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Review: Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (西遊·降魔篇) (2013)
This was a pretty dumb movie. Don’t watch it.
Spoilers?
Story
This was supposed to be a prequel to Journey to the West, telling us the story of how the gang of the story came together.
Chen Xuanzang was a demon hunter who was not very good at his job due to his overly kind ways of trying to lure the goodness out of demons instead of using violence to subdue them. He ran into Miss Duan, another demon hunter who was very effective by using violence. She subdued a fish demon that was terrorizing a town. They bumped into each other again when trying to subdue a pig demon who was eating humans.
Miss Duan fell in love with Chen Xuanzang for his kind ways. The movie spent way too long on this supposedly funny subplot, in which Miss Duan would try to force Chen Xuanzang into kissing her or having sex with her. Chen Xuanzang constantly refused. At one point, they got into a fight and Miss Duan ripped up his manual of children’s songs and poetry which was upsetting. There was also a scene where a bunch of demon hunters assembled to try to get rid of the pig demon. Xuanzang lectured them about the importance of working together to kill the demons instead of trying to one-up each other.
Xuanzang travelled to see the Monkey King, who was currently still imprisoned by Buddha, since he would be helpful in getting rid of yaoguai. Sun Wukong tricked Xuanzang into releasing his seal and wrought havoc, but Xuanzang overcame him by reciting the scripture. Miss Duan died in the battle, but other demon hunters came together to defeat the Monkey King. The movie ended with Xuanzang, Sun Wukong, the pig demon (Zhu Bajie), and the fish demon (Sha Wujing) at the beginning of their journey.
There were a lot of things about this story that were dumb.
I thought a lot of the humour was an attempt at Stephen Chow to replicate his old style but the pacing was all off and it doesn’t work when it’s happening in the context of a serious story. This was apparent right off the bat because there was humour injected into the fight with the fish demon but later Xuanzang was shown to be really sad about the death of the people in the village.
I thought the romantic subplot was really dumb and took up way too much time in the story. it was really unnecessary and it just made Shu Qi’s character look like a fool because her defining trait is her being a demon hunter, not her crushing on Xuanzang and using coercive means to force him.
The way that Chen Xuanzang because the Tang monk was just really weird. I didn’t really get the emotional continuity of him learning to be enlightened, because the story didn’t spend that much time on his introspection.
Production
Not great. The CGI was whatever, it was better at first but it was pretty bad at the end. The acting was hard to comment on because all of the characters were working with whack-ass scripts for characters that did not make sense.
Characters
All of them are dumb, I’m sorry. Chen Xuanzang was nowhere near as enlightened as Tang Monk should be. Miss Duan was done so dirty because the writers were misogynistic. All the characters weren’t even one-dimensional, they just weren’t characters
Overall
Bad movie and it should feel bad.
Spoilers?
Story
This was supposed to be a prequel to Journey to the West, telling us the story of how the gang of the story came together.
Chen Xuanzang was a demon hunter who was not very good at his job due to his overly kind ways of trying to lure the goodness out of demons instead of using violence to subdue them. He ran into Miss Duan, another demon hunter who was very effective by using violence. She subdued a fish demon that was terrorizing a town. They bumped into each other again when trying to subdue a pig demon who was eating humans.
Miss Duan fell in love with Chen Xuanzang for his kind ways. The movie spent way too long on this supposedly funny subplot, in which Miss Duan would try to force Chen Xuanzang into kissing her or having sex with her. Chen Xuanzang constantly refused. At one point, they got into a fight and Miss Duan ripped up his manual of children’s songs and poetry which was upsetting. There was also a scene where a bunch of demon hunters assembled to try to get rid of the pig demon. Xuanzang lectured them about the importance of working together to kill the demons instead of trying to one-up each other.
Xuanzang travelled to see the Monkey King, who was currently still imprisoned by Buddha, since he would be helpful in getting rid of yaoguai. Sun Wukong tricked Xuanzang into releasing his seal and wrought havoc, but Xuanzang overcame him by reciting the scripture. Miss Duan died in the battle, but other demon hunters came together to defeat the Monkey King. The movie ended with Xuanzang, Sun Wukong, the pig demon (Zhu Bajie), and the fish demon (Sha Wujing) at the beginning of their journey.
There were a lot of things about this story that were dumb.
I thought a lot of the humour was an attempt at Stephen Chow to replicate his old style but the pacing was all off and it doesn’t work when it’s happening in the context of a serious story. This was apparent right off the bat because there was humour injected into the fight with the fish demon but later Xuanzang was shown to be really sad about the death of the people in the village.
I thought the romantic subplot was really dumb and took up way too much time in the story. it was really unnecessary and it just made Shu Qi’s character look like a fool because her defining trait is her being a demon hunter, not her crushing on Xuanzang and using coercive means to force him.
The way that Chen Xuanzang because the Tang monk was just really weird. I didn’t really get the emotional continuity of him learning to be enlightened, because the story didn’t spend that much time on his introspection.
Production
Not great. The CGI was whatever, it was better at first but it was pretty bad at the end. The acting was hard to comment on because all of the characters were working with whack-ass scripts for characters that did not make sense.
Characters
All of them are dumb, I’m sorry. Chen Xuanzang was nowhere near as enlightened as Tang Monk should be. Miss Duan was done so dirty because the writers were misogynistic. All the characters weren’t even one-dimensional, they just weren’t characters
Overall
Bad movie and it should feel bad.