After taking the 2025 Spring Festival box office by storm and smashing a long list of records (including becoming the first Chinese film to make more than 2 billion dollars and entering the top 5 biggest box office hits worldwide, right behind “Titanic”), “Ne Zha 2” has been progressively released in select theaters across the world. And as it turns out, the super-charged animated blockbuster, also known as “Nezha: The Demon Child Churns the Sea”, offers plenty of action, beautiful scenery, laugh-out-loud humor, drama, and heartwarming emotions around themes of family, friendship, and self-determination.
The film, which draws heavily from Chinese mythology and the 17th-century shenmo novel “Investiture of the Gods”, picks up not long after the events depicted in 2019’s “Ne Zha.” Almost as soon as our rebellious demon child and his best friend dragon prince Ao Bing (aka Spirit Pearl) are given new physical bodies, the Dragon King of the East Sea and Master Shen Gongbao attack Chentang Pass to avenge the supposed death of Ao Bing. The attack leads to the destruction of Ao Bing’s body and results in an agreement between the two sides: Ao Bing and Ne Zha, who now share the same body, must travel to Yu Xy Palace, complete three trials, and restore Ao Bing’s body.
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This, however, is only the beginning of their adventures, as the plot still has many twists, turns, and revelations up its magical sleeve. Visually as well as narratively, “Ne Zha 2” is a roller-coaster ride, rarely allowing more than a few minutes of relative calm before offering a new twist and charging into another spectacular battle. In fact, at 2 hours and 24 minutes, the movie probably overdoes it a little. Despite its many qualities, it does feel bloated and overstretched in its attempt to be as epic as possible. With about 20 minutes cut from its current running time, the film would simply be wonderful.
Its eye-candy visuals are often stunning, particularly the extreme wide shots of Chentang Pass, the Heavenly Palace, and many other locations visited by our characters, all the more striking for their numerous intricate details. The battles are impressive, including one set on bamboo stalks at the foot of a waterfall (as well as below water). Overall, the work by the myriad CGI animators deserves high praise, especially in how the contributions of many different studios feel coherent and consistent throughout the feature. Director Jiaozi (also known as Yang Yu) has done excellent work supervising and coordinating these many teams while providing the sheer momentum and energy that runs throughout the movie.
The trademark of this version of the Ne Zha legend is also its humor, and this film is as much a comedy as it is an action/fantasy epic – at least during approximately its first half. After that, things get noticeably more serious and tragic than in the 2019 installment as the sequel takes a decidedly darker direction. There are still excellent jokes and gags here, including some rather gross (but hilarious) jokes involving farts, urine, and even vomit. Disney this is certainly not. After a rather hysterical encounter with pirate groundhogs, however, the jokes become rarer and the story noticeably darker. But there is nothing wrong with that – it is a logical and respectable choice by filmmakers who are not simply proposing more of the same but are building on the legacy of the first movie to develop the characters and their moral journeys.
What is especially interesting here is the discourse not only about family but also about community. First adhering to the prototypical good vs. evil dichotomy, the story eventually shows, in true Daoist fashion, how things can be more complex, and how the so-called demons can be respectable individuals as well that the heavenly forces are not always so noble after all. This is not exactly an original moral, but it is particularly skillfully handled here, especially as it adds to it the main theme of free-will and self-determination: Ne Zha refuses to be defined by his birth and believes he can decide to grow into the adult he wants to be. At its heart, “Ne Zha 2” is an inspiring coming-of-age story about a little boy who needs to grow out of a child’s selfishness and learn to care about the community around him, while still refusing to let parents or elders decide for him what he should do with his life.
Even more so, the movie is willing to praise little Ne Zha’s rebellious spirit, showing how elders can be tragically mistaken and need to be opposed by the younger generation. One of the best moments – coming after the emotional climax of the film which made many in the theater sniffle and cry – is when Ne Zha defiantly opposes the main villain and praises the younger generation’s ability to act fearlessly to try to change the world. This theme runs throughout the feature, including when three villainous dragons share how they have learned from the folly of their youth and are now willing to compromise and go along with corrupted elders and leaders. Not so Ne Zha and Ao Bing, who are naive and careless enough to believe they can make a difference. So naive and careless that they might actually succeed in doing so.
To see if they can achieve revolutionary change, however, audiences will have to wait for the third installment, explicitly announced at the end and in a mid-credits scene (which may also be one of the funniest scenes in the movie). Before he changes the world, Ne Zha still has new box office records to smash, after all.
