August 7th, 2023 
Jackson Murphy 
Anthony Stacchi co-directed Sony Pictures Animation’s first feature, 2006’s hilarious Open Season, and Laika’s 2014 The Boxtrolls, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Now Stacchi is the director of new Netflix animated film The Monkey King, which debuts August 18th. In this Animation Scoop Q&A, Stacchi talks with me about this action-packed adventure, as well as his animation heroes and how he got started in the industry. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Anthony Stacchi: Originally I was trained as a 2D animator at CalArts. I’ve kind of done every kind of animation there is. For years I did TV commercials at studios that did a lot of mixtures. I’ve never been in one area for too long. I worked with Henry Selick for a while in the Bay Area on stop-motion projects. I always love stop-motion. When the opportunity came along to come to Oregon (where I still live) and work at Laika, I jumped. But I’ve done CG before and I love it.
Jackson Murphy: “The Monkey King” is so action-packed, very entertaining, and it has quite a story. And it’s got this action rivalry of The Monkey King vs. The Dragon King but also this core relationship.
AS: When I first met Peilin Chou, our producer, back in 2018, she had been developing the project for a while. And I had been trying to develop it at other studios and always could never get it started. The story was always considered culturally too difficult. “The Monkey King is too unlikable. The story is too complicated.” Usually they were the notes. Even though it had been made into movies many times in Asia, it had never been made at a western studio. When I met Peilin, one of the great ideas was to make this the first movie where Monkey interacts with humans. I love this little girl Lin. The more we worked on it, the more I thought it was a great way into the movie for a western audience who didn’t know anything about the mythology. Jolie Hoang-Rappaport is the actress who plays [Lin]. She’s a great foil for the greatest anti-hero in history, The Monkey King, who’s such an arrogant, selfish, stubborn jerk. You meet this little girl through sheer obstinacy. He’s got all the superpowers in the world. She’s got nothing. And she has to go up against him to save her village.
JM: The dynamic between the two characters is fantastic. Jimmy O. Yang voices The Monkey King. He also led “Rally Road Racers”, another terrific animated movie, earlier this year.
AS: He’s great. He brings a lot to it. He grew-up with The Monkey King story with “Journey to the West”, the original tale. He knew it really well. He also has this perfect balance to play Monkey who, in our story, since it is sort of an origin story, he’s a little bit of an adolescent monkey. He’s such a jerk that finding the right voice for him so you’re willing to stand a whole movie with such an arrogant character, Jimmy did a great job of making him approachable and likable, despite the fact that he’s such an arse.
Anthony Stacchi and Jackson
JM: (laughs) The Monkey King has a grand entrance. Very bold. How much focus did you really want to put into that?
AS: Our main focus all the way through the story, especially in working with our “Journey to the West” guru Stephen Chow (who’s our executive producer and a legendary Hong Kong film director) was how to tell the most authentic version of “Journey” that we could and still make it comprehensible to a western audience AND bring to it new elements, like Lin and that Monkey’s legendary fighting stick is anthropomorphized. He’s a speaking character. The beginning of the movie is very much the beginning of the folk tale. The first seven or eight chapters of “Journey to the West” are his origin story. We focused on that to introduce him. Stephen thought that was an interesting way to do it — a great way to introduce the character.
But he was very protective of other stuff. When I first read [“Journey”] 20 years ago, my first impression of it was how funny it is. I always thought it would be a great story for an animated film. Stephen’s emphasis was not to forget that ultimately it’s a spiritual journey. He didn’t want us to lose that idea. He wanted to keep Buddha in the story. He wanted to keep Monkey’s obnoxious personality arcing through the story. He wanted to make sure that we didn’t turn it into a version where Monkey becomes a completely good character. This is only the first chapter in his story. This is his first step on his spiritual journey.
JM: You are so right that the spiritual themes come through. And here’s one of the other big themes that I got out of the movie: It’s about acceptance. And it’s about outsiders trying to be let in and other people trying to let in outsiders. Does The Monkey King want to have another friend in his life? That theme is going to hit home for families.
AS: Yeah. Every generation has a need for a hero who stands up to authority figures… who fights his way in, even when people tell him “No”. He’s not going to [take] “No” for an answer. He’s often really obnoxious about it. That’s why he’s a perfect character for Lin. She’s really unique for female characters. She comes into the movie with a goal to do something special in the world and make something out of her life. Monkey wants to do a very similar thing. She has to convince him to help her. It’s a lot like a movie like “True Grit” — a little girl character has to convince a powerful character to help her, to get her what she wants. She’s only got her own resourcefulness to fall back on.
JM: I just watched some of the original “True Grit” for the first time recently. I had seen the Coen Brothers version.
AS: Glen Campbell! John Wayne!
JM: Yeah. Amazing performances. The action sequences in [“The Monkey King”] are unbelievable. They move at lightning speed. What are the challenges of getting into action scenes that have such pacing like these do?
AS: Storyboarding allows you to make it one frame at a time. We asked Stephen for a choreographer he thought would work well, and he introduced us to Siwei Zou, who’s great. We had our storyboard artists who had done martial arts before. We’d show them to Stephen and he’d go, “Okay. Not bad. Let’s talk to Siwei.” Siwei has a history in Peking opera, which is a really ornate way of moving — a mixture of dance and martial arts. We had been using Peking opera as an inspiration for our character designs and some of our posing. Siwei does that. And we also discovered halfway through that he’s a really talented 2D animator. He’s got all the tools. We would send him our storyboarded sequences for the five distinct sequences in the movie. Siwei would take our sequences, draw over the top of them and make suggestions for gags, all the while making sure the story beats and the character beats inside the fighting sequences were still there. He would make the poses much more authentic and tighter.
JM: Wow. There are so many great set pieces in the movie. And the clouds look beautiful.
AS: Stories in animation, as you know, go through a lot of changes. There was an earlier version of it that was much more inspired by Chinese brush painting. That inspiration stayed in the movie in the look of the film. It’s very atmospheric with clouds and fog. Very elegant and beautiful. We used that for the inspiration in creating Heaven, the ink-stained version of Hell and Buddha’s appearances in the big climactic storm. That’s [our production designer] Kyle McQueen and the great folks at Reel FX in Montreal who figured out how to do our cloud scenes.
JM: Nice. I feel like this movie is going to be an experience for families and young kids. What is the animated movie that gave you that awe-inspiring experience when you were younger and wanted to get into this business?
AS: There’s so many animated films! The film that inspired me the most when I was a kid was the original “King Kong”. You’re looking at it and you’re like, “Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Am I watching a movie?” It’s such a strange, magical experience. You love monster movies afterwards and the handmade quality of the effects. “King Kong” was my gateway drug for cinema. But my hero is a Russian animator named Yuri Norstein. He made “Tale of Tales” and “Hedgehog in the Fog”. They’re cut-out animation done on multi-plane. They’re gorgeous, super immersive, little folk tale feeling movies that I love. When I saw them when I got to school at CalArts, they’re the movies that made me fall in love with animation. And they’re a little bit of a mixer of all kinds: a little bit like stop-motion, a little bit like very live-action looking imagery. Incredibly beautiful. He’s my hero, along with Frederic Back, a Canadian animator who did “The Man Who Planted Trees” and “Crac!”
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