Ne Zha 2 Review

Ne Zha 2 is an animated film that has been a massive hit in China, making over $2 billion at the Chinese box office. The film has finally reached Europe, being distributed by Trinity Cine Asia in the UK.

Ne Zha (Lü Yanting) and Ao Bing (Han Mo) regain their bodies but are left vulnerable by the process. Ao Bing’s father, Ao Guang (Li Nan/Yu Chen) attacks the Chentang Pass believing his son has died. When Ao Bing loses his new body there’s only one hope to resurrect the dragon prince, a quest to Kunlun and to complete three trials to become immortal.

I went into Ne Zha 2 blind. I only knew of the film because of its success in China. The first film never got released in the UK, I couldn’t get a DVD/Blu-ray or digital copy. For a newcomer to the series and no knowledge of Chinese mythology, so there was a lot to catch up with. It was a film made for the Chinese market and any money it makes overseas will be seen as a bonus. There was only one other person at my screening of the film.

The film does have a frantic start as it shows the main two characters getting new bodies and the Chentang Pass getting attacked. It was a lot to take in. The filmmakers even acknowledged there was a lot of information to take on and text cards were imposed on the screen to explain who some characters were. Yet on a basic level, Ne Zha 2 was easy enough to follow since Ne Zha was forced on a quest so he could save his friend and defeat a trio of demons for the Immortals.

A lot was going on with the world-building. One of the most interesting characters in the film was Shen Gongbao (Yang Wei). He was set up to be Ao Guang’s main lieutenant, tasked to keep Chentang Pass siege, and well, looked like a villain. Yet he was shown to be a more nuanced character who had a sense of humanity and compassion. Many of the characters’ actions were driven by their relationships. It was not a simple case of things being black-and-white, good-and-evil and that’s made the world more compelling.

Ne Zha 2 had two distinctive halves. The first was a more comedic focus whilst the second half was more action-centric. This made Ne Zha 2 similar to Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero which started as a comedy and evolved into an action film. Ne Zha 2 was made for kids, so the humour was juvenile: there was toilet humour and the use of modern abbreviations. The humour does aim for a really young audience but this stood in contrast to the 12A rating it got in the UK. Some jokes did land, such as Ao Bing describing Ne Zha’s features, and Ne Zha confronting a clan of Marmots.

Ne Zha 2 had a $80 million budget which is massive for an animated film outside of Hollywood. The money was displayed on screen due to the variety of locations and creatures, and the fantasy martial arts fights. The action worked on a comedic level, like when Ne Zha fought the Marmots, to being a big action spectacle such as during the climax battle.

The Ne Zha films were based on Investiture of the Gods, an influential piece of Chinese literature. From a Western viewpoint I can see how Chinese culture influenced Avatar: The Last Airbender and could use that as a reference point. They are all fantasy martial stories with characters who have elemental powers, demons were mostly animals in Ne Zha whilst in Avatar, spirits generally had animals. Finally, Ne Zha was a demon spirit in a human body and had human parents, which felt similar to Korra since she was the reincarnation of the Avatar and close to her parents.

Ne Zha 2 offers Western audiences an animation alternative and shows that the Chinese film industry can make an animated film on a grand scale to rival Hollywood.