The Monkey King Full Action Movie 2014

The Monkey King

Synopsis: It was initially speculated that this adaptation was going to be more faithful to the Chinese literature classic Journey to the West, and would focus specifically on the first chapters from the birth of The Monkey King Sun Wukong to the "Havoc in The Heavenly Kingdom", but disappointingly, the story's amateurishly altered and with the utterly poor CGI, makeup and costumes, the film turned out like an obsolete children's TV show.

In this adaptation, the Bull Demon King (Aaron Kwok) is not Sun Wukong's (Donnie Yen) sworn brother, instead, he's the leader of demons who, after his defeat against the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) at the beginning, attempts to manipulate and trick Sun Wukong into assisting him in his war against heaven. After reading just this, I bet those of you who're familiar with the story would probably suspect that the outcome, where Sun Wukong is punished by Buddha in the end, would no longer make much of a sense (it's so unfair,

it might even be offensive to the Buddhists). What's most disappointing is that the film fails to depict the "Great Sage, Equal to Heaven" godliness and unmanageable nature of the Monkey King. The "havoc in heaven" is ultimately not as epically havoc and terrorising as I had hoped, and that defeats the grand purpose of the Chinese title. All the characters, including the protagonist, are not well developed, hence the lack of emotional attachment. The film also expects the audience to already know who the Guan Yin and Buddha are.