(China Daily) When director Amp Wong was a teenager, he was an avid viewer of the fantasy TV series The Legend of the White Snake, also known as New legend of Madame White Snake, a 1992 smash hit adapted from one of China's best known mythological romances. Recently, Wong, who has worked in the animation industry for around two decades, has revisited this nostalgic chapter in his adolescence in a novel and visually arresting way.His latest directorial effort, White Snake 2: The Tribulation of Green Snake, opened across theaters on July 23.
As the sequel of the 2019 film White Snake, the 131-minute fantasy epic has been sitting third in China's box-office rankings since July 30.
Receiving widespread acclaim online, exemplified by 7.8 points out of 10 on the popular review site Douban, the first installment of White Snake was one of the 32 movies in contention for the best animated feature gong at the Academy Awards in 2019.
"The franchise idea was formed around five years ago," says Wong. "After a lot of discussion, we selected the classic tale as a new subject, as we believe such an enduring romance, which has evolved over 1,000 years, must have a unique charm."
Dating back to a snake demon's fable in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the tale about the love between the eponymous female snake spirit and a human male was formed in author Feng Menglong's novella collection Jingshi Tongyan (Stories to Caution the World) during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
With an iconoclastic depiction of true love, set against societal prejudice and feudal doctrines of the time, the legend's popularity has spanned generations.
It has evolved over the centuries, spawning operas and novels, as well as films and many TV series in recent decades.
However, its reputation has also cramped the scope for further creativity.
"Most audiences know the original story very well. We need to give them something that they have never seen before," says Wong.
The franchise directly skips the initial ancient tale, which is fictionalized to take place in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Respectively, the first White Snake film is set 500 years earlier, and White Snake 2 picks up from where the first film ends but develops with an ambiguous timeline.
Green Snake, the younger sister of the White Snake, and a similarly powerful serpent spirit, from a supporting role in the first film, becomes the sequel's protagonist.
Unfolding from an epic battle in which the two spirits-both assuming the human form of two beautiful women-conjure up a flood while facing off against a powerful Buddhist monk, the sequel follows the Green Snake's new adventures in a strange and brutal world.
After her sister is captured and imprisoned under a pagoda, the Green Snake is taken to Asuraville city, where both people and magical creatures are held.
While attempting to escape the hellish city to rescue the White Snake, the Green Snake has to endure a string of extremely dangerous adventures while under threat from an ox demon and his legion of monsters. The city itself is also "alive", frequently manifesting horrible disasters and huge, bat-shaped monsters.
Most of these creatures that appear in the film, such as a giant octopus and some horse-headed gangsters, are inspired from Chinese mythology and folklore, explains Wong.
With the success of the first film, which raked in nearly 470 million yuan ($72.53 million) to make it one of the highest-grossing animated films of 2019, the sequel was given a bigger budget to create a wider array of characters than the first film, he adds.
"White Snake 2 is more than 30 minutes longer than its predecessor. We have around 250 animators who spent three years producing 2,343 shots," says Wong.
In a bid to inspire the animators and nurture their imagination, the franchise's studio, Beijing-based Light Chaser Animation, set up a library with a rich collection of books about ancient culture and history.
Wong says that his current favorite is Shanhaijing (The Classic of Mountains and Seas), a compilation of stories, featuring mythical geography and fantastic creatures.
Most modern scholars believe the collection-which exists across 18 scrolls-was penned by more than one anonymous writer more than 2,000 years ago.
From Little Door Gods (2016) to White Snake (2019) and New Gods: Nezha Reborn (2021), with its focus on shooting computer-generated features with a cultural touch, Light Chaser Animation has established itself as one of the most successful Chinese animation studios.
Wong recalls that he joined the studio after being part of the 2014 short film, Little Yeyos, about seven celestial beings who only go out and work during the night.
"Over the past 10 years, I have been proud to see the development and progress of the Chinese animation industry," says Wong.
"With the rise of China, domestic talent is becoming more confident in telling stories rooted from our own culture."
He also reveals that the studio may consider producing spinoff films for several of the most popular supporting characters, such as a two-headed fox spirit.
Currently, White Snake 2 had grossed around 450 million yuan as of Aug 10, which, according to live tracker Beacon, has propelled this year's box-office receipts past the key threshold of 30 billion yuan.
Source: By Xu Fan | China Daily | Updated: 2021-08-11 08:08