logo Sign In

Da Nao Tian Gong -- The Monkey King - Uproar In Heaven (1965) RESTORATION v2 (Released)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Version 2 released! See post on page 6.


This is my project:

Sun wu kong - Da Nao Tian Gong AKA The Monkey King - Uproar in Heaven (AKA Havoc in Heaven) (1965)

  • To restore the complete chinese version from best possible sources w/english subs and possibly also international narrations/dubs.

This is classic Chinese animation, and you may have seen it on tv in the 80’s (at least in Europe, where it was quite popular apparently).

Unfortunately the only dvd available (the 40th anniversary ed.) is Chinese only (no English subs), and, while being a rather nice transfer, it is missing quite a lot of footage - 20+ mins. I’m guessing either due to print damage or lost footage. It’s sad though that they apparently didn’t have the resources to locate another print so we could at least have had a complete version…

After I learned that the dvd was sadly incomplete, I scoured the depths of the interwebs trying to locate a complete version, and I did manage to locate several European versions and a complete Chinese version. Now regrettably, none of them are all that great, and they certainly can’t compare with the ‘40th’ dvd.

Now, my plan is to take the 40th anniversary dvd and re-insert those ‘lost scenes’ (+ english subs) so we can finally get a complete international version… Also I’m considering adding additional dubs/narrations. Of course restoring everything as best as possible (color-correcting, stabilizing, some light dirt-removal etc.).

If necessary I will complete the project with the sources I have now, however, it would be very nice to have a higher, even slightly higher, quality version of the complete movie - which must exist (the complete Chinese version I found (which is rather washed out - it looks a bit like a telesync) seems to have come from a dvd).
Also it would be very nice to have the English audio which must also be out there somewhere.
Further, I also need help with some translating… There is a fan-sub of the ‘40th’ dvd which seems pretty good, however the restored scenes have no translation.

Please speak up if you know of or have access to any versions of the movie I’m not aware of!

And let me know what you think or if you have any other ideas for this project…

Sources:

Da Nao Tian Gong (40th anniversary ed.) (DVD)
Da Nao Tian Gong (40th anniversary ed., Taiwan ed.) (DVD)
Da Nao Tian Gong (Complete ‘ts-like’ Chinese version) (DVD->DivX)
Apkungen/Kung Markatta (Swedish narration) (VHS->DVD)
Le Roi des singes contre le palais céleste (French dub) (VHS->DivX)
Abekongen (Danish narration) (TV->VHS->DVD)


The Monkey King - Uproar In Heaven (1965) FAN RESTORATION
Restored from the best sources currently available

PAL DVD5

Runtime: 114 mins.

Audio:
    Chinese Mandarin
    French
    English (Narration)
    Danish (Narration)
    Swedish (Narration)

Subtitles:
    English (Fansub)
    English (Alternate)
    Chinese Traditional
    Chinese Simplified

Fixes include:

  • Stabilized and cleaned image
  • Re-inserted 20+ mins. missing from the 40th anniversary edition
  • Hand-cleaned/repaired hundreds of frames
  • Color-corrected entire movie as best as possible
  • Restored stero audio from poorly faked 5.1 audio
  • Tried to make the audio slightly less grating
  • Added credits
  • Added reworked fansub and reworked Taiwan ed. subs, including new subs for the added scenes

Long:

BACKGROUND

The story is based on the earliest chapters of the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West.” The main character is Sun Wukong aka. the Monkey King, who goes to heaven in rebellion against the Jade Emperor of heaven.

The first part of the film was completed in 1961 by Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan. The second part was completed in 1964 with the assistance of Wan Chaochen and Wan Dihuan. Both parts of the film were screened together for the first time in 1965.

Both historically and artistically this should be considered an important movie in Chinese animation. Today when we think of foreign animation, many will probably just think of Anime (Japanese animation). But this movie affords a glimpse back to a time before the Cultural Revolution dealt Chinese animation a serious blow from which it (arguably) never recovered.

And it is simply a fun story with some beautiful animation! It certainly deserves a proper DVD release. Hence this FAN RESTORATION. Hopefully a proper restoration will be done at some point in the future, until then this is probably the best you’re gonna get…

VIDEO

Basically two versions of this movie exits:
The theatrical version, which has been released on vhs and on a Chinese bootleg dvd. This is also the version you might have seen on tv - it was aired in many European countries in the late seventies or early eighties.

And the 40th Anniversary Edition, an official Chinese dvd released in 2004.
It appears to be an earlier generation/different version than the theatrical version, and features some differences in framing and colors. This is the only official dvd release of the movie.

