Monkey King: Havoc in Heaven's Palace

The origin story of a legendary figure in Chinese culture. Sun Wukong the monkey king, the inspiration for so many popular anime, manga, tv, movies, and books. Comes to life in this amazing film. That tells his story from his joyful years as ruler of his own kingdom to his fall from grace, when he loses everything. The prequel to the journey to the west begins here.

Honestly the movie is gorgeous, and fantastic graphic, I love Donnie Yen (not Chen, Yen is know for Ipman, Heros, Star wars rouge one, Crouching Tiger, Hidden dragon) his pole work is fantastic, and he does a great monkey king, which is one of the hardest characters to play good. The move has some fantastic wire work int he fight scenes and it breaks you heart when the kill off Ruxue.The only thing I could really wish for is better letter boxing on the captions, often the scenery and back ground hid the captions and you couldn't read it well. Otherwise I know this is one of China's favorite stories and I have the story of the Monkey King since I was old enough to watch moveis and saw it back in '59 / '60 in Okinawa Japan on the big screen.

Nice addition to any fan of monkey king stories.

Though a slightly changed version of the story, it is still quite a ride. personally I'm looking forward to buying the second and third installment. it's all in Chinese with English subtitles, and I can honestly say, this is my favorite Chinese movie, of all time.

It has a great story of the monkey king and I can't wait to get my hands on the fourth.

My husband saw this movie on Amazon and since we like different movies we purchased it, WE loved it.. Even though it has English subtitles … you are able to keep up with the entire movie. We have ordered Monkey King 2 and 3 as well.

While I do love martial art fantasy films, especially the ones from Hong Kong, this one was just a bit too silly. Don't get wrong, I wanted to like this film but I just had a hard time getting into it. For those unfamiliar, the story centers around the "Monkey King" character who was from an old but popular chinese story called "Journey to the west". It's basically about a shapeshifting monkey with superpowers who ends up having to fight both the forces of heaven and hell. It's pretty wild but also kind of fun, at least in concept. I feel like I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I had been more familiar with the "journey to the west" story or the chinese buddhist mythology that it is based on, but to someone unfamiliar, it just comes across as bizarre and nonsensical. So many characters are constantly pulling out magic powers that the film never established them having and its really unclear just how powerful some characters are or what exactly they are capable of doing. The movie also just throws so much weird stuff at you without any explanation or any sense of how it functions in the context of its own narrative that it becomes rather difficult to be invested in whats happening in the story. It is creative I suppose and we do get the novelty of seeing famous martial artist Donnie Yen in this ridiculous Monkey makeup(which is actually pretty good all things considered. Very similar to the Tim Burton "Planet of the Apes" film). This could have at least been an entertaining popcorn film, but sadly the visuals aren't too good. While they're are some pretty good practical makeup effects and beautiful set design, a majority of the film uses terrible CGI effects that are pretty hard to ignore. Almost all of the fight scenes are just characters in front of a green screen with horrendous CGI effects flying at the screen. The actual martial arts on display are ok but nothing memorable. It's clear that the filmmakers were less concerned with the fight choreography and more concerned with flashy special effects which is a shame because the special effects on display are not the best. and lastly... the monkey king character himself is... well.. pretty annoying at times. While Donnie Yen does do a good job acting wise, the character he plays acts like an annoying child most of the film. Think of him like Jar Jar Binks from star wars but even more annoying. So yeah, between the main character being unlikable, the special effects being terrible, and the story just being too nonsensical, I can't in good faith recommend this film. Unless perhaps your just a huge Donnie Yen fan and want to see him playing a monkey with superpowers, I'd skip it. I will say, the film does have some nice art direction here and there but most of it is lost in the flashy CGI effects that overpopulate the film. The film is also pretty tame with most of the action being kid friendly and while the Monkey King himself is annoying, I could definitely see small kids enjoying him; so this film could be enjoyed as a weird kids film if your looking something like that.

I've seen the other ones and this is the best.