Journey to the West is probably my favorite Chinese story there is, and it had been retold so many times. And so I tried to look at this particular "adaptation" with an open mind. Now, I watched this one in Mandarin with English subtitles, and so I might not have gotten everything correct. Also, I watched this last night, and so the chronology of this retelling is probably off.
I just want to say that the CGI for this film is on point. Sure there
are still some parts that is way below today's standards, but it
definitely excels many of the Chinese films.
The film begins with the explanation that deities are forever in a war against the demons. We then see a battle going on between the Jade Emperor (is it just me, or is he also a dragon king??) and the Bull Demon. As the Jade Emperor was about to finish him off, Princess Iron Fan flies in and pleaded for mercy, because this deity had actually fallen in love with that demon. How romantic. The Jade Emperor reluctantly agreed (for it is forbidden for a deity and demon to be together), and let them go.
Because of that battle, however, the entire heaven was destroyed. Nuwa decided to sacrifice herself to rebuild the entire place as well as becoming millions (billions?) of crystals to construct a sort of force field around heaven. This wall repels any demons that attempts to force their way inside heaven and burns them to ashes. A single crystal happened to fall on Earth and gave birth to a monkey. Ok then. Pretty sure it's supposed to be a stone. But I suppose it's because the creators of this film wanted to have something prettier - you have to admit, crystals look prettier than gray stones.
Anyway, the next part was super cute as we see a baby (infant??) monkey inside the see-through crystal interacting with a white fox outside the crystal. They held up their paws to each other, but then the white fox was suddenly carried off violently with a dark cloud. Very sad.
What happens next? Don't remember, but I believe that Guan Yin and Puti had a conversation about how the monkey was born from both good and evil, and I think she asked him to take care of the monkey. This is a major theme - the fact that he was born both good and evil, because how he ends up is the path that he chooses.
We then see the monkey grown up-ish, with other monkeys. We can see that he's some sort of leader to them, because he chose to climbed up some trees to grab fruits for all the other monkeys.
(There was one particular monkey with a ginormous nose.. what?)
Anyway, after grabbing the fruits, he noticed a blue butterfly, and he wants to catch it. He did, and fell down because of it. He opened his hand just to see that the blue butterfly is dead (or, well, Puti shows up and tells him it's dead). Puti blew on Monkey's fist, and behold, the butterfly is back from the dead. Naturally, Monkey asked Puti to teach him this, so he went off with Puti to learn magic.
We see the other disciples of Puti here (is it just me or is there so many pretty girls in this film?). Monkey was given a name by Puti, and he is now known as Sun Wukong. This monkey sure loves collecting names, because soon his complete name would be Flower Fruit Mountain, Water Curtain Cave, Handsome Monkey King, and Great Sage Equal to Heaven Sun WuKong. He believes that he needs such an amazing title to introduce himself. Anyway, we see that he already knows like everything, but he also has a hard time controlling himself, as we see him changing from a tiger to a rhino to chase a particular classmate. This, here, is another major theme - WuKong is unable to control himself, and this will cause him many troubles. He was asked to leave by Puti (I forgot the reason why... I think it was because he had taught WuKong everything he can already). So he leaves very sadly and returns to his fellow monkeys, who were being bullied by this funky-looking Confusion(??) Demon. It was definitely confusing, but WuKong saved them.
Now, as you've probably noticed, I've written several paragraphs, and
yet, we're still at the beginning of the story. Sure, it may be my
long-winded writing style, but it can also probably be because this film
is just so slow. I say that the best part of the film is
probably the end. Not the ending, but the parts that lead to the end.
I'm sure there's a literary term for it that I learned in 6th grade, but
I forgot.
Anyway, to move on, we see the Bull Demon
plotting to overthrow heaven once again. We see some woman (man??) with a
single flame as her (its??) face prophesying (this is apparently a
word) the end of heaven's reign will come about with the help of a
crystal monkey. We also see that the Bull Demon is a ruthless king of
the demons, as someone spoke up, and the Bull Demon just decided to kill
him. He also decided to enlist Yang Jian (Erlang Shen) who was unhappy
with being assigned the task of a gatekeeper to help him with his plan.
Wukong decided to find weapons for his fellow monkeys from the Dragon King. By find, I mean steal, and by steal, I mean to "borrow" according to WuKong. His concept of "borrowing" is that he takes them with the promise of returning them...some day. That logic. He also took the Golden Cudgel, which was used to help calm the sea, and which was unable to be taken by anyone else before. The Dragon King was mad, he complained to heaven (but was stopped by Yang Jian). Yang Jian told him that there is no need to bring this matter to the Jade Emperor. He told NaZha to take care of the monkey.