Both sources, unfortunately, has several problems:
The 40th Anniversary ed. has a very jumpy image that needed to be stabilized. It shows a lot of dirt and image degradation, many scenes shows a color shift towards green or another color - in some cases the color information was too far gone to be repaired/corrected. Also it has the dreaded ‘crushed blacks’ which destroys the details in dark scenes. Many frames are bad or has annoying writing on them. In many places it shows some strange ghosting or blended frames (fortunately not very noticable in motion). And of course, most importantly, it is missing over 20 minutes of the movie.
What is good about it is that it is sharper and more detailed than any other version, and when not too damaged, the colors are much more vibrant and colorful than ever seen before.

The theatrical bootleg DVD - like all theatrical versions, it is cropped differently, and the colors are rather different. More blue and red and lacking some yellow. This is a pretty poor transfer, rather soft and lacking detail, but it’s the best I’ve found.

This version mainly uses the video from the 40th Anniversary ed., with footage cut in from the Chinese bootleg DVD when the former was unusable or missing. I’ve tried my best to match the two versions, but they are very different in look and quality.

Dirt and damage have been removed to the best of my abilities, including repairing MANY frames by hand. A few bad frames still remain, they were simply to time consuming to fix properly.

The entire movie has been color corrected. It is still not completely consistent unfortunately, due to the sometimes heavy damage to the colors.

AUDIO

All the audio tracks was edited to sync with the restored version. Some light filtering was performed to unify the sound a bit and make the patches/edits less apparent. Also tried to tone down the sometimes very harsh sound.

Mandarin Chinese (stereo/mono)
Similarly to the video, the 40th Anniversary ed. audio was used where possible. The poorly faked 5.1 audio was converted back to stereo. This is the only known stereo source, so was preferred even though it has some weird artifacts in places. Audio from the Chinese bootleg DVD was spliced in where needed.

English Narration
From a vhs recording of the tv-broadcast.
Unknown narrator.

French Dub
From a digitized version of the original vhs.
This was recorded much too ‘hot’, so some distortion is inevitable in places. I’ve tried to restore some of the dynamics with an expander.

Danish Narration
From a vhs recording of the tv-broadcast.
Narrator: Povl Dissing

Swedish Narration
From a digitized version of the original vhs.
Narrator: Hans ‘Hasse’ Alfredsson

SUBTITLES

Chinese Simplified
Taken from the Chinese bootleg DVD, and synced to this version. A few lines are left untranscribed, and I couldn’t say how accurate it is.

Chinese Traditional
Simply converted from the above.

English Fansub
This is a slightly edited/modified version of the Duxty/foolip fansub that has been available for some time for the 40th Anniversary DVD. New translations of the re-inserted scenes was added.

English Alternate (default)
An alternate English translation based on the (bad) subtitles from the Taiwanese edition of the 40th Anniversary DVD, but very heavily edited and modified. Hardly a line has been left untouched.


The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations

Author
Time

I have never seen this film, but I was able to locate an English subtitle SRT file from the internet.  I'll PM you.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

I'll be very interested in this project...have been looking for a copy of this forever!!

Not sure what I can do to help as I'm lacking the necessary editing skills, but do have access to some editing software so might be able to help there (and learn at the same time!!)

The washed out quality of the Chinese print might well be due to the age of the master it would have been taken from...it is a fairly old movie.

2nd edit: I've just checked out the SRT and it only runs to 1:24:47.381, so the full 107min (or 114min according to the French version) would require additional translation of the scenes involved.

Author
Time
 (Edited)
Yes, the fansub that's available (by someone named 'Duxty') is for the 'cut' dvd.
Subs will have to be (and will be, somehow) added for the additional scenes.

The older, full version is simply a worse transfer - similar to a telesync. The new, shorter dvd is much sharper with much better colors, but also quite a lot of dirt.

I have all the software I need for this, the only thing that would be nice is better source material... And the English dub would be very nice also...

But the project will be completed regardless. ^_^

Edit: I do have the French version; it is the same as all the other full versions I believe, ~107mins@25fps, which is about 111-112min@24fps... Those 114 mins on imdb must be wrong... (I hope :) )

The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations

Author
Time

This is a great fan project! I have the new version of Uproar in Heaven, but I had no idea it was missing 20min. of footage! When I watched it again, I thought that it seemed to be missing scenes that I remembered from watching in the theatre, but that was so long ago that I thought it was just me. The discrepancy in runtime could be due to Pal speed up on the European versions.

