The Monkey King

The Monkey King is a Hong Kong fantasy action film based on ‘Journey to the West’, a popular 14^th century Chinese serial that still has an enduring influence. It’d be perhaps more familiar to western audiences through the dubbed seventies TV series ‘Monkey Magic’, though the material has had its share of adaptations, more recently with the Hong Kong comedy film ‘Conquering the Demons’, the video game ‘Enslaved: Odyssey to the West’ and has even had an American film pseudo-adaptation with ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ (which is actually not bad in terms of action for this sort of film). The Monkey King is the most recent and perhaps the biggest adaptation yet. It killed it in the Chinese box office, and stands as one of the highest grossing Chinese films or all time.

It’s a full-on fantasy film with a lot of special effects, intricate make-up and practical effects as well. The story is basic, the plot barely moves and the characters simplistic, to the point where it’s barely memorable in those respects, but it looks nice and is still entertaining for what it is, even if it’s just a light popcorn flick. It’s an effects heavy film, with prominent use of green screen and CGI, but also a lot of costumes and animatronics. Some of it looks nice, some of it looks bad and some of it is endearingly cheesy.

 

It’s a pretty familiar fantasy set-up. There are three realms, the divine in heaven, the humans and spirits on earth and the demons in hell. Out of jealousy (and plain evilness) the demons attacked and tried to destroy heaven but the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun Fat), ruler of the divine, managed to defeat them and banished them to a volcanic peak for eternity. To rebuild heaven a divine sacrificed herself by transforming into thousands of crystals, which also created a shield no demon could penetrate to protect it. One crystal fell to earth from the heavens, and from it was born Sun Wukong (Donnie Yen), the cheeky and irrepressible Monkey King. He is trained by the divine to be a warrior for virtue, though Monkey has a dual nature with his mischievous, destructive and high-energy personality. When he isn’t hanging out in the monkey kingdom, he’s harassing other deities by gate-crashing their palaces, smashing their stuff and stealing from them.

The Bull Demon King (Aaron Kwok), leader of the demons, teams up with a duplicitous divine to try and take heaven down again. To do this, they need Monkey - he was born from the crystals protecting heaven and thus may be able to break through it. The two go about manipulating the mischievous, simple minded Monkey into gate crashing heaven, hoping that the mischief he causes will cause disarray and destroy the shield, giving the demons access to heaven.

 

We get Donnie Yen in full-body monkey make-up. I’m talking thick hair covering him from head to toe, looking like a character from Tim Burton’s version of Planet of the Apes. I’d actually maybe go one further, and say he’s like Mike Myers in the Cat in the Hat. It looks completely ridiculous, is the point of what I’m saying, but then that’s true of the entire movie. I don’t know why they felt it necessary to go full simian with him, considering Aaron Kwok’s Bull Demon King is just a normal guy with horns. Yen has a high-pitched voice, constantly makes miscellaneous monkey noises and hops around like a mad monkey person. Which, I guess, is sorta the point of the character. Sun Wukong is an annoying, irritating character, and has been in pretty much every incarnation – it’s just part of who he is. Yen dials it up to eleven, to the point where one could wonder if he wasn’t high as shit on speed and caffeine during the entire shoot. The heavy face make-up also prevents him from emoting with his face, which he attempts to make up for it with the constant, exaggerated movement – Monkey never stops, not even for a second – it’s like the dude has ADHD. Your mileage will vary. One really has to wonder why he took the role – maybe it’s for his children? Yen isn’t returning for the sequel (which is currently filming I believe), and oddly Aaron Kwok is taking the reigns as Monkey, despite being the villain in this film (hopefully he’ll be more energetic than was here).

Chow Yun Fat has fun as the Jade Emperor, a guy who has been running heaven for so long that he finds Monkey’s antics refreshing and fun against the bureaucracy of heaven and the other divines – it’s a shame we don’t get much of him. Sadly almost everybody else just sucks. Aaron Kwok’s Bull Demon King is disappointingly bland. He has no personality – he wants to destroy heaven for some reason, and that’s all there is to it. He’s never maniacal or brooding, he’s just sort of stoic which makes for a dull villain. The Bull King is married to the Jade Emperor’s sister, yet absolutely nothing comes from this. She’s annoyed that he’s still trying to destroy heaven, and that’s literally all there is for the two of them. Likewise a fox girl that Monkey meets is literally just used as a plot device in his manipulation (which follows a pretty similar path as Anakin Skywalker’s manipulation in the third Star Wars movie).

 

This is an effects-heavy film, with seemingly the majority of the sets and scenes being green screen. Some of it actually looks quite good and there's a definite level of polish over everything (heaven’s gardens and palaces are suitably fancy) while others are less impressive (underwater palace looks weird with its ‘underwater’ filter effects). Similarly the action effects are often pretty good. Again, some of it looks shoddy (giant octopus tentacles are poor), but others look really quite great (Chow Yun Fat as a dragon is pretty slick). There are a lot of intricate costumes and effects around, the kind we just don’t see anymore. I’m talking puppet heads and moving parts, the kind of effects work that was mostly replaced with CGI in this day and age. I can understand why, but I still personally love the endearingly silly practical effects work for costumes and animatronics. My favourite for sheer silliness has to be the evil animatronic bear demon. Or, maybe even better, the crab guy who looks like a Power Ranger villain. He’s got human legs, but his torso is a crab costume.

The action scenes have the various spirits, demons and deities flying through the air as they battle, with various special attacks and abilities. Monkey has a plethora of (unexplained but it was in the book) abilities, like being able to change form, creating clones of himself from his hair and using a shape-shifting staff. Other characters have various effects in battle, like Chow Yun Fat’s weird whip/transforming dragon thing or the Bull Demon King’s demonic axe. One divine has what can best be described as flaming rollerblades. Characters zip around the screen, flying through flames and crystals, walloping each other with special effects.

Monkey King is primarily a family film. By that I mean it’s not taxing or complicated, it’s just straightforward with its characters and plot. The story is thin as are most of the characters, and whatever lessons or themes the film has are simplistic (I dunno, ‘be good’ or ‘don’t attack heaven’). There’s no real depth to it, and it doesn’t really have anything there that will stay with you. It’s a popcorn movie – simple entertainment. And I really didn’t mind it. I’m not going to call it a classic, and it isn’t something that will blow you away, but despite its many faults I found it hard not to enjoy the movie. Maybe it was the ridiculousness of it, the silly costumes or the overall slick presentation, but I had fun with it.