Course:ASIA325/2025/CJ7

CJ7, An Emotional Alien Children’s Movie: A Cross-analysis with E.T. and the Implications of what is Imagined

Key words: CJ7, Stephen Chow, children’s fantasy, imaginary, Hong Kong–China film, E.T., alien movie

Group Members' Contributions

Jason Jin: Film Reception, Alternative Interpretation

Xintong Hong: Introduction, Stories Behind the Film, Comparative Analysis

Yuke Cai: Scholarly Literature Review, Conclusion

Introduction

CJ7 is a 2008 Hong Kong Chinese sci-fi comedy film written, directed, and produced by Stephen Chow, who also stars in the movie with Xu Jiao and Kitty Zhang. The story follows a poor construction worker, Ti (played by Chow), who discovers a mysterious alien creature, later named CJ7, in a junkyard and brings it home for his young son, Dicky. Blending Chow-style humor with emotional connections, the film explores themes of poverty, parenting, and childhood imagination.

Throughout our film review, we will:

1. Share behind-the-scenes stories during the creation of CJ7.

2. Summarize and analyze the reception of CJ7 according to movie rating websites.

3. Summarize in detail the multiple interpretations of CJ7 by academics, showing the social significance that the film carries behind its fantasy.

4. Compare and contrast with E.T. the Extra Terrestrial to understand the performance of CJ7 in the children's sci-fi movie genre.

5. An alternative reading of the composition of CJ7, giving the movie a richer emotional and interpretative space.

6. Conclusion.

Stories Behind the Film

CJ7 has created many interesting and passionate stories during the filming of the movie, and this section will list some of them, based on the interviews with the creators and behind-the-scenes clips that are included in the CJ7 Blu-ray Disc.

During the casting process for the CJ7, Chow wanted to find a child who was "smarter and could understand what he was saying" to play the young hero Dicky, and after meeting thousands of children, he chose Xu Jiao, who was a girl, and had her perform the perfect role of a cross-dressing boy. Chow once teased in a production featurette, "I wonder if girls are smarter among kids these days?" Simply because when they first selected the best batch of Dicky's prep actors from a huge number of children, they were basically all girls.

In the character creation stage, as a co-production film in mainland China, Stephen Chow also indicated that when creating Dicky's family, he not only combined his own experience, but was also inspired by the many migrant workers in mainland China, and personally visited and studied the details and habits of their lives. Stephen Chow believes that this group of people are "poor but hardworking", and he revealed that he was once a migrant worker, so he has a deep empathy and interest in focusing on and digging out the stories of these marginalized people. As for another key character setting, the alien dog CJ7, Stephen Chow said directly in the interview that he loved dogs, so in the first draft decided on this cute alien creature "dog" image, and then in the styling design and reference to his own Pekingese dog in the past, with a big head, big eyes. The whole team even spent a few months to vote on whether CJ7 should have the ability to speak or not, and around the different settings to discuss the different possibilities of the plot, and finally created the current CJ7.

Indeed, as a sci-fi alien movie with children as its core audience, CJ7's role as the movie's core image is crucial. Stephen Chow also said in an interview that he had the ambition to create an "icon" from the very beginning, just like Mickey Mouse in the US and Doraemon in Japan, so he and his creative team wanted children to believe that such a creature exists in real life, which brought great challenges to the post-production VFX team. Eddy Wong, CJ7's VFX Supervisor, explained in an interview that in order to make CJ7's hair model produce the most realistic physical effects in different lighting environments and physical interactions, the team specially invited an expert from overseas to write the hair-making program, and then improved according to the scene (e.g. the bruise of CJ7 being beaten up, the wet effect of being stuffed into the toilet). In line with director Stephen Chow's habit of adjusting and reshooting during the shooting, a shot needs to be adjusted at least thirty times by the team, and some even need to be adjusted a hundred times. The process was painful, but it did create a vivid and realistic "alien dog" dream for the majority of children.[1]

Histories of the Film’s Reception

The reception for the movie CJ7 was very mixed. Just looking at the website Rotten Tomatoes and seeing the reviews over the years, we can see that the movie was quite split for many people. The praises and critiques seem pretty consistent over the years as well. Many praised the movie for its fantastical story telling as well as the lesson it wants to teach, others deride it for the weakness of the plot and a lack of structure. All of this leading to a 49% on Rotten Tomatoes. A lot of other websites also gave average scores, for example on IMDb the movie has a score of 6.4 out of 10. In terms of finding real-life historical things that happened in the backdrop of this film during its production that may have influenced it, this was quite a challenge. The only connection we were able to make was how this film was made and released around the same time as the 2008 Financial Crisis. Thus, the message of how integrity and virtue are more important than wealth in the movie makes sense in a time where the wealthy in real estate exploited the poor through predatory lending practices, leading to a recession.

Scholarly Literature Review

Scholarly literature reviews surrounding Stephen Chow’s CJ7 (2008) reveals a multifaceted engagement with the film’s intersection of fantasy, social critique, and cultural identity. While academic attention to CJ7 has been relatively limited compared to Chow’s earlier works like Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, existing scholarship approaches the film through several key analytical frameworks: cultural reception and Hong Kong-China relations, digital fantasy cinema and ecological critique, translation studies and linguistic authenticity, moral education through children’s fantasy, emotional realism amid social hardship, and narrative structure analysis. These scholarly perspectives collectively illuminate how CJ7 operates as both a commercial children’s film and a complex cultural text that negotiates local identity within globalized cinematic forms.

