Return of Wu Kong (2018)

You can avoid trouble, but you can't avoid fate

Another telling of a Monkey King tale, this time 500 years after the fall of the gods. Wu Kong has been reincarnated into a human form still carrying the revered Bodhi Buddha Relic he swallowed in his monkey incarnation. Be forewarned, Return of Wu Kong is a low budget, poorly told and poorly acted story.

Wu Kong, in the form of Shi Sheng, a wanderer who follows his overzealous demon hunting master has no idea of his former life. When the two run afoul of the god Du'er on their way to delivering the relic to the Great Leiyin Temple, Shi Sheng finds himself alone. Shi doesn't know what he is carrying but his diminutive master did. An old traveling companion, Sha Wujing comes to his aid aware he is Wu Kong. He picks up a female demon named Xiao He along the way. A blind Bodhi gives him half of the Monkey King's golden cudgel telling him he needs to find the other half for his memories to return.

Shi Sheng and Sha decide to help some villagers after the sand demons kidnapped a child for their even supper. That story gets set aside when they run into Pigsy, now called Zhu Wuchang. He runs the town where all the fallen gods live as well as the residence of the other half of the golden stick.

If the story to this point wasn't convoluted enough, the writer's said, "hold my beer". I won't spoil anything more, but the story was already messy and turned into a dumpster fire as it went along.

The lack of quality fight choreography showed. Most fight scenes were filmed close up, cut off, blurred and edited with a hacksaw. Or the fights were covered over completely by taking place behind curtains or other items or completely chopped off showing only the results.

This film was obviously low budget. The sets, costumes, and CGI were rudimentary at best. It was at its best when filmed out on the photogenic sand dunes.

Most of the actors were adequate. Louis Fan was the most accomplished actor out of the bunch. He Lan Dou, the actress playing Xiao He, mugged a lot for the camera and it didn't help that her character was written to be either cute or annoying. Most of the characters were vastly underwritten to the point of being akin to photos pinned to a bulletin board.

By the time the final showdown arrived to save the world, I was ready to be put out of my misery. The ending was just as underdeveloped, maybe more so, than the rest of the movie. If you are a Louis Fan fan or a Monkey King completionist, it is watchable-barely. If you've never watched any version of Journey Into the West or any Monkey King movies, this would not be a good one to start with as the makers assumed the viewers would be familiar with the story and glossed over important information. Thankfully, the movie is only 85 minutes long. As the blind sage said, you can avoid trouble but you can't avoid fate, however, you can avoid this movie.

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