I would like to help this project in any way I can. My brother is taking Mandarin classes and can help translate if necessary and I'm trying to track down an old VHS tape of the film in question, but even if I find it I doubt it's in any better quality than aything you already have. In any case good luck!

The original Star Wars trilogy: Our cultural history deserves to be preserved and should be available to the public like all great works of art!
Author
Time

It would also be in Mandarin. I've never seen/heard a dubbed version myself.

The original Star Wars trilogy: Our cultural history deserves to be preserved and should be available to the public like all great works of art!
Author
Time

I've heard of a swedish version on VHS, I've heard it should be possible to buy this version still.....

There was also a dubbed version in danish on the telly in my childhood - the speakers name was Poul Dissing (he was actually an exellent storyteller), I woul love to get such a danish version to someday show my not yet born kids ;)

Even an english version would make my day...

Author
Time

I'd never heard of this till I read your post.  I just watched the beginning of it on YouTube & was thinking this isn't for me but once it got past the opening credits I changed my mind real quick.

 

It looks very stylish & synergistic(?) with the music.

E Chu Ta!

Author
Time
Ok, a small update for anyone who might be following this project..

I've been working on an avisynth script for the movie, and it sure has a LOT of problems.
I'm trying to do stabilizing and some dirt removal, ideally you would have to do everything on a scene by scene (or frame by frame) basis, but that will probably be too much work for me. However even with an overall script, I think it is much improved.

Example of dirt removal:

Unfiltered:

Filtered:



Some frames have writing on them, I will repair/clean at least some of them by hand.

Before:

After:



Some frames a very damaged:



Some frames have a very strange 'ghosting' effect... I don't know what might have caused this. Looks like some bad temporal smoothing?? Almost impossible to fix I think (yes, it is on the original dvd and not caused by my filtering).



The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations

Author
Time

That looks great! Amazing work so far, really, for such an old animated film. Keep it up!

The original Star Wars trilogy: Our cultural history deserves to be preserved and should be available to the public like all great works of art!
Author
Time
 (Edited)

It looks like any transfer was done from the original film which will have suffered what looks like substantial damage over the last 40 years. The shot of Monkey in the forest with the smaller monkeys looks like it has some kind of water damage along the top edge, whilst the ghosting effect may well be from the film touching itself when in the reel. Unlike the west and Hollywood, the far east have not had very good storage vaults when it comes to their movie archive. In fact, right up until recently, major studios were routinely destroying older movies when it came to space. That allied to the climate over there means film stock has an extremely limited storage life, so it's not surprising to see that much damage to this movie. You've done well with the damage repair where possible though! I don't envy you having to sit there and sort out the damage on a frame by frame basis (on occasion!)

I'm looking forward to your end result - it's been a very long time since I last saw this movie...well over 20 years in fact!

Author
Time
 (Edited)

I found another SUB project (for all Monkey king cartoons) that maby can help (EDIT: cancelled due to lack of translators).

And (bit off topic) apparently Uproar.. is only the first in a series, also I found a freestanding movie in the same drawing style. All from the famous chinese story.

 

DVD

"Monkey King subdues the demon" 86min with English subtitles. :)

Movie clip and info here:

http://www.heychinese.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=14_15&products_id=205 (some other nice movies there too btw)

 

And a 8 VCD bundle, but they are not dubbed or subtitled :C.

 

VCD

1 "Havoc in Heaven"/("uproar in heaven") 106min 2VCD  (the long version) :)

2  VCD2 of #1

3 "The Stolen Ginseng" 43min

4 "3 Battles with the white bone demon" 86min 2VCD

5  VCD2 of #4

6 "Fighting fire mountain" 50min

7 "The three treasures" 42min

8 "The monkey king and Ding Ding" 42min

 

Info:

http://www.apkungen.info.se/ (The other SUB project)

http://www.chinasprout.com/shop/V005 (Bundle INFO and picture, here you can also find the "subdues the demon"  DVD)

http://www.cgcmall.com/Monkey_King_p/vc00swk.htm (Chinese)

 

Good luck!

Author
Time

Yes, there are other Monkey King movies...

In 1985 the same company (Shanghai Animation Film Studio) that did Da Nao Tian Gong/Uproar In Heaven made another theatrical movie featuring the Monkey King - Jin Hou Xiang Yao/The Monkey King Conquers the Bone Demon (AKA The Golden Monkey Conquers the Evil AKA Golden Monkey Subdued the Evil).

