Monkey the king of China's animation cinema
- By Wei Jia
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 28, 2015
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Tian Xiaopeng [Photo/CFP] |
Similarly, the Monkey King in Tian's movie, after spending 500 years under a mountain, doesn't feel exactly a king when he was rescued by Monk Tang (Xuanzang). And it takes Monk Tang's loving, devout heart to lift Monkey King above his moping and help him find the courage to rise from the ashes and be a "superhero" again.
A story like that is not written exactly with a preteen audience in mind.
The positioning as a real family-friendly fare has paid off for "Monkey King." According to Liu Hui, manager of a UME cinema in Beijing, adults without kids also flocked to watch "Monkey King," something that can hardly be said of most domestically produced animation movies.
The movie's appeal to a mature, and more discerning, audience attests to the quality of the work. A case in point that illustrates the movie's attention to detail are the follow shots and hand-held camera effects that are widely used in the movie to better capture its Oriental characters' nuanced facial expressions and movements, which are not as prominent as their counterparts in the West.
While it is still early days to equal the success of one movie to the revival of a genre cherished by generations of Chinese, "Monkey King: Hero is Back" is just what the animation movie industry in China now needs: the courage to break free from an outdated mold of making animation just for children and the patience to work on a project with such craftsmanship as cannot possibly be explained by the short-sighted ambition of making a fast buck, unlike many of its peers.
Just like the Monkey King, the movie itself is a hero.
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