31 posts tagged with "Donghua"

Author | Jin Ya Source | Yuli

Summer 2026 sees another new director joining the film world. The animated film To Your Island, releasing on August 7, is directed by newcomer Zhou Haoran, his first theatrical feature.

Last weekend saw sneak previews of two major films, Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant and Odyssey; Spider-Man: Freshman Year and Eight Immortals! continue their strong runs. To Your Island dares to release in this window because this fantasy romance animated film is completely different in genre from the others, and during previews it has earned good word of mouth. In this AI era, if you want to watch a film painstakingly crafted by hand, if you want to be moved by love and family bonds between people, To Your Island is a great choice.

The original novel of To Your Island is a famous IP from Jinjiang. A girl named Wang Jiexiang is carried by an origami crane to a mysterious island, where she journeys with her ex-boyfriend Yin Xian, who has transformed into a rabbit, on a healing adventure. In Zhou Haoran's view, this is a fairy tale like a dried plum candy—the outer shell is coated with sweet, crystalline fairy-tale syrup, but inside it contains a somewhat bittersweet realist story.

Not shying away from the bitterness of life, but willing to believe the world is beautiful—Zhou Haoran's own life also wavers between ideals and reality. A graduate of Tongji University's animation program, he has stood on festival podiums basking in lights and applause, but back in real life he has to survive, to make a living, juggling part-time jobs with creative work. He once became a worker on Foxconn's assembly line, but was quickly pulled onto a different path by Guangxian Animation and Li Yuchun.

The animation industry keeps putting forward new directors. Today let's get to know this story-rich Zhou Haoran, and see how a newcomer director handles a hot IP.

01 From Small-Town Youth to Film Director​

Zhou Haoran's hometown is a very small county in Zhuzhou, Hunan—You County. He grew up in the countryside; his family's cable TV couldn't pick up any cartoon channels, and the only animation he watched as a child was Doraemon. When applying for college, he didn't know how to choose a major and stumbled into the animation program at Tongji University. Once in Shanghai, he realized, "Oh, so this is what the world is like."

"I've always had this inexplicable stubbornness—I figure since fate brought me here, I might as well go for it."

After entering university, Zhou Haoran began catching up on the classic animations of Hayao Miyazaki and Pixar, while also extensively exploring live-action films. This young man, who loved to write stories and had a delicate emotional sensibility, gradually discovered how well the animation major suited him.

While still in school, Zhou Haoran's 3D animated short Harry won awards at festivals in 2017, and his 2021 animated short project Straw Diary was nominated for Best Narrative Short Film at the 15th FIRST International Film Festival. These accolades encouraged Zhou Haoran to persist on the path of animation, but behind the awards lay very real issues: where would the investment come from? How would he survive?

Zhou Haoran says he is very conflicted, constantly torn between working a regular job and creating. "Animation directors like me who live from meal to meal save up money by working; when I feel like there's a story I want to tell, the urge to tell it drives me to quit my job and start working on shorts. Then often I run out of money while making the short and have to go back to work. I keep bouncing back and forth between a state of supporting myself through a day job and starving myself to create."

During his student days, Zhou Haoran was encouraged by seniors to submit his works to investment forums and film festivals as much as possible. The biggest goal was to let people see that there was a young animation director named Zhou Haoran out there.

After FIRST, Zhou Haoran was indeed noticed. One day he received a direct message on Weibo from a staff member at Guangxian Animation, saying they had seen his short works online and wanted to invite him to Beijing for a meeting.

"Is this a scam?" was Zhou Haoran's first reaction. But when they discussed buying plane tickets and booking hotels, he realized it probably wasn't a con. After arriving in Beijing, Zhou Haoran soon met with Guangxian chairman Wang Changtian and Guangxian Pictures CEO Li Xiaoping.

"The common animation types are still mostly myth-based, but the scripts I write are more modern fantasy. So after we met, I told them about my upbringing. After learning about it, they thought the novel To Your Island might suit me well. I got the novel that same day, and after reading it I found that Wang Jiexiang's background is quite similar to mine, and the story between her and Yin Xian was very touching. So I wrote a detailed proposal and sent it to them. After discussing it, they liked some of my ideas and gradually decided to let me take on this project."

After receiving this opportunity, Zhou Haoran started to focus on making the film. But animated films have long production cycles—from confirming the intention to actually starting work, a year and a half passed with slow progress. At that time Zhou Haoran was very anxious, thinking his directing path had come to an end, so he went back to working.

As a child, Zhou Haoran was a left-behind kid. His parents had always been working in Shenzhen, living in urban villages. The rental room where Wang Jiexiang and Yin Xian live in To Your Island looks a lot like his parents' place. To save on rent, Zhou Haoran went to stay with his parents. His father was a night-shift taxi driver, and his mother worked at Foxconn. This time he chose to follow his mother and work on the Foxconn assembly line.

On the Foxconn assembly line, you couldn't bring your phone. His job was to scan barcodes on over 8,000 phone chargers a day, earning 25 yuan per hour. But after the labor agency deducted fees, his take-home pay was 17 yuan per hour.

After a few days on the assembly line, a turning point arrived.

A friend from FIRST introduced Zhou Haoran to Li Yuchun's studio, inviting him to direct the music video for Li Yuchun's song Five Viscera and Six Bowels. When Zhou Haoran went to meet Li Yuchun, it happened to be the anniversary of her debut, and she was having hotpot with her team. Facing his idol, Zhou Haoran was nervous, but his drive was strong.

"I always feel like a kid, and that inexplicable stubbornness kicked in again—I figured since I'm here, let's go all out. So I talked very sincerely with Chun Chun about my creative ideas. Chun Chun was really nice, and we clicked immediately. In the end, she entrusted the job to me."

