The Lion Boy 2: A Realistic Portrayal of Underdog Resilience
Among this year’s domestic animated film releases, The Lion Boy 2 undoubtedly stands out. With its profound realistic touch, fervent coming-of-age theme, and exquisite audiovisual narrative, the film presents a story of grassroots individuals battling against capitalistic forces.
The Essence of Grassroots
The film features A Juan’s two close friends, nicknamed A Mao and A Gou, which are common nicknames for grassroots individuals in reality. Centering the narrative around A Juan and others’ lives, experiences, emotions, and psychology, the film incorporates traditional cultural elements like lion dance and martial arts. Through a commoner’s perspective, it reveals the plight of ordinary people, expresses their emotions, and showcases the beautiful qualities of resilience, upward mobility, steadfastness, and indomitable spirit inherent in them.
Two Conflicting Evaluation Systems
As a sports-themed film, The Lion Boy 2 presents two evaluation systems. The first is the conventional success of a competition. If A Juan could win first place in the fighting competition and take home the 300,000 yuan prize, he would be considered successful. However, this evaluation system is worldly, crude, and result-oriented. The film embodies the pursuit of this level of success in the Jin Xin Martial Arts School and its entire operational system. They are willing to win at all costs because victory brings them countless benefits.
Initially, driven by the pressure to survive, A Juan and his Qiu Zhen Martial Arts School entered the evaluation system set by Jin Xin Martial Arts School. With the help of Coach Zhang Wate, A Juan worked hard on the basics. With extraordinary talent, diligent practice, and the right methods, he advanced rapidly, transforming from a grassroots lion dance teenager into a rising star in the fighting arena. He originally achieved much success within the established evaluation system, but precisely because he was deeply involved, he suffered many injuries from behind-the-scenes manipulators.
Dark Side of Competition
First, in the arena, A Juan’s coach, Zhang Wate, discovered that when A Juan was at a disadvantage, the referees would deliberately delay the time, increasing the chances of A Juan’s failure by delaying the end of the match. This was because Jin Mu Yang, the owner of Jin Xin Martial Arts School and the organizer of the competition, had already bribed the referees, commentators, and other parties involved in the competition. Later, A Juan’s strength improved rapidly, and he won many matches, but he suffered other serious setbacks from behind-the-scenes manipulators. A group of troublemakers from Jin Xin Martial Arts School maliciously spread rumors about A Juan, Xiao Yu, and others, inciting uninformed netizens to denounce them, and A Juan lost his qualification to continue participating in the competition.
Echoes of Hong Kong Cinema and a Deeper Narrative
The film’s narrative echoes some Hong Kong inspirational films. For example, when Coach Zhang Wate takes A Juan through the streets to find the other three of Qiu Zhen Martial Arts School’s former “Four Heavenly Kings,” it resembles the scene in the film Shaolin Soccer where Stephen Chow’s character, the fifth senior brother, takes football coach Ming Feng to find the other five once-famous Shaolin disciples. From the perspective of story connotation alone, The Lion Boy 2 is richer and more diverse than Shaolin Soccer. The former uses fighting as an excuse to showcase the cruelty of commercial warfare, the alienation of people by capital, the bitterness of ordinary people, and the perseverance of traditional martial arts, while the latter simply tells a story of overcoming external unfavorable factors with internal causes that are constantly becoming stronger, and ultimately achieving victory.
Similarly, the villains who have the advantage and are aggressive in the competition use cheating behavior. In Shaolin Soccer, the Qiang Xiong side abuses chemical drugs to rapidly improve the players’ physical fitness. In The Lion Boy 2, Jin Mu Yang’s side allows Xiao Zhang Yang to add plaster powder to the hand bandages to increase the strength of the punches. Qiang Xiong’s conspiracy was discovered by a third party after losing the game, while the film The Lion Boy 2 obviously focuses on revealing Jin Mu Yang’s conspiracy. After a sports reporter discovered the suspicious points, A Juan and his party began to prepare to expose Xiao Zhang Yang’s fraud in public. On the ring, A Juan broke Xiao Zhang Yang’s gloves, and the scene of the solidified plaster powder scattering formed the climax of the film.
Beyond Victory: Defining Success on Your Own Terms
Director Sun Haipeng said in an interview that he has “no resonance with the cool stories of becoming a chosen one.” He wants to tell the story of an ordinary teenager’s small highlight moment. In A Juan and others, another level of evaluation system for success is introduced. It is not necessary to win every game, but outside the game, when you cannot compete with your opponent, you should do what you can. Perhaps you can’t find a chance to turn around even if you try hard, just as A Juan can’t win the competition system controlled by capital, nor can he get much benefit after exposing the other party’s fraud, but he needs to try his best to prove right and wrong once.
Countless films have exhausted their efforts to find various solutions for the protagonist to truly win the game. Although these solutions are becoming more and more logically appropriate and reasonable, their core is still winning. At present, more and more films containing competitive elements are breaking away from the single value of “victory and failure” in the story direction, cleverly jumping out of the trap of “only the successful are right”, but expanding the evaluation system behind it and re-discussing what is success and what is failure.
In fact, when a person is in a system set by others, he will be judged and restricted everywhere, but when he establishes his own evaluation system for success, he can deconstruct the existing evaluation criteria, and he does not have to fulfill the conspiracy of the capital that manipulates the game, just to “fight for a breath” for himself, fight back when he encounters bullying, be a down-to-earth person, and live like a weed in a city full of high-rise buildings. The film shows the unyielding and uncompromising tension and spirit that ordinary people still maintain under the heavy pressure of the environment, “not being blown down by the wind,” just like the ending song sings, “Nameless people, I salute you with a glass of wine” “Salute you for bending over and walking uphill to a higher place.” In this way, there is no need for traditional fighting victory, and you have already achieved your own victory.