The
good thing about pilgrimages is they are long and can thus accommodate sequels.
Of course, epics never got any more epic than Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West. Slivers and
segments of the classical tome have been endlessly adapted by Chinese-language
film and television, so it is not so surprising Stephen Chow came back for
seconds. This time around, he serves as screenwriter and producer, but Tsui
Hark replaces him at the helm of Journey
to the West: The Demons Strike Back (trailer here), which screens
during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.
Frankly,
Tang Sanzang (a.k.a. Xuan Zang, a.k.. Tang Seng, a.k.a. Tripitaka) should not
be having dreams of glory, but he will soon be brought back down to earth. At
the end of Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, the mischievous demigods Pigsy, Sandy (who is now unexpectedly
fishy), and Sun Wukong, better known as the Monkey King, were redeemed and
subsequently pledged themselves as Tang’s disciples. Tang is firm in his
purpose, but his heart still grieves for Miss Duan, his demon-busting colleague
and true love.
However,
life on the road has weakened their solidarity. The Monkey King is erratic at
the best of times, but lately he has practically been at Tang’s throat, with
Pigsy and Sandy quietly egging him on. They are no longer a cohesive unit, even
when they blunder into country lodge filled with demons. Sun Wukong always
senses them first. Partly it is probably due to his nose and partly due to Tang’s
supernatural lack of intuition. However, their internal fissures threaten to
violently cleave apart when they enter the kingdom of a mad, child-like prince
worthy of Lewis Carroll. It is only thanks to his elegant minister Guanyin that
his realm continues to function at all. Fortunately, she takes a bit of a shine
to Tang or he would probably be executed for being a party-pooper. However, the
slave-girl songstress Felicity really complicates matters.
Visually,
Strike Back is an utter marvel of
set-piece lunacy. Never intimidated by a little spectacle, Tsui’s strategy is
clearly to go big, then bigger, and then bigger still. Who needs acid when we
have Tsui’s candy-colored surreal wuxia fantasyscapes? He has the macro and
then some, but the micro level of character development is a little thin. In
all honesty, the film misses Shu Qi’s Miss Duan for reasons beyond the obvious.
Perhaps recognizing the charisma gap, Hark and Chow periodically bring her back
like Ben Kenobi in the later Star Wars films,
but it is not enough.
Still,
Kenny Lin holds up his end as the Monkey King. He does not go as completely
feral-creature nuts as Aaron Kwok rocking out in The Monkey King 2, but he definitely came to play. In contrast,
Kris Wu mostly comes across like a petulant jerk as Tang. However, Yao Chen is
wonderfully regal as Guanyin and Jelly Lin is quite poignant (and arguably
helps bail out Wu) as Felicity.