Now Zhou Haoran jokes, "I'm very grateful to Teacher Li Yuchun for rescuing me from the assembly line."

02 Newcomer Director and Hot IP​

Meanwhile, the To Your Island project also resumed moving forward. Zhou Haoran soon moved to Beijing and began an office-based creative life at Guangxian Animation.

Why did a new director who had only made shorts get the chance to direct this hot IP? After talking with Zhou Haoran, the Yuli studio found the answer.

Like the protagonist Wang Jiexiang, Zhou Haoran grew up in the countryside as an emotionally sensitive child. When he was little, he would ride his bike to and from school along a road flanked by rice fields. He turned this childhood memory into a fairy-tale image in the animation, placing it in Wang Jiexiang's growing-up memories.

Every summer vacation during his childhood, Zhou Haoran would go to Shenzhen to reunite with his parents. He couldn't go to work with them and, so as not to disturb the roommates' privacy, he couldn't watch TV either. He could only hole up in the tiny rental room with nothing to do. Later, as an adult director attending film festivals everywhere, he seemed glamorous to outsiders. But when he returned to the Shenzhen rental to stay with his parents, he realized he was thirty years old and still hadn't given his parents a good life. What he felt was a heartache, sitting in that room not knowing what to do—when talking about this feeling, Zhou Haoran's eyes reddened.

"Every time I attend a film festival, I see the very glamorous side of the world. But deep down I'm still a country kid, and all I see is the crowded, bitter side. So my perspective is rather fragmented." This upbringing gave Zhou Haoran a pair of eyes good at seeing both sides of the world—beauty and splendor on one hand, isolation and hardship on the other. And this is likely exactly what aligned with the To Your Island project—the film constructs a world where dreams and reality interweave.

Zhou Haoran describes To Your Island as a dried plum candy. The story is coated with a layer of fairy-tale, cute, crystalline syrup, but inside it contains the bitterness of reality. He uses his own attitude toward life to adjust the ratio of sweetness to pain.

"First of all, I won't avoid the pain in our reality. Because I've seen some of the suffering in the world since I was a child, I won't turn away from it. But I think as an animator, I'm always willing to believe the world is good. I want to use the youthful, pure, innocent perspective of animation to tell such stories, and in our own way heal all the wounds of the characters in this film.

"So I won't shoot this story in a heart-wrenching way. For example, when Yin Xian says 'I don't have a home,' Wang Jiexiang draws him a house. I would also approach the story that way. I always hope to use gentle, fairy-tale brushstrokes to soothe the more piercing pains of reality."

To Your Island is an animated film "handcrafted by old methods." The project went through more than 2,000 days and nights of creation, and the film contains many scenes that were extremely difficult to produce.

"For example, the urban village sequence—the house emerges from the water, and then buildings start being built around it. That part was very complex; we worked on it for over a year. And the reveal that Wang Jiexiang has already passed away—that's a long take—we worked on it for nearly nine months. Also, there's a special art style: when raindrops enter the frame, there's a kind of strand-like simulation effect, as if things are getting wet and blurring, giving the audience a sense of memory. That also took a while to develop."

In the process of overcoming these difficulties, Zhou Haoran often felt like breaking down and giving up. At those times, he would go to Ditan Park near Guangxian Animation to sit for a while. After an hour or two, he would regain his inner peace and find the courage to start again.

In recent years, the animation industry has seen a surge of new directors. Newcomers like Zhou Haoran can finally be seen by audiences because of their passion and persistence.

"We have to balance economic and worldly issues, but we still have creative dreams in our hearts. So everyone has to go through a long, painful, agonizing, lonely creative process. Everyone is lovely in that they always feel there's light ahead—just a little light, and we can keep going. Those who persist through this process may be noticed.

"Especially animation creation—it's really a job that takes an extremely long time. If along the way you waver even a little, or feel that this thing isn't particularly meaningful to tell, and you haven't found the core of your creation, then many difficulties will knock you down. But every time I think about the points in the film that moved me, I feel this story is good, and I'm willing to devote six years or even longer to making it. I have to start from my own heart, find the root of my creation, so I can endure these barren times."

03 From Text to Animation​

The original novel of To Your Island is a popular online IP. Adapting it from text to images means first having to pass the test of the original book's fans.

Zhou Haoran's adaptation principle is to respect the original work, focusing as much as possible on the emotional main line between Wang Jiexiang and Yin Xian within the limited runtime, and recreating as many iconic scenes as possible. However, due to the film's length, some cuts and changes had to be made. The original author, Fan Dawang, also personally participated in the script adaptation this time. Together, the director and screenwriters slimmed down the main storyline.

During adaptation, Zhou Haoran realized that using animation to present a love story has the advantage of always keeping the perspective of a young person's purity and innocence, which might bring a refreshing feel to a romance. The scene in the high school room where Wang Jiexiang draws a house and a swing for Yin Xian, who says "I don't have a home," is a very animated expression. Also, the premise of the male lead transforming into a rabbit naturally suits the animation format.

The little rabbit version of Yin Xian in To Your Island is designed to be very cute. The director revealed that the rabbit has many of Yin Xian's characteristics: "For instance, the distance between his eyebrows and eyes, his flat upper eyelids, his mournful eyes, even a bit of dark circles—all subtly correspond to the real Yin Xian."

When working on the "island" portion, Zhou Haoran also deliberately emphasized the contrast in the relationship between the two characters through design—in reality, Yin Xian is a block of wood, but the island is his inner world, where he can talk more. In reality, it seems Yin Xian is dominant, with Wang Jiexiang always following behind him. But on the island, this dynamic flips: the little rabbit asks Wang Jiexiang if she can save him, but she deliberately refuses. The little rabbit can only trot after her, with his short arms and legs, but can't keep up. This creates an inexplicable sense of humor and satisfaction.

