Ne Zha 2 (2025)

This is quite an entertaining stand alone fantasy adventure that doesn’t really require you to know anything about what’s gone on before. Thanks to the sacred lotus, there’s a bit of reincarnation going on, but will that be completed in time to save the population of the “Chentang Pass” about to be attacked by an army of lava-borne devils? With certain defeat looming, the immortals start to take an hand in things - not unlike the story of the siege of Troy, and just like that take from antiquity, there is plenty of betrayal and duplicity to complement the more traditional stories of loyalty, family and team building as the story gradually builds to it’s pot-boiling climax. The CGI is better than many, much less two-dimensional, and there is lots of vibrant action as the naive but honourable young “Nezha” must find his own destiny, define his relationship with the more clean cut “Ao Bing” all despite the distant intervention of the “Loong” dragon kings and always under the watchful gaze of the cloud-hopping “Wu Liang” - a being outwardly benign and munificent, but is he all that he seems behind that grey beard? If you are of a mind to look deeper, then it may well offer up a critique of modern China - or, quite possibly many other societies, where the weak are manipulated and persecuted, where family is increasingly undervalued and where power and riches are the true gods. Essentially, I just found it to be a classily produced computer animation that mixed the astonishing richness of Chinese mythology with a solid adventure concept and just a little bit of pantomime humour as we go along. It looks great in a cinema, and doesn’t hang about getting off to a lively start and pacing well for a couple of action-packed hours.