Ne Zha 2 is THE highest grossing movie of all time, earning $2.2 billion at the box office so far, but sadly, the English dub didn’t fare well here despite its initial subtitled release back earlier this year, which I never even heard about at all thanks to poor advertising.
The first thing you see from the title of the movie is that it’s the second movie in the franchise. What happened to the first movie, and why wasn’t it shown in movie theaters like this movie? On a personal note, I myself still need to watch the first movie. My parents tried to watch the first movie, but they were bored instantly and fell asleep trying to watch it. I went into the movie theater with zero knowledge from the first movie, but surprisingly, that wasn’t a deterrent from watching and enjoying the second movie!
The movie is based on Nezha, a protection deity in Chinese folklore from the 16th century novel, Investiture of the Gods. The story starts where the first movie leaves off with Ne Zha and his friend, Ao Bing, a dragon in human form, as disembodied spirits, having both sacrificed themselves to save Ne Zha’s village. Ne Zha and Ao Bing are both reincarnations of the Chaos Pearl split into two: the Demon Orb and the Spirit Pearl or yin and yang. Despite their polar opposite natures, they somehow became friends in the first movie. Sadly, without the first movie, they try to explain all of this in the first 5 minutes of the second movie, very rapidly.
To prevent their souls from dying/dissipating, Master Taiyi Zhenren uses a mixture of lotus root with the magical sacred lotus flower to give both Ne Zha and Ao Bing their bodies back in gelatinous form. After both their souls enter the gelatinous goo and shaped to reflect their true form, they’re put into the magical lotus root one at a time to fuse their new bodies and souls together.
Meanwhile, Shen, the antagonist of the story, tells Ao Guang, the Dragon King of East Sea, that his son, Ao Bing, has died. Ao Guang is consumed with rage and is egged on by his sibling dragon kings and queen of the other compass regions to attack the people of Chentang Pass for revenge. Ao Run, the Dragon Queen of the West Sea, gives Shen one of her claws called the Sky Claw which could rip open the sky and space and create portals between different locations. Shen forges the Sky Claw into a weapon he uses to rip the sky surrounding Chentang Pass to the dragon realm filled with lava, monsters, and demons that just pour out from the portals to attack the city. All the soldiers fall before the monsters and demons, and only Ne Zha’s parents can somewhat stand against them for some reason.
Ne Zha’s parents try to reason with Shen and tell him that Ao Bing is still alive, but Shen doesn’t believe them. While the attack continues, Shen flies off (I don’t know how he has powers.) to find Master Taiyi who has surrounded the area with a protective shield after Ne Zha’s parents warned him an attack from Shen was imminent while he completes the ritual to give Ne Zha and Ao Bing their bodies back. Shen uses his Sky Claw weapon to rip open the sky for the four dragon kings and queen to attack the shield with their fire breath. To protect Ne Zha and Master Taiyi, Ao Bing leaps into the fray and uses his ice powers to protect them both but at the cost of his new fragile body.
Ao Guang senses his son’s presence and rushes to cradle his son in his arms in his humanoid spiritual form. While Ao Guang embraces his son, Master Taiyi finishes the ritual to restore Ne Zha fully into his new body. Unfortunately, restoring Ne Zha fully exhausts the magic lotus flower which withers away, making it impossible to make another new body for Ao Bing. Without a new body, Ao Bing’s spirit will fade away forever. With his dying breath, Ao Bing begs his father to stop the war with the gods and the people in Chentang Pass.
Outraged, Ne Zha aggressively begs Master Taiyi to fix this and save Ao Bing. Taiyi says the only way to keep Ao Bing’s spirit alive is for Ao Bing to temporarily share Ne Zha’s body. This solution would only be temporary because Ao Bing would only be able to share Ne Zha’s body for a week before they can no longer stay together and Ao Bing would be ejected and dissipate forever. Shen, who was Ao Bing’s shifu/teacher in the first movie, wanting to save his disciple’s life as well, says there is still a way to restore his body. In the Heavenly Palace of immortal gods, there’s an elixir that can restore the magical lotus flower, but Taiyi doubts the gods would just give the elixir to Ne Zha to save the son of their enemy, the dragon king. Shen suggests that Ne Zha complete the ascension trials in which he can become an immortal and choose a magical item from the palace which would of course be the elixir. If Ne Zha fails though, Ao Guang says he will wipe out all the people in Chentang Pass. Ne Zha agrees and goes off to the Heavenly Palace to apply to be an immortal with Master Taiyi.