On the other hand, the narrative structure of a novel and the audiovisual language of animation are two completely different systems. The subtle, delicate aspects of love present a whole new challenge for animation.

"Text leaves a lot of room for imagination, but images are definite—it's either there or it isn't. In text, I can imagine Yin Xian's restrained and hidden love for Jiexiang. But in animation, how do you show the turbulent emotions beneath a calm exterior? How do you accurately capture those complex, subtle things within a very narrow range? That's very difficult.

"So while keeping Yin Xian's avoidant attachment personality trait, we still want the audience to know that Yin Xian loves Jiexiang. To make his love visible, we designed some details for him in the film.

"For example, when he says the line 'The juicer company—nobody wanted it, so the boss gave it to me,' his eyes dart away, and his hand scratches his head—these expressions make his tough exterior and soft heart visible. Another example: he 'scolds' Jiexiang while applying medicine for her. When she argues with him and runs to the overpass crying, he follows her, still keeping his mouth shut but silently holding a flashlight to light her way. When Jiexiang asks him why they're together, he says it's to make each other's lives more convenient. Between the word 'convenient,' he pauses for a breath, which makes you feel he's saying something against his will in the heat of an argument—it's not what he really wants to say. All of these are details we hope allow the audience to see the boy's restrained and hidden love through his actions and behavior."

The scene where Wang Jiexiang and Yin Xian reunite in the thick fog to give the rabbit is the one that left the deepest impression on Zhou Haoran. To express the turmoil beneath calmness, to capture the complex and subtle elements, behind it was the collaborative work of over a dozen animators.

"When he sees Jiexiang again, Yin Xian has already aged. His frail body and restrained personality dictate that we must put a very strong emotion beneath a calm exterior. How do you express 'infinity' within 'nothingness'? The range given to animation is really small. We shot a lot of reference footage. Over a dozen animators filmed many takes, and then we selected the best parts from each.

"One colleague blinked very slowly with subtle pupil movements, which seemed to convey more shock and stupor. Another leaned forward slightly, stretching out their neck a bit, which seemed to help show anticipation. Another added a sudden, distracted look of panic before delivering the line 'Pangpang, I bought the rabbit,' which was also great. We spliced together the best parts from everyone, and that's what you see in the film. In live-action, actors can let their emotions flow naturally; in animation, every blink and head-turn is actually the result of careful deliberation by the animators."

When talking about this scene, Zhou Haoran couldn't help but get teary-eyed. To Your Island is described by many fans of the original book as a "tragically beautiful" story, but Zhou Haoran hopes the feeling the film leaves the audience with is warmth and strength.

"Some people also discuss: if we're destined to part, then what is the meaning of meeting? I often feel disappointed in human relationships myself, and often doubt whether love really exists and whether it can last. Making this story, especially the final scene of the film, gave me a lot of courage. When the elderly Yin Xian visits Jiexiang's grave, he finds the small flower she embroidered for him inside his sweater—it's called the winter daphne flower. This small flower is like a sun, illuminating their universe, telling the audience that love truly exists in our world. The winter daphne flower existed in their love, and the character Wang Jiexiang existed."

In the film, due to his childhood experiences, Yin Xian never developed a proper way to love. He is a beginner in love, and by the time he understands it, it's already too late. After that, a part of his life is taken away by that rain, and he spends the rest of his life in remembrance.

The story presented in the film is very dramatic. Zhou Haoran says, just like a line from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: "We're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?" He hopes To Your Island can also bring the audience this strength and reflection. After watching the film, return to reality and think about how to love the people around you.

“Perhaps the first thing creators ought to figure out is the question of the ratio between fiction and reality in a ‘new mythology.’”

With the summer season more than halfway through, the animated film The Eight Immortals! directed and written by Mou Zhengyang has become this month's dark horse. Ten days after its release was moved up, box office revenue has already surpassed 900 million, with Maoyan predicting a final total of over 2 billion.

Such a dazzling result is bound to draw plenty of attention from inside and outside the industry — especially since reactions were already polarized during the preview screenings, and the controversy has only intensified as the box office climbs and the audience grows.

At first glance this looks like yet another round of the eternal “critically acclaimed vs. commercially successful” debate, but perhaps it also marks a turning point worth discussing in the creation of domestic mythology-themed animated films:

On one hand, drawing classic elements from a vast database already validated by other entertainment markets and reworking them means the finished product's basic form is predictable, and the box office response is usually satisfying;

But on the other hand, how to fully and appropriately present original, auteur-like characteristics on screen, while also answering the hopes of that other portion of “ideal viewers,” remains an unsolved creative challenge.

If we dissect The Eight Immortals! in detail, its strengths and weaknesses are a complete illustration of this very challenge. In a traditional myth whose ending was written long ago, in what form can the importance of human effort be presented? And after walking out of the cinema, what are those things that leave us wanting to speak yet hesitating?

01 Immortals and Mortals Are Different — And Then?​

To summarize the main storyline of The Eight Immortals! in one spoiler-free sentence: it is a “new” myth about how Lü Dongbin, Zhongli Quan, and the other “Eight Immortals” outwitted the heavens to save all living beings.

The traditional framework from A Journey to the East (written by Wu Yuantai of the Ming Dynasty) — the Eight Immortals crossing the sea in a contest of powers and battling the Dragon King — has almost nothing to do with this film, and the characters' master-disciple relationships and appearances differ greatly from the original tales. As for “Penglai,” from the line “a reed boat blows me away to the Three Mountains,” it mainly serves as a backdrop for an otherworld. So, simply put, like all the previous “new mythology” series, The Eight Immortals! is a giant mythological fanfiction (.)

