New Legends of the Monkey King
Based on Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en
Written by Jacquelin Perske; Craig Irvin; Samantha Strauss
Directed by Gerard Johnstone
Starring Chai Hansen; Luciane Buchanan; Josh Thomson; Emilie Cocquerel
This is what Wikipedia has to say about the original Monkey King, a Chinese deity:
The Monkey King, known as Sun Wukong in Chinese, is a legendary figure best known as one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West (西游记/西遊記) and many later stories and adaptations. The Monkey King’s origins predate the novel and can be traced back to the Song dynasty.[2] In the novel, he is a monkey born from a stone who acquires supernatural powers through Taoist practices. After rebelling against heaven and being imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha, he later accompanies the monk Tang Sanzang on a journey to retrieve Buddhist sutras from the West (India) where Buddha and his followers reside.
The Monkey King possesses immense strength; he is able to support the pressing weight of two celestial mountains on his shoulders while running “with the speed of a meteor”.[3] He is also extremely fast, able to travel 108,000 li (54,000 kilometres (34,000 mi)) in one somersault. Sun also knows the 72 Earthly transformations, which allow him to transform into various animals and objects. Sun Wukong is a skilled fighter, capable of defeating the best warriors of heaven. His hair possesses magical properties, capable of summoning clones of the Monkey King himself, and/or into various weapons, animals, and other objects. He has demonstrated partial weather manipulation abilities as well, and can stop people in place with fixing magic.
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Well, OK then. Most pantheons have gods of chaos various, good, evil or neutral. Loki would be evil, Coyote and Spider neutral. Chaotic benign gods are hard to come by, although if the West had a pantheon, Bugs Bunny might fit the bill. I like tales of chaotic gods for the simple reasons that they are amusing, and you never really know what the hell’s going to happen.
I knew there were a series of Monkey King movies that were massive hits in China, and commercial and critical flops everywhere else. But New Legends, a joint Australian/New Zealand production, promised to bring an aura of feckless humor to the character that the movies lacked.
More to the point, New Legends of the Monkey King owes its (re)birth and approach to the cult Japanese series, Monkey, which was a 52 episode series that aired between 1978 and 1980. It featured a Japanese cast and crew, but was at least filmed in China. Translated to English, it went on to become a world-wide cult hit.
I made the mistake of watching NLOTMK simultaneously with Witcher, a fantasy series also showing on Netflix, and with a similar enough theme and style that I found myself confusing characters and plotlines. “Is Tripitaka the one with the hypersonic scream?” “Is Pigsy the one who named his horse ‘Roach’?” The shows aren’t THAT similar—I’m just easily confused, is all.
The tone of NLOTMK is fairly light, underwritten by a genial sense of humor. It is aimed at the teen market, another way to tell it from Witcher. The title character in Witcher, confronted with the menacing or just unexpected, mutters “fuck!” so often it’s become a meme on the internet. Monkey is a talented goof, both feckless and talented. The show is aimed at teens, so Monkey avoids the f-bombs.
Once freed from the mountain he was cast into 500 years earlier, he travels to the west in the company of two other Gods, Pigsy (yes, Pigsy, based on a character of the same name AKA,Zhū Bājiè, who was a god/monster, half human and half pig) and Sandy (Sha Wujing, a water buffalo hybrid), and a monk named Tripitaka, who is arguably the most important character in the show.
Sha Wujing is a male character, traditionally endowed with a bushy black beard and a fierce manner. Sandy, played by Emilie Cocquere, is buxom, blonde, and not particularly fierce, although she seems to have the strongest magic of the three gods. The purists probably aren’t too thrilled, but she’s a good addition here.
Tripitaka normally is also male, since a) all monks are male and b) what part of ‘a’ did you not understand? So on the show, Tripitaka is played by Luciane Buchanan, who is elvish, svelte, and graceful, and not particularly hairy, but passing as a male. From this, you might conclude that Buchanan is a pretty rough-looking broad (she isn’t) or this is a particularly stupid group of gods. These gods are a pretty dim bunch.
The show is fast-paced, with lots of fairly unconvincing martial arts and menacing baddies who want to control the universe, flavored with a dry wit and comic interplay amongst the characters. It reminds me a bit of Farscape, no small praise. While carrying little of either the classic Chinese versions or the witty Japanese take on it, it is good fun and you find yourself liking the characters despite their deficiencies listed above.
Now on Netflix.