As of the moment this review goes live, Ne Zha II is the biggest movie of 2025.
Ne Zha II debuted in February of this year in the country that produced it, China, and its rollout across the world has generated over $2.2 billion. In fact, the film technically was released in the U.S. earlier this year, but in a subtitled version. The animated film has broken multiple box office records already, and at least one more company wants to get a sliver of that pie.
The famous film distribution and film production company A24 has produced an English dub to draw in audiences in the United States who missed the film earlier this year, or just didn’t want to read subtitles. I’m not here to evaluate A24’s business decisions, I’m here to review a movie they’ve produced a dub for. However, that business decision does intersect with the art in this particular case.
As the title indicates, Ne Zha II is a sequel. The first film in this franchise is Ne Zha (2019), and Ne Zha II isn’t just a sequel; it’s a sequel that appears to take place almost immediately after the conclusion of the previous film. I did not have the time to watch the previous film before seeing this, and I imagine most audiences who might wander into a theater showing Ne Zha II have not seen the previous film as well. It appears that A24 produced this dub with this fact in mind, trying its best to bring audiences up to speed on a dense fantasy mythology.
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