This summer, Chinese animation fans were delighted by the newest take on legendary Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) novel “Journey to the West” by the movie “Monkey King: Hero is Back.”

    Although the screening rate of the movie was only 9.17 percent on average when it debuted, it quickly took social media by storm thanks to excellent reviews from critics and fans alike.

    According to box office data, the movie had become the highest grossing animated film in Chinese cinemas as of July 29 by raking in 705 million yuan (US$113.6 million), snatching the spot that was formerly held by “Kung Fu Panda 2.”

    “Monkey” not only captured the nation’s attention with its high visual quality, but also won praise from Andrew Mason, producer of Hollywood blockbuster “The Matrix,” during the 2015 Cannes International Film Festival.

    “There was no involvement by a Hollywood team? According to my understanding of the industry, the cost of such a film would not be less than US$100 million,” he said after watching the movie.

    In fact, Tian Xiaopeng, the movie’s director, and his team completed the film with a modest budget of only US$10 million, but it took them eight years. In an exclusive interview with chinadaily.com.cn, he said that they couldn’t afford to be affiliated with a Hollywood team, so they had to find their own edge.

    “We lacked experience and mature technology, so the biggest difficulty for me was competing with myself. In the beginning, for almost every single frame, we had repeated discussions and made countless modifications. During the whole production, I struggled with the imperfections and tried to make everything better. We put in our time and mental and physical energy into remedying our technology’s shortcomings,” Tian said.

    Tian admitted that he made a movie that is a traditional Chinese story but has a classic Hollywood structure. “For me, Hollywood’s style is a simple story with abundant details. That is how we told this story. The center of our story is a little bit Hollywood-style: with help from a child, a pigheaded, middle-aged man finds his true self and becomes a hero again,” he said.

    He believed that the only way to compete with Hollywood was to make a connection on cultural and emotional levels. He tried to tell the story in a Chinese way, using traditional philosophy and aesthetics to explain the world from a Chinese perspective.

    “Chinese people release their emotions slowly rather than express them directly. When a Chinese feels happy, he normally will not dance with joy like Westerners. Even as a child, the liveliness of an American child is totally different from a Chinese child. We are more introverted. In our story, the monkey king doesn’t speak that much, but he is emotional,” Tian explained.

    Although the movie drew its inspiration from “Journey to the West,” which is a universally known and loved story in China, Tian and his team set the characters and wrote the screenplay based on their own understanding.

    In the original work, the Monkey King is aggressive and fearless with boundless supernatural power. His master, a middle-aged monk, is kind-hearted, sometimes even too observant of conventional standards.

    However, in Tian’s movie, everything changed. The Monkey King wears a long face, which is different from the character’s traditional images, and is a man facing a mid-life crisis. Jiang Liuer, the monk, was turned into an 8-year-old child with innumerable questions.

    “We added more ‘common man’ characteristics to the Monkey King. More directly, our Monkey King is an experienced man, a knight-errant in ancient China with distinct charm and defects,” Tian explained.

    Although some Chinese audience members were not satisfied with the image of the Monkey King, they were deeply touched by the story. Some of them even went back to the cinema to watch the movie several times. It also set a record for a Chinese domestic animation with overseas sales at US$22.2 million during the 2015 Cannes International Film Festival.

    In the face of such success, Tian has remained calm and stressed that his team is far from successful.

    “Frankly speaking, there are so many problems in the movie, especially technical details. It would have been better if I had worked harder. So I felt quite ashamed when audiences began praising our work. Meanwhile, if you tell me that it has helped the domestic animation industry, I’m sure your evaluation is too high.

    “To me, the box office result is an encouragement rather than a success. In the past, when it came to domestically produced animations, people either felt they were just made for children or were not of good quality. Now, more people are changing their minds. Instead of playing the peacock, we should keep a cool head and keep making better movies for viewers,” he said.

    China has the largest animation industry in the world, with an annual output of 260,000 animations, nearly twice that of Japan, which comes in second. However, only one-third of animated productions make it to the big screen. (SD-Agencies)