Move over, DeepSeek and “Black Myth: Wukong” – there’s a new flagbearer of Chinese technological and cultural excellence.
“Ne Zha 2,” an animated film about a mythical boy born with special powers, has shattered several box office records since its release over the recent Lunar New Year holiday, the peak period for Chinese movie theaters each year. With box office receipts having surpassed 10 billion renminbi (commonly called the yuan), or around $1.4 billion, the film is now China’s highest-grossing film ever, the highest-grossing film in a single market ever, and the 17th highest-grossing film ever – all this just as it begins to hit overseas markets, with a limited release in the United States starting Friday.
The film is a sequel to the 2019 hit “Ne Zha,” which made around 5 billion yuan in mainland China’s box office. According to Chinese box office data provider Maoyan, the sequel is expected to rake in around 16 billion yuan in total, which would make it the fifth highest-grossing film ever, surpassing “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
“Ne Zha 2” has been the subject of patriotic pride not dissimilar to the 2021 state-backed war epic “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” which was China’s most successful film until being supplanted this month. Filmgoers have celebrated the emergence of a homegrown film perceived as being on par with Hollywood blockbusters such as “Inside Out” and “Toy Story” in terms of special effects and animation quality.
The plot, based on the ancient Chinese legend of Ne Zha, has also won plaudits for showcasing the strength of “Chinese IP,” a popular term in China related to the country’s soft power as measured by its cultural products and exports.
On social media, the hashtag “Raise the national flag for Ne Zha’s box office success” has gone viral, with state news agency Xinhua also using the hashtag in its posts. Celebrating the film’s achievement shortly after it broke the 10 billion yuan mark, nationalist commentator Hu Xijin wrote on Weibo that the film should encourage “Chinese people to be more confident in ourselves,” alluding to the push by the state in recent years for Chinese people to have more “cultural confidence.”
In her commentary on the film, Shanghai journalist Wu Haiyun noted the shared commitment of “Ne Zha” director Jiao Zi and GameScience CEO Feng Ji, the developer behind “Black Myth: Wukong,” to the ideas propagated by the influential online community known as the gongyedang, or the “Industrial Party,” which perceives China’s “national rejuvenation” as being intimately bound up with technological and scientific progress.
“Jiao Zi… has talked about the need for Chinese animators to stand up for themselves. One reason he gave for the prolonged development cycle of ‘Ne Zha 2’ was the difficulty he faced collaborating with international visual effects teams, whom he accused of ‘arrogance and prejudice.’ Ultimately, he scrapped his initial plan and hired domestic teams instead,” Wu wrote.
Meanwhile, a popular commentary pointed out implicit criticisms of the United States in several pivotal scenes in the film. The article, which has received over 100,000 views in the past week, drew parallels between China and the main character’s “fighting spirit to dare to confront hegemony” and notes similarities in the appearances of several settings in the film with well-known U.S. institutions such as the Pentagon.
Notably, the WeChat public account that published the article, “Jiuwanli,” has been promoted by numerous higher education institutions and government platforms since its launch in 2023, with students reportedly being instructed to follow the account.
The China-U.S. subtext aside, many filmgoers have been impressed with the film based simply on the quality of its animation and storyline, which has earned it an 8.5 rating on leading Chinese review site Douban. But patriotism and pride cannot easily be separated from politics, not when the symbolic stakes are this high.
“I can’t remember how many times I’ve watched the special effects in Hollywood films and wondered when our Chinese screenwriters and special effects would produce a similar blockbuster,” said Joyce Mai, a filmgoer in Nanjing. “Finally, it’s happened.”