For jttw and Chinese animation fans, there is an upcoming origin story movie about….the Eight Immortals 八仙….and it is a HEIST FILM.
They cast the Eight Immortals in the famed Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea folk myth (where they, presumably, are conning themselves to enlightenment?!) as…an Oceans Eight style movie. I adore it.
Eight Immortals - Wikipedia
I really really really love this! I’ve never made the connection that this is another instance in history of ‘pull a team together to pull off a cool task.’ Filmography credits it a lot to the Japanese film ‘Seven Samurai,’ but undoubtedly it predates film. Cool people with unique abilities banding together are a universal folk and storytelling staple. The idiom of the ‘Eight Immortals each revealing their unique power’ is exactly another rendition of this. I’ve just never made the connection - I so so so love people recontextualising and modernising and playing with historical things like this. I love it so much because the Eight Immortals are a ragtag group, but also a cross section of society - old and young, rich and poor, men and women, and each has their own talent and shortfall and personality. And they all attain immortality and year after year go to the peach banquet together or something. They are representative of humanity, and society.
