Ne Zha 2 (2025)

No doubt this represents a technological leap for Chinese animation. I remember seeing the first movie 5 years ago and it was already impressive and today the effects are nothing short of dazzling. If you want to see a superbly animated spectacle with some traditional Chinese mythology elements, this movie is an absolute treat.

It manages to convey the perennial theme in Chinese mythology—the tyranny of Heaven and the paradoxical mortal effort to both resist and join it—and it does so with style. By style I mean intricately imagined magic patterns and a fuckload of twinks (I mean seriously, even the thousand-year old dragon daddy has zero facial/body hair and the complexion of an airbrushed infant, what in the world?)

Its flaws are also obvious. The jokes are crass. The dialogue is awkward. Most importantly, it utterly fails to build upon the message of its predecessor.

After Ne Zha defies heaven’s will to change his destiny in the first movie, it would have been a natural progression for the sequel to deal with Ne Zha’s own growth. If the question of what kind of order he would have instead of the one he overthrew is too ambitious, then surely at least what he wants out of life for himself? Instead, this sequel completely punts and throws in more of the same: more gods to scorn and unbridled rage as solution to every problem. After its 140-min runtime, Ne Zha’s only growth seems to be his abrupt physical metamorphosis into, you guessed it, another twink, nothing else.