MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Here's a question - which animated film has made the most money at the box office? Surely something from Disney or Pixar, maybe DreamWorks. But what if it were a film you may never have heard of, from China?
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NE ZHA 2")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking Mandarin).
KELLY: "Ne Zha 2" has now taken in more than $2.1 billion - billion - in ticket sales worldwide. That's according to Box Office Mojo. And that breaks the records for animated films and for non-English language films. It was only over the weekend that the movie got a wider release in the U.S. with an English language dub.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NE ZHA 2")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) You must be brave and walk your own path.
KELLY: Let's bring in Jenny Zhang, who has written about this movie. She's a senior editor for Slate. Hi there.
JENNY ZHANG: Hi there. Thanks for having me on.
KELLY: Full confession here - I have not seen this film. In fact, I didn't even know there was a first movie, and this is the sequel to the movie. For others out there who may be in my boat, give us a taste. What is the movie about?
ZHANG: It is a surprisingly complicated thing to answer, but this essentially follows this demon child, for lack of a better term. And he is sort of undergoing various trials to try to save his hometown, his friend, and getting lots of betrayals and sort of different battles throughout this whole thing as he ultimately goes up against a big, bad guy who is revealed partly through the movie. So this is based on Chinese mythology, folklore and a 16th century novel, so it is going to be very unfamiliar, I think, to lots of audiences.
KELLY: What made it such a mega hit in China? An animated film about a demon child doesn't immediately strike me as something...
ZHANG: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...That's going to blow every existing record out of the water.
ZHANG: I think there are a few things going for this movie. One, it is, again, a sequel to a movie that was quite popular in China. The first movie was also a runaway hit for the filmmaker. This was his debut feature film at the time. Two, this movie came out over the Chinese New Year, which is essentially a time of the year where basically everyone in China has the week off. A lot of them are going to head to the movie theater. So that was a big draw, as well, and then, again...
KELLY: Timing is everything. Yeah.
ZHANG: Yeah...
KELLY: Go on.
ZHANG: ...Timing - timing, for sure - and then, again, this sort of idea of it being accessible to multiple audiences, including families, including adults, including people who like animation, including fans of Chinese mythology, folklore, Chinese stories. The fact that this is actually a Chinese film - and it's an extremely Chinese film, down to, like, the subject matter, the people who are producing it. The fact that a movie like this is being sort of now exported out from China, back into the world and back into the U.S. with an English-language dub, and one of the studios bringing it over is A24, which is not really known for this kind of thing, it makes it a pretty big moment and an unusual moment in cinema.
KELLY: I want to dig in on the remark you just made - that this is not just a Chinese film, but an extremely Chinese film. I was looking back. The full headline of the piece you wrote about it for Slate reads, "China's biggest hit of all time is finally coming to the U.S., and Americans are already losing their minds." You didn't seem to mean that in a positive way. Explain.
ZHANG: You know, some of the early English-language press from a lot of Western outlets on this movie earlier this year when it was shattering all those records in China, there was a lot of sort of fallback into sort of fears about China. A lot of attributing this movie's success to this idea of, like, nationalism, or saying this movie is actually very anti-American, and that's what it's - is, like, propelling it over the line for the box office. So I found a lot of that language very interesting, and something worth examining in my piece for Slate about this.
KELLY: Well, I will note it did not do so great at the box office this first weekend in the U.S.
ZHANG: No.
KELLY: One-point-five million dollars - again, according to Box Office Mojo - will audiences in the U.S. warm to this movie, maybe as they hear more about it, or do you think there's something that will be lost in translation here?
ZHANG: I am sort of of the mind, conservatively, that this is a movie that will probably just not perform that well in the U.S. and with American audiences, especially audiences who are hearing about it for the first time now. So this subject matter is just very dense, hard to follow, completely unfamiliar to most American audiences. And the fact that it is a sequel, again, to a movie that most Americans have never heard of, that is certainly not going to help it.
KELLY: You've seen "Ne Zha 2." Is it any good? What do you think?
ZHANG: Yeah, I have seen it. It is a mixed bag, I would say. So for context, I have seen the first film as well. I did actually enjoy the first film more. The second film, it is a little bit too bloated. It's a little bit hard to follow - the conflict, the plot. There's a lot of whiplash in there. But I will say, the animation is gorgeous. And so the - as a work of animation, and just a major work of animation for Chinese mythology in particular, it is visually stunning. So there is definitely that.
KELLY: Jenny G. Zhang, senior editor for Slate. We have been talking about the film "Ne Zha 2," out now in the States. Thank you so much.
ZHANG: Yeah, thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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