ne Zha, which, while still plot-heavy, moved with great dexterity and offered some truly phantasmagoric imagery. Often, Ne Zha 2 lumbers between set pieces, adding unnecessary layers to a cake that’s already on the verge of becoming too rich. But sometimes bigger is better. Ne Zha 2 features resplendent production design evocative of media as diverse as The Legend of Zelda, Pompeii, Naruto, and Lord of the Rings. That’s Jiaozi’s major coup: much like Megalopolis, which tried to incorporate cues from every movie decade into its style, Jiaozi grabs from every possible point of influence in the blockbuster realm, sometimes even self-consciously. In the climactic battle, Ne Zha burns a gigantic tree (quietly reminiscent of Elden Ring’s Erdtree) down. It’s a direct inversion of Avatar’s Dark Night of the Soul moment, wherein the Na’vi’s Hometree is incinerated by intruding humans. Here, the tree represents colonial authority, a Goliath to be taken down by puckish Davids.
There’s a lot — too much — to keep butts glued to seats in Ne Zha 2: frequent low-hanging jokes, legible wuxia action, stock themes like belonging and the sanctity of family hit with regimented earnestness. Slowly, however, a powerful allegory emerges from the barrage. It pokes its head in every now and again as Ne Zha battles with marmots and boulder beasts, but by the end it becomes excruciatingly clear: underneath the cheerful surface thrums a quivering metaphor for the plight in Gaza, one clan violently asserting supremacy over another. It’s opaque enough that one could fudge it to be about almost any oppressed in a conflict over land, but there are a few key moments that bring Gaza to mind specifically. At one point in the film, Ne Zha’s dad, the general of Chentang Pass, asks one of the Dragon King’s henchmen to allow medicine in to heal the injured and dying who have been blockaded from the rest of the world after the attack that opens the film. Later, Chentang Pass gets completely obliterated.
Ne Zha 2 concentrates most of its politics in the final act, where, in a battle the likes of which hasn’t been seen on American screens since Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, characters throw out one-liners indicative of the movie’s stance on imperialism. In a classic ally-turned-foe switcheroo: Wuliang, the leader of another clan, is revealed to have been behind the destruction of Chentang Pass all along. “You claim to serve the light,” Ao Bing intones, implicating decadent Western democracies who allege themselves to be the heroes but are, in fact, the villains. “Demons, immortals, all part of your trickery,” he continues, slamming Wuliang for setting up binaries of good and evil to control the battlefield and the narrative. “Only those who side with the strong survive,” Wuliang retorts, but Ne Zha and his band of merry demons prove otherwise: they, instead, become the heroes. The subtext is sublimated so much better than in something like James Gunn’s Superman, which fumbles its way through an obvious, contradictory, and hollow political message.
Hollywood has a rich tradition of sneaking progressive ideas into mainstream work. Revenge of the Sith crackles with anti-imperialist energy; Avatar, too, which makes the aforementioned tree-burning an act of unnecessary friendly fire. For decades, American filmmakers have found ways to slide sly critiques in under big budgets and populist stylings. Have they finally resigned to let others do it for them? If more nations continue to make strides in their blockbuster filmmaking such as those seen in Ne Zha 2, that just might be the case. Conglomerates can’t cease and desist the Hero’s Journey, so come December, Cameron better bring the heat. He might want to bring ice along for the ride, too.
DIRECTOR: Yang Yu; CAST: Crystal Lee, Aleks Le, Michelle Yeoh, Vincent Rodriguez III; DISTRIBUTOR: A24; IN THEATERS: August 22; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 23 min.
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