Similar to 'Uproar' this was also broadcast (in episodic format) on tv in various European countries, probably in the late 80's.

This movie is available on dvd with (bad) English subs; though as is unfortunately common with these Chinese releases it has various problems.. The 1-disc ed. has the theatrical version, it is watchable but the transfer is quite washed out, jumpy and flickery... The bonus disc on the 2-disc ed. has the episodic/tv version, this version looks a lot better but unfortunately someone decided to crop it quite badly to make it 16:9... A lot of the top picture is missing.. :(

Apparently further episodes was produced, most likely for tv only, but I have very little information on them.. They only seem to be available on vcd, and I don't own them. But I do believe they are produced by SAFS.

The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations

Author
Time

Those who are 'lucky' enough to be in the UK will be able to see the BBC's Olympic idents during their coverage of the games. They have done a stylised version of Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy working together to defeat various monsters, all in the Olympic style.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Update:
This project was on hold hold for a few weeks, as I had a lead on a dvd of the full version. However, while it had a few more lines of resolution it also had various other problems making the quality same or worse than the xvid I've been using...

The editing is nearly done. I did my first full encode yesterday, and I think it looks pretty good. A drop in quality for both audio and video was always unavoidable, but I've done my best to blend the two sources. This is the best it's gonna get until someone does another transfer...

I've tried color correcting the best I could. But the '40th' dvd, while sharp, is so messed up... The color is all over the place, and in many scenes the color information is damaged or even missing.

In one of the final scenes for example, all the blue is basically missing and no amount of color correction can get it back. This scene also had severely crushed blacks, you basically couldn't see what was happening (it is naturally a very dark scene). I've had to replace this scene though I didn't really want to.

Many scenes are shifted towards green or another color, and it really is impossible to make it completely consistent, also because the color sometimes fluctuates a lot just in a single scene... But it should be a lot better.

The work that remains is
- syncing the other language audio tracks, which is tedious work, but at least the Danish one will be done.
- translating a few more lines for the subtitles.
- fixing about a billion bad frames... Well there sure are many. I think it is unfeasible for me to fix them all, but I'll try and do some more..
- final color pass, if needed

Anyone up for some quality control? Just one maybe two guys, preferable someone familiar with the original dvd for comparisons. PM me if you're interested.


-

I'm considering releasing the complete 'long' version I have as a bonus disc to this. It is framed/cropped differently and has rather different colors, and is a lot blurrier, but in a way it is more consistent with itself at least. What do you think?

The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Wow, I'm shocked that you've accomplished so much already. Especially since you've done it all yourself without much help.

It would probably take forever to fix every bad frame, and to be honest considering how old the film is and the condition it has been kept in, it probably wouldn't be worth the effort considering all the other quality problems it would still have. Just fixing the big stuff is enough.

I think it's a great idea for you to release the complete 'long' version as a bonus disc, especially for people who have never seen it that way.

If you don't find anyone for quality control, I'd volunteer (although I'm all the way in Canada). I'm somewhat familiar with the old VHS transfer and I have a copy of the 40th anniversary version if that's what you mean about the original DVD.

 

 

The original Star Wars trilogy: Our cultural history deserves to be preserved and should be available to the public like all great works of art!
Author
Time
 (Edited)

Would be nice without a 25fps pal speed-up, is there any chance for the correct 24fps Blu-ray format?

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Sorry I can't be of assistance (no experience), but impossible?

Every frame is intact (well almost) and originally intended to run in 24fps. PAL just plays it erroneously fast, there must be authoring programs that can correct this and convert it to BD(24p). (or will converting distort it unacceptably?)

Anyway reason I want BD 24 is mostly the audio pitch-up of 25, but also why watch films incorrect when there's a choise.

Author
Time

I didn't say it was impossible, nor necessarily a bad idea.
But firstly I have no access to any hd equipment to test on, and I know noting about converting to a blu-ray compatible format..

Secondly, why do you want it? Is it only for the 24fps? An ntsc dvd would (very nearly anyway) deliver that... Another possibility, while not quite the same, would be a pitch corrected pal audio track.
Or is it also upscaling you want? Somehow I would assume anyone serious about hd would have some sort of quality upscaler for their dvds..

Anyway, if you (or anyone else) can provide me with some info on doing this sort of conversion, all the more likely it could happen.


PS: sweyland - not sure if you got my pm, but if you're reading this feel free to contact me if you still wanna help out..

The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations