Ne Zha II was a massive hit even before it landed in the United States. Sure, moviegoers, critics, and Film Twitter love dissecting box office numbers and what they say about Hollywood, but often at the expense of talking about quality. Yet Ne Zha II, made in China by director Jiao Zi and co-distributed in the States by A24, proves just how little those online voices actually know.

Why? Because despite not being on most Americans’ radars, this is currently the highest-grossing film of 2025—and the highest-grossing animated movie of all time. It has already earned over $2 billion worldwide, more than double the numbers for the live-action Lilo & Stitch and surpassing Inside Out 2’s record just months after release. An English dub may raise its profile, especially with Michelle Yeoh among the cast, but most U.S. audiences may go simply to see what could justify Jeff Bezos–level profits. Once you witness Ne Zha II in all its stunning operatic glory, from character designs to fight scenes, you’ll understand why it took the world by storm. This film rules.

A direct sequel to 2019’s Ne Zha, the film pushes its mythological conflicts even further, adapting tales from the 16th-century Chinese novel The Investiture of the Gods. The rebellious, buck-toothed child Ne Zha (Crystal Lee) and the dignified dragonborn youth Ao Bing (Aleks Le) are linked as reincarnations of the Demon Orb and Spirit Pearl, two mystical forces born of the all-powerful Chaos Pearl. The catch: Ne Zha, the youngest child of generals Li Jing (Vincent Rodriguez III) and Lady Yin (Yeoh), was originally meant to embody the Spirit Pearl. Now he must reconcile his demonic nature with his drive to become a hero.

Stuck in spirit forms, both Ne Zha and Ao Bing need new bodies. The flamboyant immortal Master Taiyi (Rick Zieff) attempts to restore them to human form, but before he succeeds, Ne Zha’s village is attacked by Ao Bing’s father, the Dragon King Ao Guang (Christopher Swindle). Mistakenly believing the villagers killed his son, Ao Guang unleashes an immortal demon and its army of crustacean-like abyss monsters. Ao Bing saves the village, but at the cost of overexerting and destroying his body. Ne Zha lets his friend’s soul share his own, but they only have one week to find a solution before Ao Bing disappears: Mortal bodies can’t contain two souls.

The film’s world is teeming with magic, martial arts, and exotic settings. Mortals and immortals coexist uneasily, and the cast of characters includes angelic deities, flying pigs, sentient marmot villages, and imprisoned dragons plotting their escape. All of this is rendered in CGI animation that mixes semi-realism with bold stylization, making the characters and landscapes feel larger than life. The filmmakers, however, are uninterested in handholding. Though the spectacle draws you in, the rapid changes in tone—from wuxia action to juvenile humor to tragic melodrama without warning—might take some getting used to.

At heart, Ne Zha II is a grand epic filled with mythic personalities and superhuman feats, grounded by loyalty to family, friends, and personal ambition. Some major twists are predictable, but the sheer spectacle more than compensates. Fight sequences channel the best of Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo-ping choreography, with dashes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Final Fantasy. Combat blends martial artistry with elemental powers and supernatural weapons, creating a visual overload that makes even the “Spider-Verse” movies look like mid-tier DreamWorks efforts.

The final act delivers one of the year’s greatest set pieces. Without giving too much away, it involves a massive cauldron doubling as a prison and an aerial clash between two armies numbering in the thousands. Keeping track of the chaos is nearly impossible, and that’s not even counting the many wild battles leading up to it. The nonstop action sometimes threatens to overshadow character development, but the sheer ambition behind these sequences makes the film’s global box office triumph easy to understand. At this point, Ne Zha II doesn’t need Hollywood’s validation. Still, an Academy Award win next year would be a fitting bonus.