Billion Dollar Baby
jiaozi follows his only film with a record-breaking sequel that does everything all sequels do. That’s not always good.
Ne Zha 2
Director: Jiaozi • Writer: Jiaozi
Starring [Putonghua]: Lü Yanting, Chen Hao, Lü Qi, Han Mo, Li Nan
China • 2hrs 24mins
Opens Hong Kong Feb 22 • I
Grade: B-
If you haven’t heard by now, Jiaozi’s (AKA Yang Yu) second film, Ne Zha 2 | 哪吒之魔童鬧海, the follow up to the surprise hit Ne Zha, emerged as the Lunar New Year juggernaut no one saw coming. Since its January release in China, the film has reportedly hoovered up a whopping US$1.7 billion in ticket sales, putting Jiaozi in rarified air alongside James Cameron. It’s the first non-English language film to hit the magic billion-dollar mark, though it’s unlikely to catch Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for receipts outside its home market. Still, it’s making headlines and it’s gotten everyone scratching their heads and wondering what the fuss is.
Based on Xu Zhonglin’s Investiture of the Gods, the same source material as Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force, Ne Zha 2 is a more family-friendly adaptation of a specific slice from a classic piece of Chinese literature, teeming with imaginative fantasy spaces and creatures, speaking directly to people who grew up reading the stories and their values, and who may now have kids of their own to share them with. It’s high-energy (too high sometimes), polished 3D animation that’s setting a new bar for Chinese filmmaking – and it landed during a major holiday. Why the pundits are surprised by its success is what’s baffling. True, the smart money was on the fourth instalment in the massively popular Detective Chinatown series (Detective Chinatown 1900) to be the season’s big winner, but hey. Disney was sure Mufasa: The Lion King was going to make bank. It just goes to prove audiences are going to go their own way. So does Ne Zha 2 live up to the hype?
Sometimes. Ne Zha 2 picks up almost exactly where 2019’s Ne Zha left off. If you forgot – and it was five years, who can blame you? – the Chaos Pearl was split into the “good” Spirit Pearl and the “bad” Demon Orb, eventually manifesting in a couple of switched-at-birth kids: the unruly, hot-tempered Ne Zha and the more even-keeled Ao Bing. Long story short, the de facto brothers team up to save Ne Zha from his fate of being struck by heavenly lightning, destroying their physical bodies in the process. Ne Zha 2 starts with Taoist Kunlun immortal, Master Taiyi Zhenren (voiced by Zhang Jiaming), working with the Sacred Lotus to reconstitute their bodies. But Ao Bing’s (Han Mo) furious dad Ao Guang (Li Nan, Yu Chen as a human), the Dragon King of the East Sea, shows up during the process and distracts everyone, and worst of all draws Ao Bing out of his half-formed body to save Chentang Pass, Ne Zha’s (Lü Yanting) hometown. Ao Guang, Chentang Pass governors Li Jing (Chen Hao) and Lady Yin (Lü Qi) – Ne Zha’s parents – and Ao Guang’s agent Shen Gongbao’s (Yang Wei) agree to a ceasefire so that Ne Zha and Ao Bing can go off and complete three trials overseen by Master Wuliang (Wang Deshun) and earn a healing elixir, the only way to restore Lotus and save Ao Bing. And they do this while sharing Ne Zha’s body, the one Taiyi got finished. That’s the very basic set-up for the rest of the action, which includes run-ins with bandit beavers (?), demon reform training by a master who turns out to be Shen’s brother, misunderstandings, tragic deaths, revenge, parental sacrifice and a very shady, very pissed off Dragon Queen.
For all its accomplishments it feels as if Jiaozi spent too much time studying Pixar and Dreamworks, and let the worst instincts of animators worldwide get to him. Ne Zhe 2 is afflicted with many of the symptoms of sequelitis: hyper-kineticism, bloated action sequences, truncated character moments, needless stingers and too much story where it’s not simply half-baked. Ne Zha comes from a rich, dense text, and as a writer Jiaozi needs to allow himself some ruthlessness: not everything is going to fit. Ne Zha was a nice, tight 110 minutes (30 minutes shorter) that grabbed a single story thread and ran with it. Ne Zha 2 doesn’t need all the bells and whistles. Ne Zha does some trials. Okay. But what are they? Jiaozi’s so caught up with rodent fighting he neglects to tell us what the challenge is. A second act heel turn should have the seed planted much earlier. Readers will likely fill in the blanks, but newcomers to the story won’t have a clue what’s happening. Assuming viewers will “get it” doesn’t fly in Batman movies, it doesn’t fly in The Iliad. It doesn’t fly here.
Despite the visual indulgence and some wobbly script moments, there’s plenty in Ne Zha 2 to see why it’s hitting. Despite those wobbly script bits it eventually settles down into a coherent narrative. The underwater creature work is imaginative and fun, and the deepening friendship between Ne Zha and Ao Bing and themes of parental devotion form the bedrock of the story. Add conflicts of nature versus nurture, fate versus free, of people versus corrupt rule (there’s an American dollar sign on a crucial lock late in the story) and a modern spin on the characters – Ne Zha is coded traditionally as a boy but is voiced by a female actor, if you really want to read an LGBTQ+ text you can, particularly in those closing sequences – and it totals a billion dollar no-brainer. And yes. I’d guess there’s a part three about five years away.