Christopher Young has composed the music for the upcoming fantasy action adventure The Monkey King. The film is directed by Pou-Soi Cheang (Dog Bite Dog, Accident) and stars Donnie Yen in the title role, alongside, Aaron Kwok, Chow Yun-Fat, Peter Ho, Kelly Chen and Joe Chen. The movie is based on selected chapters of Wu Cheng’en’s novel Journey to the West and tells the story of how the Monkey King rebels against the Jade Emperor of Heaven. Edmond Wong (Ip Man) has adapted the material for the screen and Agan (Don Quixote) is producing the Mandarin Films and Filmko Pictures production. The Monkey King will be released in China, Hong Kong and other Asian territories on January 31, 2014. A release in the U.S. later in 2014 is expected.
I'm actually looking forward to this for two reasons. One, being that I'm a big fan of Christopher Young. Two, I'm almost finished reading the four volume set of Journey to the West (aka Monkey King). I'm currently halfway through Vol. IV and I will say this much - Journey to the West is without a doubt the longest book i've ever read (2,300+ pages) and one of the most fun. Monkey is always battling demons and evil spirits in every chapter. I think Young is going to have a good time scoring this film.
Having lived with someone who is Asian for now 18 years, I can honestly say that I have seen my fair share, if not more, of Chinese/Hong Kong and everything else SE Asian kind of film. With the exception of a few, I cannot remember nary one of their titles. But I know I've seen one with Jet Li who played the Monkey King. It was entertaining but damned silly. This one looks more like "The Cowardly Lion King" than a monkey.
Chinese martial art fantasy films really do nothing for me. The fight scenes are typically ENDLESS. They go on and on and on...just when you think it's over, that a character is down for the count the third time, it starts a new. Tiresome for the most part. Some are fun, yes but their fantasy films like this just wear on me.
Now movies like The Red Cliff or The Emperor and the Assassin, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, bring em on. And their gangster films are always fun to watch.
With all the positive comments I read about the score I am surprised no album was made available overseas so far. I thought they are releasing any movie music in the Asian territories. This film has been out there for, what, four months now? Hopefully the album situation is because they're waiting for the US premiere later this fall, and not because nothing is planned at all.
Christopher's film scores are often far superior to the films, and he is pretty open minded about scoring some pretty off beat, odd and dark stuff. It is pretty similar to his late mentor Jerry Goldsmith, although he tends towards more horror than Jerry liked to do.
ok, the movie is simply terrible.remember the cgi-heavy sequel to one of tsui harks classics? this level of terrible.i feel sorry for donnie yuen.and while the music is a lot of fun it has been edited to death. same sequences over and over again until your ears start to bleed.i really hope it comes out in the intended form.
The movie is the worst possible CGI crap anyone could imagine, but surprisingly it did pretty damn well in China as it seems so it is quite weird that no album has been released there yet... The score is simply outstanding - this was just one short action piece but the score has so much more to offer. Hopefully this won't end up like KILLING SEASON last year, which was easily one of the best 5 scores of the year...
