The Monkey King Reborn - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Monkey King Reborn



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Even those who don’t want a lot of Chinese/Hong Kong films will know the basic idea of The Monkey King. The age old story of The Journey to the West is a major Chinese folk legend that surpasses even that of Wong Fei Hung, or even the various Dynasty change stories. It’s a bit of legend that has been told, retold, and then retold again a myriad of times over the years, with people like Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li, and even Steven Chow taking the mantle of the mischievous Monkey King. Now it’s time for another animated adventure told by Mainland China rather than Hong Kong. The end result is a film that, while well meaning, is just re-warmed over tales of old packaged in shiny new animated form. Nothing more, nothing less, with all the good and bad that entails.

The film doesn’t even bother with any back story either, basically just accepting the fact that most people have already heard about The Monkey King. We start out with our typical monk and his 3 demon cohorts including the Pig demon and the all powerful Monkey King. Now The Monkey King is supposed to be the most powerful of the demons existing today, but he’s very mischievous and slightly bent towards good. However his hubris ends up getting himself involved with the Patreon of the Immortals, and accidentally ends up releasing Primordian, the progenitor to ALL demons who has slumbered in chains for thousands of years. Yeah, oopsie.

Well, putting his life on the line, The Monkey King wheedles his way out of punishment by agreeing to hunt down and re-capture Primordian for the Patrieon, and also rescue his Monk master who was captured by the evil demon. You see, Primordian’s physical form has been reduced to that of a salamander (a super powerful one I might add), but in 3 days if he absorbs the power of the monk his old ageless body will return, along with all the powers he once possessed. This means that The Monkey King needs to work against time to get to him before the clock runs out. With the help of a Qi entity, and the help of his master’s other two demon acolytes, the Monkey King is going to have to put everything on the line to save the world once more (and in the process his own butt).

If the story sounds a bit familiar, don’t be shocked. This is basically the same character arc and progression that we’ve seen throughout all of cinematic history. The Monkey King’s arrogance gets him in trouble, and it’s up to himself and his friends to bring out the good in him and save humanity. Classic story of hubris meets humility. What really is unique about the film is simply the animation. The story is pretty rote, with the same characters we all know and have seen before, just with the shiny veneer of plenty of high grade animation. It’s a bit exhausting and chaotic to watch, but generally an enjoyable watch for those who like the ancient Chinese folk lore.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

I’m pretty sure that The Monkey King Reborn was one of many Chinese films in years past that was shown in theaters in 3D, but only 2D for the home video release as you can tell with all the slow motion and front and center shots that the movie utilizes. That being said, I could find no real information on what forms of film making and resolution of masters were used for this release, but it’s a stunner for sure. A crisp and clean digital production (although it has some wonky motions to the characters built into the animation) it is bright, cheerful, and just deeply saturated at every corner. My only real complaint comes from the banding in low light shots, as well as the very obvious banding in smoke. Other than that, this is a near picture perfect digitally animated film (I’m 99.9999% sure it was digital as it has all the earmarks of a digital film, so no shock there) for the Blu-ray.







Audio:

As is the case with most Well Go USA releases, there is a 5.1 original language Mandarin 5.1 DTS-HD MA and English dub in the same format (along with the 2.0 night mixes in Dolby Digital for both languages as well). Usually I don’t notice any differences in the mixes outside of dub, but this time I noticed that the volume levels for the vocal track in the center of the room shows WAY different amplitude than the other track. However, the rest of the track (surround, LFE etc) shows no differences at all. It’s as if they mixed the dub vocal section differently than the Mandarin track for some apparent reason. Still, no matter the choice, both mixes are excellent with rip roaring bass for when the Monkey King lays the smack down, as well as kinetic use of the surround channels as the characters spin about the room. Great mix for sure.









Extras:

• Well Go USA Trailers
• Trailers and Teasers

Final Score: ​

The Monkey King character has pretty much been done to death for Chinese action films (live action or animated). I guess it was popular enough to warrant a sequel (which is already in the works), but fans of the Journey to the West story line might be a bit bored with this entry as we’ve already seen the plot points countless times in the past. Animation is solid, audio and video are great, but the story is just a little bland and rote in my personal opinion. Rental territory.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Xuccen Bai, Zhongyang Baomu, Jiang Bian, Jason Kesser, Shangquing Su
Directed by: Yunfei Wang
Written by: Yunfei Wang, Xiaoyu Wu
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Cantonese DTS-HD MA 5.1, English, Cantonese DD 2.0
Subtitles: English
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: NR
Runtime: 96 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: December 7th, 2021

Recommendation: Rental