Jeon Wu Chi---East Asian superhero

Unlike the other blockbusters we have watched in this semester, Jeon Woo Chi: The Taoist Wizard based its story on traditional folktale and departs from the theme of reunification. It's generally a fun movie to watch, the trio Taoist Wizards and Woo Chi's dog-turned-man sidekick use exaggerated facial expression and ridiculous acts for comic effect. However I found it hard to keep track of the plot in the first 45 minutes, the setting is chaotic and the conversations happen way too fast to follow. Most of the time I was just staring at the subtitles and tried to figure out what's going on. I was a little bit overwhelmed and completely zoomed out during the the part when Woo Chi was framed by the three Taoist gods into the scroll. But luckily, I was able to make it through the rest of film regardlessly. Perhaps, it's due to the simple story and conventional settings of the characters. Especially the character Woo Chi, reminds me a lot of the protagonist Sun Wukong from Journey to the West, one of the Four Great Classical Novels in Chinese literature. Sun Wukong is a monkey who acquires supernatural power through Taoist practices, and he also has a master who he protects in their way to pilgrimage. He has plenty of strength, like transforming into different animals and people, using his hair to make colones of himself, and his weapon is a golden cudgel that can change its seize just like the one Woo Chi has. For me, Woo Chi brings nostalgia and makes me feel like he is actually the Sun Wukong, who is just transformed into a South Korean Taoist magician. What I found interesting is the fact that the goblins are actually not that bad, they do not tend to destroy the city and the motivation of their evil deeds are not fully explained in the story. They're just bad villans. And they're portrayed as half human half animal, which also shares similarity with the Chinese fictionized novel I talked about earlier. However, the three gods are extremely stupid and useless, they are the one who messed up everything. The protagonist Woo-chi is rather a anti-superhero since what he really cares is building his own fame and flirting with the beautiful widow. Another thing to mention, this film was released in 2009 Christmas after Avatar. Although it was categorized as a blockbuster in South Korea, it only accounted for one-fifth of the budget of Avatar. Nevertheless, Woo Chi did not lose the battle with Avatar. So what drew Korean audience to the cinema? I think in this movie, the casts really do a good job in making their rather simple characters fun and dynamics. I am so used to Kang Dong-won being melancholy,so it's nice to see him goofying around.