Pop quiz: what’s the biggest animated film of all time? If you said Inside Out 2 ($1.7 billion), you’d have been correct – up until last month.
That’s when a Chinese animated sequel, Ne Zha 2, leapt to the top of the all-time animated movie chart. It left monster hits like The Lion King ($1.6 billion) and Frozen 2 ($1.4 billion) in the dust. Barely two months on from its China release, the $2.1 billion in takings puts it in fifth place in the all-time box office charts – behind only the two Avatars, one Avengers movie and Titanic.
So what is this movie, and how did it become such a colossal hit?
What is Ne Zha 2?
The phenomenon began with 2019’s Ne Zha, a spirited action-fantasy derived by writer-director Jiaozi from Xu Zhonglin’s epic 16th century novel Investiture of the Gods, a tale of gods and demons as familiar to Chinese audiences as the Greek myths are to the West. The film concerned the rivalry between two brothers born of a magical pearl: a serene, placid water spirit, Ao Bing (voiced by Han Mo), and Ne Zha (Joseph Cao and Lü Yanting), a fire demon whose crude, chaotic Big Toddler Energy gives this boisterous movie its appeal.
Ne Zha, while a bona fide hit, failed to crack the all-time animated top 30. It ends in a climactic battle with the big bad, dragon king Ao Guang. The sequel begins with Ne Zha’s home under threat from Ao Guang’s dragons, emancipated after a thousand years in chains, fighting alongside a vast army of magical wolf-hunters, and a legion of underwater monsters with fearsome powers – including a giant squid-beastie that cooks, eats and regrows its own tentacles. Yum.
Meanwhile, the two brothers find themselves sharing a body, with comic and chaotic consequences. Like many sequels, Ne Zha 2 is bigger, longer, and inferior to he original. But it has attracted three times the audience of its predecessor, and broken records galore. In China, there’s been no escaping its tentacles.
Hollywood’s dominance in the animation world has endured for almost nine decades, despite relatively recent encroachments from Japanese anime such as Spirited Away and Your Name, both of which earned around $400 million worldwide. But with DreamWorks’ Chinese-culture-appropriating Kung Fu Panda franchise skidoosh-ing its way to $2.4 billion – probably twice that if you factor in merchandising – China’s ruling party decided a home-grown hit was long overdue.
How did it become so huge?
And with a newly-minted middle class, a vast cinema infrastructure for its 1.4 billion inhabitants, and a tech sector capable of rivalling the best in the West, it was surely only a matter of time before China had a smash-hit franchise to call its own, and demon boy Ne Zha was summoned for duty.
Film writer Jonathan Clements’s book Anime: A History explores the symbiotic relationship between the Chinese and Japanese animation industries, and the way in which the Chinese have recently disengaged from Japan to go it alone. He notes that China’s latest Five-Year Plan encompassed not only nuclear power and tractor parts, but also the animation industry. ‘A bunch of policy wonks look really good if an animated film goes gangbuster at the cinemas,’ he says. ‘But it's worth pointing out that almost all of Ne Zha 2's box office has been earned within China. China doesn't need overseas markets any more. They’ve got 1.4 billion people, so they can literally just please themselves.’
In China, Mulan and Kung Fu Panda are regarded as unwelcome foreign rip-offs
As Clements points out, 2020’s ‘Five-Year Plan for the Film Industry’ outlined the country’s ambition to become a ‘strong film nation’. ‘You might think that Mulan and Kung Fu Panda were sweetly Chinese, but in China the authorities now regard them as unwelcome foreign rip-offs that distort the Chinese originals.’ Local films like Ne Zha and another recent hit, Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force, draw upon Chinese mythology ‘because these stories are essentially pre-approved, and unlikely to rock any political boats. Nezha has form: yes, he has a mythological basis, but he was also the hero of Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, which was the first big splash of contemporary Chinese animation in 1979 in post-Mao China.’
Ne Zha 2 may have made a billion dollars outside of its native country, but its local production means that its profits – not only from the film, but toys, furniture, clothing, action figure and all the usual movie tie-ins – stay in China. ‘It's made a lot of Chinese stockbrokers suddenly look at animation as a viable investment,’ Clements says, ‘but although Ne Zha 2 hysteria is going to bring in a lot of new investors who think every cartoon is going to be a blockbuster, someone is going to take a bath on one.’
What is Ne Zha 2’s release date?
Probably not Ne Zha 3, though – a threequel almost certainly en route to China’s cinema screens.
For curious Westerners, meanwhile, Ne Zha 2 is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, March 21. Compared with its domestic taking, its box office is likely to be a drop in the popcorn bucket – even with surcharges for the massive IMAX screens which are the natural home for a film teeming with gigantic battle scenes.
Hollywood? Forget it, Jake. It’s China’s town.
Ne Zha 2 is in US theaters now and UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Mar 21.
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