With that premise in mind, let's look more closely at the film's main structure — the most prominent, arguably foundational issue is clearly the discussion of the relationship between immortals and mortals.

Although the film does not elaborate on the distinction between “gods” and “immortals,” judging from its established setting, humans and gods (immortals) are the two clearly distinct races in The Eight Immortals!, and the characters and dialogue (Donghua Dijun mentions the Jade Purity Vase as a symbol of peace between Buddhism and Daoism) reveal a worldview blending Buddhism and Daoism, cultivation and enlightenment. Throughout history, the immortal-mortal relationship has been the most effective and direct perspective for mythology-themed storytelling. Without separately discussing “yao” demons (indeed, no “yao” race appears in this film; the “Three Realms” mentioned by the immortals is only vaguely touched on), the immortal-mortal relationship in practice means a binary power structure in which immortals look down on mortals and mortals look up to immortals — and The Eight Immortals! is no exception.

Except that in The Eight Immortals!, the “intermediary space” is Penglai, an ambiguous space that looks like an enclave but is in fact where immortals and mortals live mixed together. Both the released trailers and the main storyline deliberately highlight this.

The giant statues of the Three Gods of Fortune, Prosperity, and Longevity in Penglai (Yanjiao reality walks into an animated dream (not) and the near-future fantasy-style set design seem intended to emphasize that Penglai fits another sense of “a realm beyond the world.” Of course, this also serves to set up the protagonist group's extraordinary performances later in the story, and implies a creative trade-off: the very fact that mortals can reach Penglai embodies a kind of screening process. As for how one gets there, the creators only offered a brief explanation with a line from Extensive Records of the Taiping Era: “Only those fated to this land may arrive.”

When “immortals and mortals are different” becomes a premise even the audience tacitly accepts — in other words, when “why are they different” is no longer a question the film needs to answer — then telling the “and then?” well becomes extremely important.

The Eight Immortals! once again chooses the safest, but also the greatest-common-denominator path: using a barrage of gags to dissolve the protagonists' discomfort upon first entering the upper echelons of power, and thereby keeping the story's pace in a state of rapid development with no time for anything else.

For example, at the start of the story, the audience's perspective is completely synchronized with Lü Dongbin's, both facing “Noah's Ark”-like Penglai in a state of unknown. The immortal rankings interface and the smiling, baby-faced God of Wealth, the dialect accent of the cloud traffic driver, a certain immortal paying tribute to the classic image of Mao Ri Xingjun complaining at the Immortal Management Bureau, and so on — behind Penglai's flourishing spectacle lies the abilities and power of the immortal race far exceeding mortals', and Penglai's law, “every request granted,” must hold precisely under this premise: mortals worship the immortals, immortals shelter mortals — the former is the foundation guaranteeing the efficacy of the latter's privileges, because the power gap between the two is an unbridgeable chasm.

But a non-equal power relationship inevitably breeds resistance, and the audience naturally expects the film to portray it — the first half of The Eight Immortals! indeed focuses on this. The swindling “lowly underclass” rises up, blazing into something like Now You See Me (Now You See Me) and Guardians of the Galaxy (Guardians of the Galaxy), and the special guest who appears for less than a minute in the battle-of-wits segment steals the show. In terms of cinematic effect, it works quite well.

At this point, the story of mortals “outwitting the heavens” told through the shell of “the Eight Immortals crossing the sea” can largely be considered self-consistent: under a “Great Flood” disaster narrative, the superiors who should have borne the responsibility of protection become corrupt privilege-holders, so all the resistance made by the lower class to survive is self-rescue — and moreover, in Lü Dongbin's words, “the right thing” — even if “all living beings” is just a vague, faceless pronoun.

02 Good Deeds Are Rewarded — Really?​

That said, even though most audiences have long since grown used to the logic of immortal-mortal narratives mixed with political cynicism in recent mythology-themed animated works, a necessary character motivation remains the touchstone.

Looking at the whole film, only four characters in The Eight Immortals! have complete motivations: Lü Dongbin, Yang Jian, He Xiangu, and Zhongli Quan. The storylines of the rest of the protagonist group are comparatively fragmented. It's understandable that this was a trade-off the creative team had to make for runtime, but it's not without regret.

Here, this author will offer one interpretation: the four above together form a closed loop of “good deeds being rewarded,” and none of them can be removed. Because the film not only shows Buddhism and Daoism merging in its dialogue and worldview — the relationships between characters also embody this combination.

Buddhism speaks of karma, Daoism of this life. The core thread of “good intention” originates with Zhongli Quan: the “cause” he sowed brings forth Lü Dongbin's “effect,” which in turn leads to He Xiangu's wanderer's journey and righteous deeds — this is the karma of the three. And Zhongli Quan, though cursed by Donghua (i.e., the fate-decreed verdict), still breaks free of his “fate” in this life — because a variable appeared in his destiny: first, Lü Dongbin, with whom he shares a karmic bond; second, their respective immortal connections, Yang Jian and Sun Wukong.

Therefore, understanding Yang Jian's motivation becomes especially crucial.

Is Yang Jian good in this film? Different answers to this question directly caused some viewers' dissatisfaction after watching, because from a standpoint perspective, Yang Jian is clearly opposed to the protagonist group and the “common people.” But combined with He Xiangu's line, “For your one mother, you would sacrifice everyone else's mothers,” all of Yang Jian's actions in the film stem from one utterly pure purpose: saving his mother. This is a motivation whose purpose is just; what is unjust are the means Yang Jian employs.

