The Monkey King is a 2014 Chinese fantasy film with Donnie Yen as The Monkey King, Aaron Kwok as Bull Demon King and Chow Yun-fat as the Jade Emperor. It's based on part of the centuries old novel Journey To The West. The story has been adapted to tv and film repeatedly. The first film listed on the Wikipedia page of adaptations is the 1927 silent film The Cave Of The Silken Web. Keep that in mind.
After a battle in heaven between the heavenly deities and the demon hordes of the Bull Demon King the buildings were all smashed. The Bull Demon King was banished to his fiery kingdom. A noble deity gives her life to repair everything, she turns into magical crystals that cement the buildings together. One of the crystals falls to a mountain where it turns into a stone egg. Eventually the Monkey King bursts out and became the leader of a tribe of monkeys.
The Monkey King is more than just a monkey, he's a deity, and he makes his way to heaven. He's rebuffed but busts in anyway. The Jade Emperor likes him and encourages his education. The Monkey King is a bit of a trickster and he doesn't act properly. Like Gods of other cultures the gods in the Chinese heaven are just as petty and vain and capricious as the human's they rule. The Bull Demon King is plotting to attack heaven again and he uses the dissatisfaction of one of the heavenly guards as a way in. They trick the Monkey King into turning against heaven by killing his tribe of monkeys and telling him that the gods did it. The Monkey King attacks heaven and it's destroyed again. The Jade Emperor calls on Buddha to stick the Monkey King under a mountain until he gets his act together.
That's where the movie ends. The Monkey King will be sitting under that mountain for 500 years before he's freed to help the Monk on his journey to the west to collect the sutras that bring Buddhism to China. I read online that there are supposed to be two more sequels and the second is already under way. The movie will be released in the US in September 2014. Joe ordered the Asian BluRay so we got to see it ahead of time.
The movie got panned by critics but it smashed several box office records in China. It's $82 million cost was repaid by a $175 million box office. It's supposed to be a family friendly movie and it is. The CGI is a mixed bag, most of it works well, occasionally there are spectacular bits and occaionally there are some weak bits. CGI is still a fledgling industry in China and they do fine. I could see why some people wouldn't care for it but I enjoyed it a lot. It scores an unusually low 4.8 on the IMDb but that might be because a lot of people haven't seen it yet. It's certainly not your typical Chinese action film but it's not supposed to be. It's a magical story filled with color and movement, plenty of entertaining action, wildly imaginative scenery and characters who are bigger than life. In fact I can't remember seeing any human's in the story and I didn't miss them. I certainly would recommend it to those that might like a fun fantasy story. I'll be keeping an eye out for the sequels.
Our second film is the 1967 Shaw Brothers film The Cave Of The Silken Web. It's based on another section of the Journey To The West novel. The Shaw Brothers made a series of four films based on JTTW in the later half of the 1960's and TCOTSW is the 3rd. The 1st is the 1966 Monkey Goes West, the 2nd is Princess Iron Fan, also from 1966, and the last is The Land of Many Perfumes which arrived in 1968. Unfortunately NetFlix doesn't have the other three films and I haven't looked to see what they would cost from an Asian DVD vendor. In this movie the Monkey King has already been released from his prison under the mountain. He's traveling with the monk Xuanzang on his trip to India. They're joined by Pigsy and Sandy on the journey, you know, to the west.
Unbeknownst to them the spider ladies of the silken cave have a plan to kidnap the monk and snack on him. Not only is he tasty, his flesh will give you immortality. In the novel there are a long series of adventures in which the monk is caught by one monster after another. All these villains are wanting a bit of his immortality inducing flesh. Heck, I might be tempted myself. The Monkey King joins with Pigsy and Sandy to try to get the monk out of captivity before he's tossed into the giant pot of boiling water. Two or three people could easily bath in that pot. It's a huge prop in a huge set.
The Shaw Brothers often have great sets in their films and this is no different. It's typical of the time. They shot a good bit of the movie outside and there's some nice scenery. The acting is ok, nothing bad or great, and it's a musical on top of that. The spider ladies all like a bit of singing and dancing. The IMDb gives this movie a 6.8 and while it's not anywhere near as entertaining as the first, it's still fun to watch.
More Jouney To The West adaptations:
Here's a 2011 Tv Adaptation of Journey To The West in 66 episodes. I'm planning to watch them over the next while. Here's a 2010 tv version on YouTube but only the first 3 of the 45 episodes are posted. There's a 1941 animated film called Princess Iron Fan. It's not great but it's kind of interesting. You can watch it on YouTube or download it at the Internet Archive. There's still more stuff to watch on Youtube but I haven't time today.
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