Saie S. Surendra Talks Monkey Enters Lanka
‘Monkey Enters Lanka’ is based on a famously retold folktale but from a more dark and gritty angle, focusing on the angle of Women Empowerment and Cultural Exchange. This is the miniature low-budget proof-of-concept version to Writer and Director Saie S. Surendras magnum opus. Saie is a Motion Graphics & VFX artist who has worked on several Hollywood franchises including ‘Planet of the Apes’, ‘Deadpool’, ‘Kingsman’ and ‘Alita’. He also has significant on-set experience from the Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood film industries.
As Monkey King enthusiast, Surendra has also been part of several theatrical projects devoting time to props and performance. He has pioneered his illustrative comic book in both English and Chinese.He is best known for his documentary series, Legends of a Monkey God.
This film takes inspiration from ‘Sin City’ and ‘300’. With his love for VFX, this film was originally planned to be all live-action, but with the 2020 corona lockdown, he decided to combine Anime and Live-Action elements.
Surendra is in talks for a series in Chinese-English language following this storyline as well as a producing a feature-length Chinese-Indian movie called ‘Anjana: Monkey Queen’.
We got the chance to catch up with Saie S. Surendra to talk about his film.
Hi Saie, thanks for chatting to us.
How did you put together the orchestral soundtrack?
I called together a lot of friends who were singers and additional friends of friends through Vishakha and Yu Lei and told them I am building an orchestra. Bear in mind, these were singers across the world, from UK to China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore. But I told them, we aren’t meeting up. I am going to send you a master track and some lyrics, sing along to it and give me back the file. Then I combined everyone’s singing together and had Adrii the composer mix it together.
WOW! You have done a great job getting everyone together.
What is the aim of this project, and its future?
This was just a storyboard or a proof-of-concept for my bigger idea. So many scenes are missing from this short film which easily make up a trilogy, or even a 9 season long series, and this is my big dream. I had to make this film to prove my point because when people hear ‘Monkey King’, they usually think of the Japanese comedy series ‘Monkey’ or Chinese series ‘Journey to the West’ which have been done several times. Others think of the indian series ‘Ramayana’ which has also been done several times. But when I read the books, I saw things very differently to how they were always being brought to the screen. There are some deep and sensitive topics that have been left unexplored, but by telling people my idea, I felt it wasn’t getting anywhere. Hence, this short. In the future I will have a series on this plot, potentially in Chinese. I also have a feature script prequelling the Monkey King’s birth.
That all sounds great. It’s good to see a different take on this.
Why all the random usage of different languages?
Cultural exchange is very important to me. I wanted to tell stories that can captivate multiple cultures at the same time. I grew up with Tamil films, but I quickly realised that even if there was an amazing English or any other foriegn film I wanted to share with my family, they were not interested simply because they didn’t know the cast or it wasn’t in their native language. It was a shame, especially as I really loved Chinese cinema and there were so many foriegn gems. Then I realised it wasn’t just my family but most audiences of most cultures. When I see films that have gone the extra mile to appeal to multiple cultures, I feel happy.
In the disclaimer, why do you state ‘based on a True Story’ when it is based around a Mythological book?
Because often a lot of very ancient tales get labelled Mythology or Fantasy which usually means that none of it happened. I felt this is an important issue to tackle, a great folktale may have had many fantastical elements that were inserted by fanatics over the years but it doesn’t mean it was all “made up”, in the case of Ramayana and Journey To The West, many of the events mentioned did indeed take place. The sites where they took place even exist today. The quarrel you may have is whether there was really a monkey species involved. This is where you’re allowed your opinion because there are two sides here, one that claim Hanuman’s race were actually just humans who dwelled in the jungle and were branded as ‘monkey people’, another side also claim that by the theory of evolution, it suggests there were once a talking monkey race which may have gone exist, this story takes place over 7,000 years ago!
It is a very interesting way of looking at it.
Who is your target audience?
At the surface it’s a Superhero-Fantasy film told in a neo-noire arthouse style, kind of like ‘The Spirit’ or ‘The Dark Knight’. Also for those who love films with Monkey protagonists like ‘King Kong’ and ‘Planet of the Apes’.