Furthermore, if we set aside our emotional standpoint as viewers, Yang Jian is hardly an “evil” figure in this film. What the story of The Eight Immortals! emphasizes is only that “good deeds are rewarded,” not “good and evil are both rewarded” or “evil deeds are punished.” When the eight struggle against Yang Jian, the childlike smile he gives while watching Xiaotian the hound being “forced” to carry Zhang Guolao, and the password voiced through Lan Caihe, are in their way effective portrayals of Yang Jian's “non-evil” side.

Combined with the film's early candor about “immortals and mortals being different,” a fixed, no-longer-struggling hierarchy appears more and more frequently in “new” myths, and creators' attention has shifted more toward rendering relationships between characters, especially emotional bonds. (For more on this topic, see the Academy's earlier article: Why Can't Chinese Animated Films Do Without “Demons and Monsters”?)

Or, put another way, when mythology-themed creation consciously dilutes grand narratives, it inevitably moves toward discussions of emotion and ethics. In The Eight Immortals!, this trend is accompanied by another technical device: the skillful appropriation of the “superhero.”

Even though the protagonist group are nominally mortals, judging by their feats and combat skills, they are already superhuman “heroes” with immortal connections, not truly ordinary people. Because in an unshakable hierarchy, neither grand narrative nor small-person narrative can hold; only a superhero who “reaches heaven and stands on earth” can “bridge” that chasm.

— Severing the passage between heaven and earth, yet in Penglai, the “Eight Immortals” are the ladder.

Of course, The Eight Immortals! ultimately offers a plain, kind-hearted ending: we can still save something — whether as Lü Dongbin and Zhongli Quan, or as the ordinary people being saved — because in this world, good deeds being rewarded is true, and it remains the highest governing law.

03 Plenty of Twists — Surprising?​

Compared horizontally with recent domestic animated works, The Eight Immortals! is fairly similar in actual effect to last year's modest hit Child of Time. Simply put, both enjoy narrative tricks, keenly grasp market sentiment, and the official side will “ship along” (here meaning that the emotional clarity and intensity of the original work far exceed the emotional portrayals in fan-created secondary works).

Thus, for viewers with a decent amount of viewing experience, a sense of “déjà vu” (having seen it before) after watching is hard to avoid — but not to the point of being hard to swallow. It's like a meal that doesn't taste great but passes food-safety standards: a matter of taste, not quality.

So, will the narrative tricks of The Eight Immortals! wear the audience out?

If treated as a popcorn movie, the several important twists currently designed in the film all serve the logical needs and pacing, and do stir up audience emotions to a degree, as can be seen from some social media discussions. But if during viewing one realizes that the film's central clue is concentrated entirely on Lü Dongbin, then when the biggest twist is revealed, viewers may feel somewhat speechless — as if “wrapping a whole dumpling just for that dish of vinegar.”

And this “speechlessness” ties into another major discussion around the film: Are the ships in The Eight Immortals! worth shipping?

Though shipping tastes vary endlessly, the film's direction is fairly clear: the big triangle of Yang Jian / Lü Dongbin / Zhongli Quan, and the ship lines involving He Xiangu. No matter how the big triangle is arranged, seasoned fangirls can always find their most satisfying flavor in it. But with an implicit “canon pairing” feel, the master-disciple ship in the film never seems quite potent enough — and in a daze, it really does carry the air of an old flame.

Instead, certain “crossover ships” given little screen time in the main plot grow more flavorful the more you savor them — for example, the Yang Jian-related and He Xiangu-related ones.

On one hand, this returns to the old question that only sufficient blank space gives fan derivatives vitality. On the other hand, although Yang Jian is set up in the film as the absolute superior and He Xiangu's storyline isn't fully developed, both of their images within the ship are “inverted” relative to the above, full of contrast — He Xiangu, with a brief past, bursts forth with astonishing power in battle scenes, and her effective screen time greatly supplements her character arc; while Yang Jian's certain fragility of “staking everything” just to save his mother softens his sense of superiority, giving him a charm point open to interpretation in fan works.

As such, the master-disciple ship isn't hard to ship or prefab, either — it's just that it's “good” in every way to the point of being too complete, once again presenting a certain facelessness.

This resembles the feeling given by the film's highly saturated entrance captions and soundtrack: within the fast-paced context of the film, they are fitting and natural, but when you step out of the cinema and try to chew it over, (some) viewers can't help feeling a sense of confusion: as if something smooth slipped away — the twists, the tricks, and the bonds all washed away together in the heavy rain, like beads and pebbles drifting into the sea with the waves, leaving no trace.

04 Epilogue: The Eastern Sea of Clouds, Empty Once More​

On the whole, although The Eight Immortals! bears the legend of “the Eight Immortals crossing the sea,” its story's core is still the same old trio of mythology-themed animation and superhero narrative — conventional, complete in plot (the master-disciple two-man show is even a bit drawn-out), with occasional brilliant touches in design, and no vulgarity or ethical gags — earning it the title of a “good student.”

To be more optimistic, with its relatively smooth and complete narrative, The Eight Immortals! has indeed brought some new breakthroughs to the creative direction of mythology in domestic animated films. For instance, the villain (at least the apparent one) is no longer a venerable one disguised as a “great benefactor,” nor does it simply use “the will of heaven eroding” as a deus ex machina to uphold justice (the monkey counts as an Easter egg, yes); when facing an enemy far more powerful, the protagonists no longer rely on teammates being sacrificed or self-sacrifice to force a power-up, but essentially carry through the film's “outwitting the heavens” theme of battles of wits to a narrow victory.

