Ne Zha (2019)

I’d previously watched the old 2d animated version of Ne Zha, but this was my first time properly giving this updated version a look. It’s clearly taken a lot of inspiration from the Illumination playbook, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse.

Before anything else, i’ll say that a big issue for me was that i didn’t like Ne Zha. He’s a bit of a brat, and i think it’s a disservice to the character. In the previous version, and also for his appearance in 封神, he’s cheeky, or even naughty, but in a loveable rogue sort of way, whereas here, he takes pleasure in being evil for the sake of it, and yes, he’s got a demon inside of him, but even so, it’s hard to relate to a character like that. And compared to those two other films, he’s much more boyish; my perception based on the other films was much more that he was an androgynous divine being. The change is not necessarily a bad thing, it was just quite jarring.

A lot of the humour here was either gross humour or fat alcoholic sidekick humour, both of which felt a little bit overdone even by the first joke. Other than that, the major side characters generally felt well done, if a little two-dimensional.

The animation was pleasant throughout, not spectacular but significantly more than serviceable. There were a few innovative camera angles scattered throughout, but generally it felt like it was shot pretty basically.

The main reason that i watched this was so that i would know what was up for the sequel, which was a huge success. Given the simplicity of the plot, i think i probably would have been fine just reading a summary somewhere, but what’s done is done.