Now the monkey was happily hanging out with his white fox friend who he recently reconciled with (now a pretty girl, because she is a demon as well and can transform between fox and demon). Little did he knew that this friend was actually taken by the Bull Demon and now placed near him as part of the demon's plan. It was obvious that WuKong likes the white fox as he was even flirting with her with his tail.
Anyway, they got attacked, and WuKong was almost incinerated by NaZha's fire balls, but the Bull Demon came to rescue him. WuKong now regards him as a friend. It was also obvious that at this point, WuKong was not strong enough to take on Heaven. The plan is to get him to Heaven and take an elixir pill which will strongly increase his power (by 100 times, I believe). Somehow he did decide that he wants to be up there, and he met the Jade Emperor as well as became the Protector of the horses, which is probably the lowest rank possible in heaven.
One day, Yang Jian provoked WuKong by whipping the horses. After smacking Yang Jian a couple times WuKong escapes. He found some special peaches, which he ate, and a bunch of immortals flew around him annoying him. He once again escaped, and this time he came upon a girl (who was actualy Yang Jian in disguise) who says she is guarding an elixir pill. He was tricked into being accused of trying to steal the pill. Puti tries to stop him, but Yang Jian tries to goad WuKong into taking the pill. He did, and came out super powerful.
He leaves Heaven only to find that his home had been attacked and burned with all his friends dead. Most importantly, his crush, the white fox, is dead as well. He fruitlessly tried to bring them back to life. The Bull Demon comes by and shows him a scene of the Heavenly Army attacking. We later found out that this army was an army of demons in disguise. WuKong rages and goes to attack Heaven.
I also forgot to mention that the Bull Demon was creating an ultra Demon Axe weapon that is, of course, supposed to be all-powerful. So he takes this weapon and he too begins to attack Heaven with his army. He fought against the Jade Emperor, and now he is too strong of a match against the emperor, and so he fell into unconsciousness. He then kills Puti, but before he dies, he tells WuKong that "the butterfly is now dead". I'm not quite too sure how to interpret this. This is, after all, THE major theme of this film - death.
Anyway, he noticed that Puti has a black ring cloud around his neck, just like how the white fox died, and he suddenly realized that it was the Bull Demon who killed her. He sets off to fight the Bull Demon, but the demon was winning, and suddenly, he had a vision of Guan Yin talking to him. I think the conversation was about the path he decides to take or something like that. Anyway, he's now suddenly more powerful than the Bull Demon and beats him and took off one of his horns.
The scene suddenly turned to Princess Iron Fan who was walking with a kid to a bull (with a missing horn) and told him that, no matter what he becomes, she and their son will forever be by his side. The feels! Anyway, WuKong and the now conscious Jade Emperor sits together and discussed about how long it will take to rebuild heaven (which was destroyed once again) and it was said that it would take a couple hundred years. As WuKong was wondering how to rebuild the place, he was caught by Buddha and is now placed under a Five Pillar Mountain until his next mission, which he happily complies.
So, if you know the original story of Journey to the West, or at least have some sort of understanding of it, you can see that there are many differences.
Here, I will list a few.
1. Crystal vs. stone
2. No mention of the special eyes he got from the samandhi fire (only a visual representation)
3. The monkeys found the Water Curtain Cave only because WuKong was brave enough to jump in (not mentioned)
4. There was no Bull Demon vs. Heaven fight
5. Hell's attempt to collect WuKong's soul
6. WuKong was strongly unhappy to be trapped under a mountain for forever
7. No white fox in the story
Some of these differences are pretty minor, and honestly, I don't mind the changes that much, because it does create a new story. The only complaints I have of this film is that it is just way too slow, there seems to be way too many details added in, some characters' decisions aren't thoroughly explained, and towards the end, some scenes changes seem sudden. What I like about this film are the CGI, the costumes, the aesthetics, and Donnie Yen was a pretty good monkey. In fact, I didn't even recognize him even though I knew it was him, because pretty much the only movie I've seen him in was Iron Monkey and Yip Man, and he looks pretty stoic in both. Overall, I think that this movie is just average, and it wasn't definitely worth my 110 minutes. If the movie was paced faster or was shorter, I might enjoy it more. but I can't say that for sure. I think that the graphics was amazing, but the plot just fell short.