Although all of this makes the protagonist's battle highlight in the final showdown turn out to be a con, it better fits the logic of how the objective world runs, and thus delivers a different emotional experience. Longing to shake a tree as an ant through self-sacrifice, thereby achieving an artistic effect one might call “catharsis” (catharsis) — this is a reliably effective creative formula, but also a self-destructive, utopian, beautiful expectation. The Eight Immortals! ultimately gave up that direction.

Thus, in this summer season — a rare window of potential for domestic animated films — The Eight Immortals! is not a bad cinema choice, and it once again validates the box-office viability of greatest-common-denominator creation.

However, since it borrowed Penglai and the “Eight Immortals,” some viewers naturally came for the narrative possibilities of ethereal legends and tales of the strange. Yet from the moment they set foot on Penglai, the protagonists face a highly modernized world (leaderboard rankings, highways, renovations, video conferencing……). One could say that to fit modern audiences' lives (or to express a certain surrealism), The Eight Immortals! abandoned many imaginative possibilities of classical literature.

As stated at the beginning of this article, this may be said to be a current creative pain point for mythology-themed domestic animated films: besides borrowing a shell for reincarnation, are there other “new” mythology creative approaches that are both critically acclaimed and commercially successful?

Domestic animated shorts like Goose Mountain and Stealing the Peach certainly offer a “critically acclaimed” approach of breathing new life into classics and making the old serve the new. But translating this into feature-length animation is not easy — with the box office returns of Lanre Temple and The Siege of Luoyang as precedents, the effects of faithful adaptation are clearly less than ideal. Perhaps, for creators, the first thing to figure out is the question of the ratio between fiction and reality in a “new mythology”:

If it is a new symbolic language, what is it meant to convey? And if it is a spiritual plea yearning for resonance, then the gaze you cast from the screen — who is it looking toward?

Over the past few years, Light Chaser Animation has been the most “consistently reliable” domestic animation studio at the box office, and in 2023 it scored a massive hit with Chang An. This summer season, however, the “New Culture” series encountered an “unexpected” turn.

On July 10, Light Chaser Animation's new film *The Three Kingdoms: Part One — The Battle for Luoyang* was released nationwide. Word of mouth climbed steadily, opening at 8.0 on Douban, but 15 days after release the box office had yet to break 100 million yuan — the studio even launched a “refund if you don't like it” campaign.

On July 25, The Three Kingdoms: Part One — The Battle for Luoyang suddenly announced it was pulling out of theaters. The theatrical key expires on August 9, so audiences who still want to see it on the big screen have only limited chances left.

01 History as the Backbone​

We were all taught from childhood that Chinese classical literature has Four Great Novels, but the most widely read and adapted are only Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West.

Water Margin is constrained by its historical context and controversies and now invites divergent interpretations, while Dream of the Red Chamber's high literary threshold limits its popular appreciation. When it comes to Journey to the West, the straight adaptation is the CCTV TV series, comedic takes include Happy Pig: Bajie and Journey to the West: The Aftermath, and deconstruction brings to mind A Chinese Odyssey, Wukong Biography, and Black Myth: Wukong. Thanks to the naturally fictional nature of gods and demons, these immortals and monsters can freely visit one another's stories — Sun Wukong can crossover with the gods of the Investiture of the Gods, and even drop by Japan and America.

But the Three Kingdoms is different.

Broadly speaking, the Three Kingdoms period covers nearly a hundred years of history, from the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 AD to the fall of Wu to Jin in 280 AD. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is an adaptation of a real stretch of ancient Chinese history, a compilation of folk legends, plus imaginative elaboration of details not covered by the histories of the time (including but not limited to the *Records of the Three Kingdoms*, *Book of the Later Han*, *Book of Jin*, and *Zizhi Tongjian*). From this perspective, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is itself an epic tale, an ancient legend (or a massive work of fanfiction).

Some stories can be freely embellished or distorted, but the Three Kingdoms is different. When modern creators adapt the Three Kingdoms, on the one hand they want to break free of the framework set by the Records of the Three Kingdoms and Romance of the Three Kingdoms; on the other, they can't overlap too heavily with existing adaptations. And in either case, no one dares to tear it all down and build a new Three Kingdoms in which no one can tell who is who.

From this angle, Light Chaser's Three Kingdoms: The Battle for Luoyang is ambitious: on one hand, it bills itself with the slogan “Honoring History, Carrying On the Original” printed right on the poster; on the other, the title format nearly explicitly signals an intent to shape the material into something akin to Hollywood's millennium-era epic historical films.

In the past, whenever anyone attempted a new Three Kingdoms work, they invariably stressed their “respect for history.” But having seen the film, the author can confidently say that Light Chaser's screenwriting team put real effort into honoring history, keeping adjustments and changes for dramatic purposes to a minimum.

In fact, the three-way struggle among imperial in-laws, eunuchs, and scholar clans presented in The Battle for Luoyang's trailer is only the first part of the story; it then unhurriedly transitions to Dong Zhuo entering the capital, Cao Cao's assassination attempt on Dong Zhuo, and the coalition of warlords against Dong Zhuo. Throughout, the story follows the perspectives of two young talents — Cao Cao and Yuan Shao — viewing the struggles of high-ranking late-Han ministers through their relatively “lowly” eyes.

In the film's first part, the narration succinctly summarizes the late-Han power struggle: eunuchs battling imperial in-laws, imperial authority sidelined, and scholar clans maneuvering for profit with the wind. Unlike recent Three Kingdoms adaptations that focus on battlefield deployments and war scenes, The Battle for Luoyang makes a bold attempt at portraying “Chinese-style political thriller”.