Ultimately, this is about the particular fan base of the main character, ‘Hanuman’ also referred to as ‘Monkey King’ or ‘Sun Wukong’. The Monkey King is the Eastern equivalent to the entire Marvel and DC universe put together. Many in the West may know him through his derivative manga character ‘Son Goku’ from ‘Dragon ball’ or from the hit TV series ‘Monkey Magic’ or the Jackie Chan starrer ‘Forbidden Kingdom’. He is also an immensely popular video game character in Dota, Smite and League of Legends.
Those in the East know him even better with the countless Movies and TV shows that are based on his legends. Every year there are at least 2 or 3 different franchises producing very successful films on him. Just to name some recents, there was ‘Journey to the West 2’ ($240M+), ‘Monkey King 2’ ($187M+) and ‘Hero is back’ ($148M+).
Moreover, there are varying Monkey King legends across Asia. While China is more familiar with ‘Journey to the West’, India, Thailand and Cambodia are more acquainted with the ‘Ramayana’.
The Producer felt each region had many missing subplots to share and the best way to do this was tell each cultures story in a cross-cultural movie. So this film starts with ‘Ramayana’ but told with other cultural elements, and as I expected, ‘Journey to the West’ fans so far have been very excited to discover this ‘untold story’.
It does sound very exciting.
Why this stylistic choice? What was your influence?
Everything starts with a big dream. Likewise for me, ‘Monkey Enters Lanka’ as a feature is ‘Dark Knight’ and ‘Planet of the Apes’ meets ‘Lord of the Rings’, but the budget was out of reach. But for me it doesn’t mean you just sit and sulk. My biggest influence and inspiration was my favourite director Robert Rodriguez. I admired how he pulled of his first film ‘El Mariachi’ by reverse engineering from what he had available and how he experimented with low-budget shortcuts to pull off ‘Sin city’ with a big cast. This worked in my favour when we were hit with 2020 Corona lockdowns, at hand I had really good actors as friends, access to a yoga studio where I made my own blue screen and access to some local parks. With my love for VFX and animation, I was sure I could mix the styles to do something interesting, and reassured by films like ‘Sin City’ ($158M+) , ‘300’ ($456M+) and ‘Immortals’ ($226M+) which had succeeded with this before, I went for it! And I did manage to save a lot on production costs! But I wouldn’t recommend this method to anyone else unless they were well-versed in the post-production world, or had a good friend in that industry. The only reason it worked for me is because of my experience in post.
It sounds like you have a great team around you.
How did you film this during Corona lockdown?
Again, ‘Sin City’s method was what worked for me. All the actors were shot separately.
What??
Yes! As perplexed as all the cast initially were, they had no idea what they were reacting to apart from my friend Pedro or my sister Sara roughly reading the other characters lines to them. They were surprised to see how well it came together in the final film. This also helped us to focus on one character at a time and their costume, makeup and performance.
How and why did you mix live action and anime characters talking to each other?
Like I mentioned above, my friend or my sister read the lines of the other character, and to help (a little bit), my friend Pedro wore a Monkey King mask while reading the lines at times. But a lot of Carmen and Dhvel’s acting were left to the imagination, where I would tell them things like “people are burning in front of you, right here.. this bag is a man.. on fire” The reason was basically corona. Originally the Monkey King was meant to be live action. We had a costume and everything, but in the end I started animating a storyboard during my lockdown and quite liked the look, so the storyboard became the movie.
This is indie filmmaking at its finest!
Well good luck for your short and thanks for taking time out to chat to us.
WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW
A neo-noire Sin City-esque retelling of the popular Asian folk hero, the Monkey King, also known as ‘Sun Wukong’, ‘Hanuman’ or ‘Great Sage Equivalent of Heaven’. Based on the best-selling famous books ‘The Ramayana’ and ‘Journey to the West’, the film tells the story from the Monkey’s angle as he searches for a Princess that has been abducted by the tyrant Ravana whose atrocities have no bounds. Ravana is
about to find out that he went too far this time. This was not just any ordinary Princess.
The deeper the monkey goes into Lanka, the more atrocities he witnesses. He must trigger righteousness. He decides to make his mark, by wrecking havoc over the city. This adaptation places special focus on the cultural exchange between China and India along with Thailand, Japan and Cambodia where the Monkey King is highly celebrated.
