The Monkey King

The Mediocrity King

From a brief google search, it seems The Monkey King has had other iterations and this might be an attempt to expand off of some existing fandom, and I have no idea what to do with that information.

Now, for the film itself, The Monkey King (2023) had a strong start. The beginning was set up for some great character development to take place throughout the film, but seemed to have just scraped it towards the end. I am not sure if this was done purposefully in anticipation for a sequel, but if so, they really ruined the quality of the first film for the chance at another dart.

Some beautiful character design that really showcased the creative vision the filmmakers had. Other characters were just plain or boring to look at with little to no visual appeal.

The writing for this movie was both good and bad. The dialogue was not too bad, they had some pretty deep and philosophical quotes used throughout, but given the film's Buddhist nature, I could see there being a lot of source material the dialogue could've been derived from. The storyline itself also was pretty decent, a very interesting concept. I can't say I was a fan of the way the characters were written, the movie also got sloppy near the end. You would think with all the philosophical talk that the film would continue to deliver on the lessons of morality when it actually just backtracked on it.

Overall, Netflix has had some beautifully animated movies recently (i.e. The Sea Beast (2022), Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022), and Nimona (2023)), but they have, for the most part, lacked in their direction.