Behind the Scenes of Netflix's The Monkey King

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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!

Transcript

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)

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