New Gods: Yang Jian (4½ Stars)

This is the 25th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

It's the third day in the festival that has begun with an animated film. "New Gods: Yang Jian" is by far the best of the three films. It's overwhelming, from beginning to end. It's based on a 16th Century Chinese novel, which itself is based on old Chinese myths. It would be interesting to sit with someone from China to discuss the myths. I assume I would have been better able to understand the film if I'd known the background.

Yang Jian is a God who's lost most of his powers and now works as a bounty hunter. He's hired to retrieve a magic lamp from a thief called Chenxiang. He soon finds the thief, but others are also searching for the lamp. The events escalate, and Yang Jian discovers that he has a connection with Chenxiang.

"New Gods" (shortening the title) is the best film in the festival so far. I almost gave it a five star rating, but I deducted half a star for the simple reason that I didn't understand it all. There are too many characters who are barely introduced. Their names aren't enough to explain their motivation, and I was confused when some of them changed sides, fighting first on Yang Jian's side, then against him.

The film is two hours long, but I found it was overly compressed. An additional half hour would have helped to explain the story to western novices like me. Added to this, there's a mid-credits scene that confused me even more, because it featured characters who didn't appear in the film itself. I can imagine that Chinese audiences would have watched it and said, "Ah ha! That's who we'll see in the next film".