From the rivalry between Empress Dowager He and Empress Dowager Dong, to the Ten Attendants' about-face from arrogance to fawning, to the starkly different temperaments of He Jin and Dong Zhuo, we see how the young Emperor Xian, Liu Xie, is utterly powerless, and how the subjects Cao Cao and Yuan Shao, while doing their best to assist the General-in-Chief, gradually grow into the deeply scheming regional warlords of later years.

When Cao Cao first appears, he has already displayed his martial bravado leading troops into battle. But sometimes, more terrifying than visible blades and spears on the battlefield are the invisible knives in the shadows of the court. The scene of He Jin entering the palace to be executed is the first time Cao Cao feels fear; the wobbling, off-balance camera composition perfectly mirrors the shattering of his first ideal: earning merit cannot save the Han, because while he is holding up one pillar, someone else is pulling down the others.

Light Chaser struck an excellent balance, painting the late Eastern Han political struggles — which most audiences know relatively little about — in rich, vivid detail. The screen time devoted to it rivals even the 1994 straight adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, while the better-known coalition against Dong Zhuo is briskly covered at a faster pace.

Dong Zhuo's entry into the capital is the second act of The Battle for Luoyang: when the imperial in-laws and eunuchs have all been exterminated, someone will inevitably covet the power vacuum. Dong Zhuo claimed kinship with Empress Dowager Dong, granting himself the status of an imperial in-law. Then, the peace Yuan Shao and Cao Cao hoped for never arrived; instead, Dong Zhuo's tyranny brought even greater bloodshed.

In this section, the pacing accelerates as many familiar characters appear in quick succession, leading straight to the climax of the coalition against Dong Zhuo: here the film stunningly showcases the different landscapes of the Central Plains' provinces, with place names rising in artistic lettering styled after local terrain, set against a montage of prefects and governors raising armies. This also neatly ties up the fates of characters like Bao Xin and Yuan Shao mentioned earlier: after leaving Luoyang they did not despair, but rebuilt their fortunes with trusted followers from their home regions, waiting for a chance to restore the Han.

For audiences unfamiliar with this history, or for children still learning it, Light Chaser saves a highlight for the end: this epic dual-protagonist story of Cao Cao and Yuan Shao concludes with the debut of brand-new characters — who will also deliver the action highlight of the entire film: the Three Heroes battling Lü Bu.

Beyond grounding itself in serious history, Light Chaser Animation has, since White Snake and Chang An, been devoted to filling the gaps of historical legend with meticulously researched cultural and artistic design. If audiences remember children reciting classical poetry in unison in theaters during Chang An, then The Battle for Luoyang certainly has its share of such moments. From Cao Cao reading The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art at night and getting a headache over math problems, to Han dynasty bricks and various lacquerware, hall settings, and costumes — everything reflects deep cultural research, and one can easily imagine how long they spent digging through museums to achieve such fidelity.

02 From Hero to Demon King​

“Many years later, as the Yuan army collapsed before him, Cao Cao was sure to remember that afternoon when he and Brother Yuan went off to steal a bride.”

As “the first part of Three Kingdoms,” “The Battle for Luoyang” — which tells of “the Three Kingdoms before they became the Three Kingdoms” — seems at first glance a somewhat counterintuitive choice.

But Luoyang as the center of the known world and a symbol of the Han's old order, in an era when the court was teetering and warlords were about to contend for supremacy, means that how various figures fought for a foothold in Luoyang symbolizes precisely different personalities, even different ideologies — different attitudes toward the establishment.

In the film, Cao Cao holds a lower position, full of realism and materialist color, with steadfast execution hidden beneath an unassuming surface; he divines with falling leaves yet “doesn't believe in fate,” revealing a materialist outlook ahead of his time;

Yuan Shao believes in order and places his hopes in reputation and legitimacy, yet is tormented by his status as a concubine's son — lawful good and indecisive (hard to say whether it's a lack of conviction or being too kind to make hard calls); He Jin is reckless and blindly self-confident yet unable to truly control events; Dong Zhuo is vicious and flamboyant, choosing to violently smash the order…

Cao Cao is the film's first protagonist. Born into a eunuch family, unlike more illustrious relatives or other scholar-officials, Cao Cao's odds of rising far lower than theirs — and precisely because of that, he worked exceptionally hard and was exceptionally attuned to survival wisdom. Historical records note that Cao Cao was unpopular for his frivolous behavior, yet at the same time the young Cao Cao genuinely worried for his country and people, and it's hard to say he didn't give his all serving under the General-in-Chief He Jin.

The film opens with an adaptation of the A New Account of the Tales of the World anecdote in which Cao Cao and Yuan Shao steal a bride, and Cao Cao schemes to help Yuan Shao escape — a small scene that showcases Cao Cao's flexible survival wisdom and Yuan Shao's uprightness. The idealism of these two young talents is later worn away by reality, and they ultimately take different paths.

And so that audiences unfamiliar with the Three Kingdoms can remember the characters amid the flood of historical events, the animation team necessarily had to apply a degree of characterization.

Some of it is apt; some comes across as overly exaggerated.

For example, Yuan Shao covering his face when indecisive, or Cao Cao's occasional loud laughter. Such theatrical flourishes suit Li Bai, the unrestrained poet immortal of Chang An, but on a warlord who will one day command vast armies and reshape the fate of the realm, they can feel somewhat juvenile and jarring.

Still, the character work in the film is commendable. Cao Cao's ideals are shattered twice: the first comes after He Jin's execution, when he realizes that in a dark court, scheming is sometimes more powerful than a sense of justice; the second comes when he witnesses Dong Zhuo brutalizing commoners attending a village opera, and realizes he must ultimately rely on his own strength to destroy evil. Together, these become the villain-hero we know: a believer in scheming, cold and ruthless, trusting no one, whose idealism can only be spoken to himself in dreams.

