The Monkey King (miniseries)

*The Monkey King*
The Monkey King
	Hallmark Entertainment; RTL
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	March 11 –; March 12, 2001

The Monkey King, also known as The Lost Empire, is a 2001 television

Peter MacDonald and written by Asian American dramatist David Henry Hwang

.

Plot

Nicholas Orton (played by Thomas Gibson) is an American businessman who has lived in China for several years. He has a chance encounter with a beautiful Chinese lady (played by Bai Ling) who says that he is the only one who can save the world from reverting five-hundred years. He is unswayed by this until many modern buildings begin disappearing before his eyes. This mystical lady (revealed later as Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion) transports him to a portal which offers entrance, through the teachings of Confucius (played by Ric Young), to the ancient Chinese underworld.

When Orton (soon to be named The Scholar From Above) reaches the other side of the portal, he finds that his studies of Confucius will come in handy for the path that lies ahead. Orton's first action is to rescue

Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, from the mountain in which he has been imprisoned for centuries. Wukong travels with Orton in his quest to save the original manuscript of Journey to the West from retroactive destruction; if the story itself is erased from history, all of the people who were ever inspired by the lessons it teaches will be worse off, and history will permanently change for the poorer. They are later joined by Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) and Sha Wujing

(Friar Sand) to help them on their way.

Reception

Robert Bianco of USA Today called it "silly and confused."^[1] Variety called it "tedious" and said "all the strong technical work comes across as the outer shell of an empty nut."^[2]

The ratings for the miniseries were poor; it recorded one of the lowest ratings ever for a miniseries on NBC. Critics said it was due to oversaturation of special-effects-driven miniseries dropping in popularity.^[3]

Release

The film is available on DVD and videocassette. There was also a novelization of the miniseries by Kathryn Wesley released under the title The Monkey King.

References

^ Bianco, Robert (September 13, 2006). "What to watch Thursday". USA Today. Archived from the original on May 5, 2008. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
^ Oxman, Steven (March 7, 2001). "Review: 'The Lost Empire'". Variety. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
^ Durfee, Rob. ""Will & Grace" News Archive - 2001". durfee.net. Retrieved February 15, 2024.

External links

The Monkey King at
IMDb

[1] Bianco, Robert (September 13, 2006). "What to watch Thursday". USA Today. Archived from the original on May 5, 2008. Retrieved February 15, 2024.

[2] Oxman, Steven (March 7, 2001). "Review: 'The Lost Empire'". Variety. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved February 15, 2024.

[3] Durfee, Rob. ""Will & Grace" News Archive - 2001". durfee.net. Retrieved February 15, 2024.

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v t e Works by David Henry Hwang
Full-length plays	FOB (1980) Family Devotions (1981) Rich Relations (1986) M. Butterfly (1988) Face Value (1993) Golden Child (1996) Peer Gynt (1998) Tibet Through the Red Box (2004) Yellow Face (2007) Chinglish (2011) Kung Fu (2014)
Short plays	The Dance and the Railroad (1981) The House of Sleeping Beauties (1983) The Sound of a Voice (1983) As the Crow Flies (1986) Bondage (1992) Trying to Find Chinatown (1996) Bang Kok (1996) Merchandising (1999) Jade Flowerpots and Bound Feet (2001) The Great Helmsman (2007) A Very DNA Reunion (2010) Cain and Abel (2014)
Film/television	Blind Alleys (1985) M. Butterfly (1993) Golden Gate (1994) The Lost Empire/The Monkey King (2001) Possession (2002) The Affair (2016)
Music theatre	1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1988) The Voyage (1992) The Silver River (1997) Aida (2000) Flower Drum Song (2001) Ainadamar (2003) The Sound of a Voice (2003) Tarzan (2006) Alice in Wonderland (2007) The Fly (2008) Dream of the Red Chamber (2016) An American Soldier (2018) Soft Power (2018)