A colossal hit in China that has gone on to become an all-time box-office juggernaut, Ne Zha II widens the world of 2019’s Ne Zha to astonishing visual effect. The emotional core gets a bit lost in the spectacle, as the impulsively naughty demon boy of the title must share space with a cavalcade of new characters, as well as more screen time with Ao Bing, the ice-empowered counterpart to Ne Zha’s fiery spirit. At the start of the film, for elaborate reasons I won’t get into, Ne Zha and Ao Bing must share the same body, which builds on the thematic concerns of the first film: how to balance your best and worst impulses. That’s fairly quickly set aside, unfortunately, but still, it’s hard to complain given the animated extravaganza that returning director Yang Yu (professionally known as Jiaozi) and his team deliver. (My screening was an IMAX 3-D presentation.) There are chained hordes of sea-themed abyss monsters (my favorite was the octopus); seductively slithering dragons; a jade palace resplendent with fountains; a rambunctious clan of beaver bandits; and so much more. During the many fight sequences, the action has a brightness and clarity—in terms of line work and movement—that should be studied by anyone working on the effects side of American superhero movies. There is admittedly too much plotting; in fact, you could argue that a final-act twist isn’t even necessary. (The fact that it needs to be explained via a sudden voiceover suggests its incongruity.) Yet when everything leads to the image of a gigantic, gnarled tree atop an immense cauldron floating in the sky, with thousands of angelic demon-hunters carefully arranged on its branches like golden leaves, it doesn’t matter. With visual artistry like that, Ne Zha II magically maximizes nature to awesomely cosmic proportions.
(8/20/2025)
