Jamie "Gorillaz" Hewlett does Journey to the West

It's a hell of a flick; however, its use to promote what I call the Murder Olympics/MurderLympics/Mirdalympics is,to me and all others in the freedomfighting biz, totally stupid and evil.
 
Er... there aren't any ninjas in it, and I'd say the only real connection to kung fu is the brief bit where Sandy fights the sea monster (Pigsy's pole vault and Monkey's pole-chucking are obviously references to Olympic sports, and I doubt Pigsy grabbing a monster by the tail and spinning it round is a genuine martial art)

EDIT: HAHAHA, get a load of this gem from the comments page:
 
What HellCat said.


Admittedly, it's not like there haven't been a gazillion adaptations of Journey to the West in Chinese entertainment already, in animation and live-action (almost none of which make it here). Watching TV in China makes me feel like the only programs anybody makes are either 1) costume drama set at the Qing court, 2) heroic World War II story, 3) police procedural, or 4) another adaptation of Journey to the West. My personal feeling is that those may be the only ways to get programs made without having the censors red-tape you to death (or getting yourself arrested and tossed into prison for being subversive). Meanwhile, Chinese people look genuinely puzzled why Americans were the ones who made Kung Fu Panda.


I kind of like this version of Monkey, though, and the style of the animation. They pulled some similar tricks with the puffs of smoke and water effects in the highly stylized way that they're done in traditional Chinese painting. My Chinese is too rotten to tell and the sound is too bad for me to tell what they're saying for most of it, though.

-- Ed
 
Ehh, most of the negative comments aren't worth bothering with. The biggest specific complaint (as opposed to "it's rubbish") is that it's not British enough, which of course is a fatal flaw in an endorsement of a Chinese sporting event. Most of the comments that go into any kind of detail are positive.

Although one guy did come up with some criticisms that I thought carried a bit more weight, such as the portrayal of Pigsy (a Buddhist monk) eating meat.
 
Very nice. Stylish and exceedingly accomplished, a dynamic fusion of more art styles than you could count using the format of Jamie Hewlett's and Damon Albarn's Monkey musical. I'm happy this is show-running the BBC's coverage of the Beijing Olympics, firstly because it is a loving tribute to Chinese culture and secondly because it draws more attention to what British animation is capable of.

I don't get the negativity surrounding this. I mean, sure, if you're a 'Free Tibet' supporter then this may seem disingenuous and a bit two-faced, but one can hardly deny its technical achievement and artistic merit. Even if you disagree with the event it's promoting (and even the Dalai Lama himself considers such melodrama to be misplaced) there's nothing wrong with the short itself, is there?
 
Actually, aside from the "not British enough" stuff, very few of the negative comments on that page are taking a political tack. Mostly they're just outright curmudgeonliness:



Okay, okay, you do better! Go on then! Hop to it!
 
Nah, that kind of thing happens all the time in Chinese novels. It's the giveaway that the monk in question really isn't a very good monk. In the novel, Pigsy certainly wasn't very good at showing the kind of reserve and self-restraint a monk is supposed to have, and I'm sure he probably washed down meals of meat with jugs of wine as well.

If the Internet has shown us anything, it's that there are always people ready to complain about anything, and to blazes with fact and reality :p.

-- Ed
 
Ah. Well, just so long as he's not eating pork...

While we're at it, here's another animated BBC sport promo by the same studio, from 2002. Directed by Pete Candeland, though, not Jamie Hewlett.
 
It's depressing to read the YT comments for this, seeing people declare it a rip off of DBZ, Avatar, etc....do these people know nothing beyond what they see on TV? Do they also assume the chronological order they learn about these things exactly mirrors the timeline of individual development?
 
Kenneth Anger once said that the invention of film was a dark day for mankind. The day film was combined with unmoderated comments, though, that was pitch black.
 
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