New Gods: Yang Jian review: Chinese gods, meet Cowboy Bebop

Fans of Ji Zhao’s terrific 2021 CG animated Chinese movie New Gods: Nezha RebornHis follow-up could be similar. New Gods: Yang Jian. They’ll get part of what they came for, in terms of epic god battles, big operatic emotions, and elaborately beautiful visual design. But in every other sense, the second film is a massive departure from the first — not so much an expansion of the setting as a largely unrelated story in a completely different genre.

Nezha Reborn sets up a structure that seems designed to repeat endlessly, with endless variations: A struggling human protagonist learns that he’s the reincarnation of a mythic god. Zhao is the director of the amazing donghua movie White SnakeMu Chuan (screenwriter) and director Xue Ying give this story a unique detail. They use a postapocalyptic sci-fi setting with lots of problems to bring ancient powers into a modern world. It’s easy to picture a series of New Gods movies as a Marvel Cinematic Universe-like setup for an eventual crossover, as old gods return to the mortal realm, start to reshape it, and eventually come into conflict.

But Zhao and Chuan’s follow-up largely leaves the mortal world behind, and instead hangs out in the realm of the gods, whose concerns feel much less relevant to a presumably human viewing audience. Yang Jian It is an epic Chinese fantasy story that is much simpler. The only thing that makes it a sci-fi movie is its opening sequence, a bizarrely detailed pastiche from the anime series. Cowboy Bebop. That’s a little bit of a disappointment.

The moment Yang Jian introduces its titular protagonist, who’s playing a melancholy bluegrass harmonica riff over a close-up of his sky-ship’s engine powering down for lack of fuel, Cowboy Bebop fans are likely to have déjà vu. Yang Jian is a leader in a team of bounty hunters, down on their luck and unable to afford the latest target. Wang Kai voices him. His likes Bebop Spike Spiegel’s counterpart, Yang Jian, is deceitfully young man. He appears sleepy and tired most of the day, but then someone threatens him, forcing Yang Jian to show his incredible battle skills.

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His crew also seems suspiciously familiar: a bulky, muscular engineer with a scruffier version of Jet Black’s spiky beard; a hyper, scrawny red-haired kid who yells a lot and runs around on all fours; and a dog that’s smarter than it lets on. (The latter two have a funny connection that’s best experienced in the moment.) Only the fourth crew member, a generic pirate type who’s barely in the movie, doesn’t fit the mold.

The crew of the BebopThis foursome is known for running down the leads and getting into trouble. They pilot their ship through wormhole gates, which look like sky-hoops. The unlike the BebopThis crew, however, is led by an angel. Yang Jian — also known as the traditional Chinese folklore figure Erlang Shen — was a mighty power among the gods at one point, before his third eye closed and his powers faded. Following a battle for supremacy amongst the gods, both demons and gods of folklore are often in trouble. The Immortal Realm, where spirits reside, looks like a collection of run-down towns and retrofuturist villages. These same cities house luminescent flying Dragons as well as grubby, filthy alleys full obstructive refuse. However, the latter outnumbers the former.

The biggest oddity in the world is Yang Jian This is the speed at which the script leaves this captivating setting behind and how it affects the whole. Bebop motif. After just one bounty run, Yang Jian’s crew mostly disappears, the tone shifts, and the setting drops away. The lonesome harmonica sounds, however, are still there. When a woman begs for Yang Jian’s help in recovering a powerful artifact, he revisits his past, drops in on his old mentor, and learns some new things about his family, all of which brings him into conflict with other gods, and takes him back to the widely misunderstood sequence of events where he lost his third eye — and sealed his sister under a mountain forever.

Nezha Reborn is similarly concerned with family ties and characters navigating how they’ve disappointed their kin, but that movie spends far more time with its relationships, and with exploring the price of power. Yang JianThis movie feels more superficial. There is plenty of imagery centered around family ties and not enough time to actually build them. This is a movie that spends several long, agonized scenes on male characters wailing “Mother! Mother! Mother!” over and over at dim, disappearing visions of their moms, but doesn’t spend any time on actually creating those relationships, or letting the characters speak to each other.

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And there’s plenty of god-on-god conflict, a fair bit of it involving extremely colorful and distinctive folklore figures like the four Mo Generals, or Investiture in the Gods Shen Gongbao stars as Shen Gongbao. Here, he is seen drinking with a large white tiger and acting like a bitter drunken master of traditional martial arts movies. Each of these gods has their own agenda, but the characters are drawn broadly, as defenders of tradition or seekers of vengeance — very much as gods of myth rather than people the audience can relate to or root for.

There’s plenty of incident and action in Yang Jian, centered on the title character’s pursuit of that magical artifact and the criminal who took it. But too often — at least in GKIDS’ English translation — that action comes without much context upfront, and viewers are left to watch a heist or a fight first, then piece together the players and stakes later. Even when the fight or heist is intense and exciting, it makes for an extremely detached viewing experience.

The primary draw is the visual delights Yang Jian. The same as in Nezha RebornWhen gods are serious about a problem, they create glowing, giant avatars to reflect their actions. Every god fights with a unique style of fighting and has many different combat tools. Director Zhao can use weapons to send enemies into dream states or magical worlds. This gives him the chance to drastically alter animations and fill the screen with fantastic images. This movie is well worth the effort to see on the biggest screen.

But very little of it lands with emotional impact, in spite of all the characters screaming each other’s names during fraught moments, or yelling at each other about various lies and betrayals. There’s more feeling in a short, silent sequence mimicking the treetop face-off in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon More in total combat. It is not between people wanting to see the world change but people who are more abstractly interested in it. That’s a relatable conflict, in a way, in this politically tense moment or any other age. But here, it still isn’t drawn in a way designed to make viewers care about whether particular characters live or die, whether they get what they want or fade away, or whether they ever make it back to their Cowboy BebopAdventure after the great god antics have been over.

Western viewers may wish to complete some research after watching the show. New Gods: Yang JianDoes serve some of these same functions as Nezha Reborn: It’s an accessible introduction to some of the most memorable characters in Chinese historical epics, and a recasting of those epics in a modern light. The second New Gods movie is similar to the first. It examines the costs and benefits of rebirth and the impact that historical cycles of change on individuals’ lives. This movie lacks the human face needed to address all of these issues. The gods’ squabbles may be our squabbles as well, but if a third New Gods movie is on the way, it’d be better off bringing the action back down to Earth.

New Gods: Yang JianThe film is only currently available in limited national theatrical release. This review features the movie’s subtitled version. Check the film’s website for specific theaters, and check with your local theater to see whether they’re playing the subtitled or dubbed version.