Stephen Chow's Journey to the West Conquering the Demons and The Demons Strike Back
As a fan of Stephen Chow and Journey to the West, it interested me a lot when I heard about these movies. This take on this classic story is quite entertaining and interesting to me. I find the comedy to be almost perfect, and the action scenes exciting. Both movies are good and would recommend them to anyone. If you're not familiar with either Stephen Chow or Journey to the West, but are at least interested it may be take a bit to take on though I think it has some good scenes that I think are worth watching these movies for. While both are connect, the actors are different in both so that is a bit odd but it doesn't take away my enjoyment for these movies.
The first movie, Conquering Demons, is about Tang struggling at being a demon hunter. He doesn't face against any small demons but 3 powerful demons. A skilled female demon hunter name Duan saves Tang from getting himself killed by these demons, and she does fall for him. She is an interesting character and can make being annoying rather entertaining to watch. This movie is mainly about Tang and Duan than the demons.
The sequel, The Demons Strike Back, is of Tang and his three disciples traveling and defeating demons. His disciples are a handful and make his journey of collecting sutras difficult. So this movie is mostly about the relationship between the monk and his disciples, mostly between the monk and the monkey king. Together they have trouble dealing with people and demons. The gang do not get along which is different from the many adaptations that have the disciples who are already loyal to their master. The flow of this second movie is faster than the first movie, and I enjoyed there's much less romance in this.
Story for both movies I think fits well for the length of the movie. Its a decent story but don't expect anything deep in these movies. Many of the female characters are rather flirty and sexual, romantic interest, or for laughs at their ugliness. That is probably my biggest issue, but I can understand that it maybe hard to break out of that old mold of female characters in a classic story as this. There is some classic music as well, and there is one track they like to reuse that I think was also in previous Stephen Chow movies, but its a good song so I didn't mind they kept reusing that track. The action doesn't take up too much time like they tend to do in hollywood movies. They are well done in my opinion. Overall, I think its worth watching these movies if you're interested in them. They are a bit refreshing take on this classic story which I appreciate.
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