This review of New Gods: Yang Jian originally ran concurrently with the film’s theatrical release. It has been updated for the digital release of the film. See platform availability below.
Fans of Ji Zhao’s Great 2021 Chinese CG Animated Movie New Gods: Nezha Reborn could expect something similar from his follow up, New Gods: Yang Jian. They get part of what they came for, in terms of epic god battles, grand operatic emotions, and extremely beautiful visual design. But in all other respects, the second film is a huge departure from the first – not so much an extension of the setting as a largely unrelated story in a completely different genre.
Nezha reborn sets up a structure that seems designed to repeat endlessly, with endless variations: a struggling human protagonist discovers that he is the reincarnation of a mythical god. Zhao (director of the fascinating donghua movie white snake) and screenwriter Mu Chuan give that story an impressive specificity, with a sci-fi-tinged post-apocalyptic setting and plenty of complications surrounding the bringing of ancient forces to a modern world. It’s easy to imagine a series of New Gods movies as a Marvel Cinematic Universe-esque setup for an eventual crossover, as ancient gods return to the mortal realm, begin to reform it, and eventually come into conflict.
But Zhao and Chuan’s follow-up largely leaves the mortal world behind and instead hangs out in the realm of the gods, whose concerns are far less relevant to a presumably human viewing audience. YangJian is a much more traditional Chinese fantasy epic. The only perceptible link to sci-fi comes in the opening line-up: an oddly thorough pastiche of the anime series Cowboy Bebop. That’s a bit of a disappointment.
Of the moment YangJian introduces its titular protagonist, who plays a melancholy bluegrass harmonica riff over a close-up of his airship’s engine shutting down due to lack of fuel, Cowboy Bebop fans are probably having a déjà vu. Yang Jian (voiced by Wang Kai) is the leader of a four-man team of hapless bounty hunters who can barely afford to pursue their latest target. Like his Bebop Spike Spiegel’s counterpart Yang Jian is a deceptively young man who usually looks sleepy and checked out, until someone threatens him to the point where he has to bust out his surprising combat skills.
Image: GKIDS
His crew also seems suspiciously familiar: a bulky, muscular engineer with a scruffier version of Jet Black’s spiky beard; a hyper, scrawny red-haired kid who screams a lot and runs around on all fours; and a dog who is smarter than he lets on. (The last two have a funny connection that’s best experienced at this point.) Only the fourth crew member, a generic pirate type who barely appears in the movie, doesn’t fit the mold.
Like the crew of the Bebop, this foursome runs for bounty hunting leads and gets into trouble, piloting their ship from place to place through wormhole gates that look like high-tech sky hoops. Like the crew of the Bebop, their adventures are followed to melancholy western music. Unlike the Bebop team, although this crew is led by a god.
Yang Jian – also known as the traditional Chinese folklore figure Erlang Shen – was a mighty force among the gods at one point, before his third eye closed and his powers faded. The gods and demons of folklore have generally had a hard time after a war for supremacy among the gods. In this story, the immortal realm where the ghosts live looks like a series of retro-futuristic cities and derelict way stations. The same cities have glowing flying dragons and dingy, dripping alleyways full of rubbish, but the latter clearly outnumber the former.
One of the bigger quirks in YangJian is how quickly the script departs from this intriguing setting and the whole thing Bebop motive. After just one bounty run, Yang Jian’s crew mostly disappears, the tone changes and the setting drops. (The lone harmonica riffs linger, though.) When a woman begs Yang Jian for help in recovering a powerful artifact, he returns to his past, visits his old mentor and learns new things about his family. him into conflict with other gods, and brings him back to the widely misunderstood sequence of events where he lost his third eye – and sealed his sister forever under a mountain.
Nezha reborn similarly deals with family ties and characters tracing how they have disappointed their relatives, but that film spends much more time on his relationships and exploring the price of power. YangJian feels much more superficial, with quite a bit of imagery built around family ties, but not enough time to actually build them up. This is a movie that spends several long, anguished scenes about male characters wailing, “Mother! Mother! Mother!” over and over to vague, vanishing visions of their mothers, but spends no time actually creating those relationships or getting the characters to talk to each other.
Image: GKIDS
And there are plenty of god-on-god conflicts, with a fair share involving extremely colorful and distinctive folklore characters like the four Mo Generals, or Investiture of the Gods star Shen Gonbao, portrayed here as a bitterly drunk master in the traditional martial arts movie style, hanging out with a huge white tiger. Each of these gods has their own agenda, but the characters are broadly drawn, as defenders of tradition or seekers of vengeance – more like gods of myth than people the audience can relate to or root for.
There are enough incidents and actions YangJian, focusing on the title character’s pursuit of that magical artifact and the criminal who took it. All too often – at least in GKIDS’s English translation – that action precedes it without much context, and viewers are left to watch a heist or a fight, and only later get the players and the stakes together. It makes for a pretty detached viewing experience, even if the heist or fight is lively, intense, and exciting.
Visual sensations are the main attraction YangJian. Just like in it Nezha rebornWhen gods take conflict seriously, they manifest giant, glowing avatars that reflect their actions. Each god has a different fighting style and very varied combat tools, from traditional weapons to musical instruments to giant animal friends, making each battle unique. Weapons that send an enemy into a dream state or phantasmagoric world give director Zhao every opportunity to radically change animation styles or fill the screen with wild fantasy imagery. This is a movie worth watching on the largest screen available.
Very little of it makes an emotional impact, despite all the characters yelling each other’s names during fraught moments, or yelling at each other about various lies and betrayals. There is more feeling in a short, silent sequence that mimics the confrontation between the treetops Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon than in all battles together. The real battle here is between people who want change, in a broad abstract sense, and people who want to keep the whole world at a standstill. That is, in a way, a recognizable conflict in this politically tense moment or in any other era. But here it’s still not drawn in a way designed to make viewers think about whether certain characters live or die, whether they get what they want or fade away, or whether they’ll ever return to their lives. Cowboy Bebop adventure after all the antics of the great god are done.
For Western viewers who want to do some homework afterwards, New Gods: Yang Jian serves somewhat the same purpose as Nezha reborn: It is an accessible introduction to some of the most memorable characters in Chinese historical epics, and a recast of those epics in a modern light. And like the first film, the second New Gods film addresses the difficulties and costs of being born again, and how difficult the endless historical cycles of change can be for individual lives. It just lacks a human face to raise all these issues. The bickering of the gods may be ours too, but if there’s a third New Gods movie on the way, it’s better to bring the action back down to Earth.
New Gods: Yang Jian is now available for digital rental through Direct TVor for digital purchase in one English dubbed edition or edition in Mandarin on Amazon. It will be available on DVD and Blu ray on April 25.