Cao Cao's striving first half of life was also his failed first half. He supported He Jin but won no trust; he trusted Yuan Shao but saw that Yuan Shao could never achieve great things; after Dong Zhuo entered the capital and the ministers' ugliness was fully exposed, he ceased to trust human hearts, believing only in the power and talent he held in his own hands.

“When Duke Zhou feared the rumors, and Wang Mang humbly served before usurping.” That line fits Cao Cao remarkably well. From aide, to one of the Eight Commandants of the Western Garden, to regional warlord and Imperial Chancellor of Han, Cao Cao unified most of China, restored production, and protected livelihoods — yet he truly did execute advisors and massacre cities, becoming the demon king in the eyes of the half of China he did not unify. Between “capable minister” and “hero,” and “villain-hero” and “traitor,” how many times did Cao Cao's heart grow cold? How did he gradually come to accept what he shared with the very people he despised?

Unlike Cao Cao, Yuan Shao was already everyone's big brother by the time he made his name. In the film he is both the favored child and the abandoned one. As the eldest son of the Yuan family of Hebei, with four generations of high office, Yuan Shao could advance to serve the Han emperor, or retreat to his family seat in Hebei after the anti-Dong Zhuo affair and unify the north. But as a concubine's son, he was overshadowed within the Yuan family by his legitimate half-brother Yuan Shu. Yuan Shao, full of pent-up drive, likewise wanted to achieve great deeds, but he saw through the Han's problems; after his mourning period ended, he privately befriended heroes and wandering knights rather than sink into court life.

Unlike Cao Cao's flexible, pragmatic survival wisdom, Yuan Shao's standing rested on his family's reputation and his personal charisma — heroes of the realm came unbidden. History records: “The Yuan family has held high office for generations, their lofty principles renowned throughout the land. Shao's prestige was long established.” Thus when Yuan Shao draws his sword and denounces Dong Zhuo in the film, Dong Zhuo still fears him and cannot touch him, even later trying to co-opt him with promotions.

Yuan Shao had abundant resources and a knight-errant air, never worrying about lacking a way out. But in the film's latter half, the flaws of this character gradually emerge: Yuan Shao is impulsive yet lacks execution; he listens to advice, but he takes in diametrically opposed opinions alike; once he acts he charges with unstoppable spirit, but once he fails, he's so enraged he cannot rise again.

The maladies of the later, sprawling Yuan army are much like a big internet tech company: beautiful financial reports, but tangled internal relationships, alienated colleagues, everyone scheming to look good before the boss, even tripping up others to do so. Yuan Shao himself was “grand in ambition but small in wisdom, fierce in appearance but thin in courage, suspicious and lacking in majesty” (Cao Cao's words), unable to manage his own coterie of strategists, his style of governance “I want it all” and “you're all right” — until he could no longer withstand history's cruel filtering. These two young friends, Cao Cao and Yuan Shao, finally took up arms against each other.

They could have joined hands to restore the Han; instead, it all came to nothing.

03 What Is a True Hero?​

In The Battle for Luoyang, the imperial in-laws and eunuchs fight for power and check each other, with the scholar clans mediating between them. With Emperor Ling of Han's death, the in-laws and eunuchs seized the chance to fight each other to the death over the power vacuum. During this time, Cao Cao hopes to move slowly and at least maintain a surface balance; Yuan Shao, harboring his own ambitions, hopes the scholar clans can rise through this, and so vehemently urges He Jin to slaughter every last eunuch.

If things had only progressed to this point, it might have been relatively simple, but the imperial in-law faction was not monolithic: besides the He family, the Dong family was also part of the in-laws, competing with the Hes; and He Jin's relationship with Empress Dowager He was not as simple as it appeared.

What follows is depicted brilliantly in The Battle for Luoyang — the stifling history of the late Han opens the age of heroes precisely with this scene of blood.

Which brings us to this: dull and obscure is exactly why mainstream opinion finds the film lacking in appeal.

The political and battlefield landscape facing the Three Kingdoms heroes is inherently tangled; the film chooses not to oversimplify these conflicts, preserving as much room for thought as possible for the audience. It does not shy away from dark, cold scenes, nor chase the market's “lowest common denominator.”

It's all struggle, but compared to the court-style scheming we're used to in film and TV, the bloodshed within the late Han palace, the struggle of heroes' ideals, and the lament of displaced commoners are far crueler. Perhaps once the film hits streaming and reaches more viewers, The Three Kingdoms: The Battle for Luoyang will be understood anew.

The small work Light Chaser has done is not to spend a huge budget parroting a classic story, but to give young audiences a reason to walk into a theater and learn the details history textbooks never covered — and, one day when they've learned enough, to feel this: the difference between a hero and a demon king sometimes lies only in a single heart, and many things that seem self-evident are not so simple after all.

At the end of The Battle for Luoyang, on the other side of the warlords' march on Luoyang, the director uses montage to reveal each of their fates — many not dying at Dong Zhuo's hands, but betrayed and swallowed by their own allies.

For us, with our god's-eye view, we may quietly feel it was a pity, a waste. But in that moment of heroes clashing before Hulao Pass, none of them was thinking much about what tomorrow would bring — only of today's surge of hot blood.

And so we return to the question from the beginning: we are so passionate about watching and adapting the Three Kingdoms — what exactly makes it different?

Just as the World Cup ends and fan numbers swell once every four years, just as we remember Haaland, Mbappé, and Kane, when we speak of the Three Kingdoms, we think of those vivid faces, one by one.

The Three Kingdoms was an era with true heroes. And every era needs true heroes.