Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back

Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back is a 2017 Chinese fantasy-adventure directed by Tsui Hark and written and produced by Stephen Chow — a sequel to Chow’s 2013 Conquering the Demons. Adapting Wu Cheng’en’s classic novel, it follows Tang Sanzang (Kris Wu) and his quarrelsome disciples, among them Sun Wukong (Lin Gengxin), through a run of demon-hunting episodes; Yao Chen and Lin Yun co-star. It opened in China in January 2017 and became one of the year’s biggest local hits.

Few genres stress a pipeline the way the Chinese fantasy epic does. Demons and shapeshifters are creature-design and character-animation problems, with fur, scale, cloth and muscle simulation running underneath every performance; the worlds they move through are full CG environments and matte paintings rather than locations; and the set pieces call for destruction and fluid simulation at considerable scale. Behind all of it sits a vast amount of rotoscoping, keying and compositing to marry live-action players to almost entirely synthetic surroundings. Terminal FX contributed visual effects and animation to the production as part of its film, television and commercial portfolio.