Monkey King: Hero Is Back

Sun Wukong has been imprisoned under a mountain for five hundred years and there is little left of his power. The one who gets him out is a small monk named Jiang Liu, who breaks the seal by accident while fleeing monsters. The boy takes him for the hero of the legends and the monkey sees himself as a defeat, and the distance between the two closes along the road. Tian Xiaopeng spent roughly eight years on the film and turned the opening of Journey to the West into a story about a hero rebuilding his confidence. Its marketing budget in China was small, and it became an unexpected box office success by word of mouth, with a direct effect on animation production in the country. Who it is for: viewers who like Chinese animation and Journey to the West adaptations. Who it is not for: anyone wanting novelty in the story, which follows a known template.