It's time to go behind the scenes of the Netflix animated action comedy movie The Monkey King, directed by Anthony Stacchi.
The Monkey King Cast:
Jimmy O. Yang, BD Wond, Stephanie Jsu, Hoon Lee, Jo Koy, Bowen Yang, Ron Yuan, Jodi Long and James Sie
Stream The Monkey King August 18, 2023!
The Monkey King Cast:
Jimmy O. Yang, BD Wond, Stephanie Jsu, Hoon Lee, Jo Koy, Bowen Yang, Ron Yuan, Jodi Long and James Sie
Stream The Monkey King August 18, 2023!
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 Anyone need a hero?
00:01 Name's Monkey King.
00:03 In our film, we wanted to have really unique,
00:07 interesting action sequences.
00:09 A big part of the Monkey King's journey
00:11 is defeating all these demons and gods along the way.
00:14 And we really saw it as an opportunity
00:16 to integrate kung fu and Chinese martial arts culture.
00:20 Yah!
00:21 (GRUNTS)
00:22 Monkey King is pretty awesome at fighting.
00:24 Alley-oop.
00:25 There have been many adaptations
00:26 of the Monkey King legend.
00:28 Sort of full-on energy of the action sequences.
00:31 We wanted to stay authentic to such an important folk tale.
00:34 In a movie with Monkey,
00:36 you have to have his famous fighting stick
00:38 that he fights with, but you also have to show
00:40 other things that he can do.
00:41 He can pull his fur off and make clones of himself.
00:44 He can leap through the sky at huge heights.
00:46 (SCREAMING)
00:48 The way Monkey moves, the way he fights,
00:51 there's a lot of things that an audience
00:53 who knew the Monkey King or is familiar
00:55 with kung fu movies or Chinese cinema,
00:57 you know, if you get those little nuances wrong,
00:59 it just throws the audience off.
01:00 In designing the fight sequences,
01:03 our executive producer, Steven Chow,
01:05 connected us to a fight choreographer named Si Wei.
01:08 Steven's such a legendary filmmaker
01:10 with such a unique action sensibility,
01:12 and Si Wei is a bit of a protege of Steven Chow.
01:15 And not only does he do martial arts choreography,
01:18 he is also an animator in his own right.
01:21 (SPEAKING CHINESE)
01:26 (SPEAKING CHINESE)
01:30 (SPEAKING CHINESE)
01:35 The process with him, we would send him storyboard sequences
01:38 of the film so that he could bring to it
01:41 his own movements and design.
01:43 And he choreographed it with a team
01:46 and shot it in live action so that we could see
01:49 what the intended movements were.
01:51 Otherwise, we would have had interesting fight sequences,
01:53 but they wouldn't have any feeling of authenticity
01:56 to them. They really feel like you've never seen
01:59 anything quite like that before.
02:00 I can take it from here.
02:02 (SCREAMING)
02:03 (GRUNTING)
02:04 (SCREAMING)
02:06 You can just see how much work these animators
02:09 really put in. The set pieces feel like both familiar
02:12 to a movie like this, but also pretty innovative.
02:14 Everybody involved really wanted to take this
02:16 to an interesting place.
02:17 It's just truly incredible to see come to life.
02:19 (SCREAMING)
02:20 Monkey King reigns supreme!
02:23 ♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
02:25 (dramatic music)