Along the way, Taiyi warns Ne Zha that if he uses his powers, he will emanate demonic energy which would expose his ties to the Demon Orb which the gods would not view favorably. Taiyi suggests that Ao Bing take control of Ne Zha’s body during the trials, so he will not emanate demonic energy. Whenever Ao Bing takes over Ne Zha’s body, Ne Zha’s face changes into Ao Bing’s gentle face, but it’s difficult for Ne Zha to relinquish control of his body to Ao Bing. The only way Ne Zha can let Ao Bing take over his body is if he takes sleeping pills. Can the friends keep it together to win immortality and save Ao Bing through trials that rival that of Hercules’?
Now if you thought that was long, that’s not even half the movie! There is so much lore and explanation in each and every thing that’s said, it’s difficult to follow along even in English. Imagine reading the subtitles of such speeches while trying to watch the movie. I don’t think my reading speed could keep up with that. Michelle Yeoh who voices Ne Zha’s mother, Lady Yin, in the English dub thought the same when she first watched the movie in Hong Kong and hoped it would be dubbed into English, so the audience can enjoy the grandeur of the movie without worrying about missing the dialogue. When Yeoh was offered a role in the English dub, she immediately said yes.
The story of Nezha is as well known as stories of the Monkey King in Chinese lore, but people outside of Asia would not know this which is probably why there is so much dialogue to explain everything. It does bog down the flow of the movie a bit, but you get to learn things as well. Again, the first 5 minutes is nothing but tons of dialogue somewhat sped read to explain what happened in the first Ne Zha movie. After a bit of explanation though, the dialogue resumes at a more digestible pace.
The movie is a whopping 2.5 hours long, but watching it, it never felt like I was watching for 2.5 hours. Even the slow scenes were entertaining enough to keep me engrossed in the story. The beginning of the movie, as well as a few other areas, has a lot of potty and bodily fluids childish humor which is a part of a lot of Asian humor in general.
Bearing that though, the rest of the movie is gorgeously animated with special effects that outdo even the best anime fight sequences. It’s what live-action remakes of animated properties wish their remake could look like. The cinematic scale is phenomenal and even bigger than any kaiju movie you’ve ever seen! Think 100 times larger! Godzilla would basically be a mouse in this movie in comparison.
The second half of the movie takes a more serious tone than the first half with all the dialogue replaced by fantastic fight scenes as Ne Zha and Ao Bing go through the trials and have to contend with each other as well. There are consequences that no one could ever imagine that happen as well as unexpected surprising twists. Again, the movie did not feel like it was 2.5 hours long because I became very committed to the story and the characters.
The English cast is mainly made up of Chinese actors voicing the main characters while the immortals, demons, dragons, and monsters, including Shen the main villain, were voiced by American actors except for Ao Bing since he’s considered part of the main cast. This was a very Chinese story, so it’s fitting a Chinese cast voice the Chinese characters. I’m not sure why Taiyi was voiced by an American, but I think they considered him an immortal since his brother is one. Having the dragons voiced by an American cast didn’t make sense when you see their humanoid forms.
Moreover, the voice director goofed in keeping the pronunciation of Ne Zha consistent among the cast and throughout the movie. The Chinese in the cast who can also speak Mandarin pronounced Ne Zha perfectly as Na tzha. The English cast were all over the place in saying Ne Zha from Nudgha to Neh zha. The voice director should have instructed the English cast to say Ne Zha correctly and kept it consistent throughout the movie since that’s their job. When you watch the movie, the correct pronunciation for Ne Zha is how the Chinese cast say it. A friend who watched the movie couldn’t figure out how to say Ne Zha at all since it was pronounced differently every time it was said! This shouldn’t have happened, especially with all the resources available now that show you how to pronounce things correctly in other languages.
Overall, the movie is simply spectacular! I would definitely re-watch it to catch some more of the dialogue in the beginning or for the outrageously gorgeous fight scenes. It’s definitely worth 2.5 hours. The end of the movie hints there is a Ne Zha 3 some time in the near future, and I can’t wait to see it! Also, unlike many movies, the end of the movie tells you there are some end scenes for you to watch. I just hope Ne Zha 3 will be available in the U.S. in English despite the very poor box office for the English dub. I’m sad it didn’t do better. It should have done a LOT better given what I saw in special effects animation alone! The advertising for the subbed version earlier this year was definitely not enough. I only saw advertisement for the dubbed version on Instagram, but no where else. You definitely won’t be disappointed if you see it in the theaters since the scale and special effects demand a big screen to watch it!