Matthew Chew’s 2022 article examines how Chinese audiences and institutions have received Stephen Chow’s films to better understand evolving Hong Kong–China cultural relations after the handover. Chew argues that although Chow has achieved major commercial success in mainland China (frequently topping box office charts), Chinese scholars and intellectuals tend to prefer his twentieth-century works, which are seen as more distinctively Hong Kong in style. These earlier films are valued for their Cantonese humor, grassroots satire, and underdog themes, while later films such as CJ7 (2008) are regarded as less locally specific and more commercially mainstream (p. 795). Even so, CJ7 was among the top-grossing films upon its release. However, by 2016 it had accumulated only 5.29 million views online, far fewer than Kung Fu Hustle (141 million) or The Mermaid (1.026 billion) (p. 797). Chew uses these disparities to suggest that box office success does not always correlate with long-term online engagement or cultural endurance. He also highlights the divergence between popular and institutional reception: although Chow remains widely loved by audiences, he received a celebrity social responsibility score of just 1.19 out of 100 in 2018, reflecting limited state endorsement (p. 798). Although CJ7 is not analyzed in detail, its placement in Chow’s twenty-first-century filmography supports Chew’s larger argument about the tensions between audience-driven popularity and official cultural agendas. Ultimately, Chew concludes that Chow’s films are embraced for their counter-hegemonic qualities, revealing that Hong Kong–China cultural exchange can be bottom-up, dialogic, and resistant to state control.

Isaac Ting-yan Hui’s (2024) article analyzes the English subtitles of Flirting Scholar and From Beijing with Love. He shows that Stephen Chow’s Cantonese-based humor, rich in vulgarity, cultural references, and wordplay is often simplified or lost in translation. Hui cites Yu’s (2010) study, which discusses how CJ7 and From Beijing with Love use Cantonese to align characters with grassroots identities. However, much of this meaning disappears when the dialogue is dubbed in Mandarin or subtitled in English (p. 3). Hui’s work, though focused on other films’ linguistic loss and cultural flattening in subtitle translation, indirectly raises concerns applicable to CJ7. In short, Hui argues that English subtitles tend to highlight only the childish surface of Chow’s comedies, ignoring the deeper mix of high and low culture. Therefore, CJ7 may also lose its complexity and emotional impact when separated from its original language and cultural setting.

Jia Tan’s 2023 article "Materializing the Digital Landscape" introduces the concept of the "cinema–ecology complex" to critique how Chinese fantasy films rely on materially intensive digital landscapes. For example, Tan includes CJ7 among notable Hong Kong–China co-produced fantasy films (p. 368). Tan mentions CJ7 as one of several qihuan films shot at Xiangshan Film Studio, a site promoted for its ecological scenery and cinematic tourism (p. 377). However, Tan does not analyze CJ7’s narrative or characters. Instead, her focus is on the broader ecological costs of such productions, including set construction, energy use, and location degradation, arguing that fantasy media’s digital illusions depend on unsustainable material infrastructures (p. 374-379). Ultimately, CJ7 can be situated within the category of resource-intensive fantasy infrastructure Tan critiques, particularly through its use of studio and digital effects, though she does not discuss it in depth.

Building from Tan’s article, Jing Guo (郭晶) interprets CJ7 as a moral fable critiquing mainstream educational ideology. The alien creature resists functioning as a wish-fulfilling solution: it refuses to help Dicky cheat on exams or gain popularity, underscoring values like integrity and self-reliance (p. 91). Guo argues that CJ7 operates as a moral educator who intervenes only in moments of real emotional need, such as repairing a fan during a heatwave or sacrificing itself to revive Dicky’s father, emphasizing care and emotional responsibility over fantasy gratification (p. 91-92). This pedagogical message is softened by the film’s calm tone and emotional accessibility, encouraging children to internalize values like perseverance and honesty through affect rather than didacticism. The closing image of multiple CJ7s running toward Dicky symbolizes moral support and personal growth, especially as he quietly returns to his homework (p. 91-92).

Fu Liuxia (傅柳霞) expands this reading by focusing on the film’s emotional atmosphere, which she describes as wenqing shenghuo (温情生活), or “tenderness amid hardship” (p. 90). Rather than foregrounding material poverty as tragedy, Fu emphasizes the warmth of daily interactions and the affective resilience that emerges through relationships. The alien creature, despite its limited magical power, offers companionship and emotional comfort to entertain Dicky, share playful moments, and visually express the child’s hopes and insecurities. Dreams of high-tech success reflect Dicky’s yearning for recognition, while caring adults like his father, teacher, and employer provide a subtle but stable emotional backbone. For Fu, the film’s fantasy works not as escapism but as a way to frame enduring love, trust, and resilience within a child’s marginalized world (p. 90).

Yang Bin argues that CJ7 lacks a clear and complete central action. As a result, scenes of “imaginative carnival,” like Dicky’s fantasy dream, feel disconnected and turn into “empty signifiers” without real narrative support (p. 126). In particular, the alien CJ7 acts more like a prop than a true character. It does not show independent behavior or emotional depth, which makes it very different from the alien in E.T., who helps drive the story forward. Because of this, key plot events in CJ7 seem random. For example, the father’s death happens by accident, not as part of a structured narrative arc. CJ7’s act of bringing him back to life also feels arbitrary. Since CJ7 is treated as a toy rather than a character, this moment comes across as a strange event without proper motivation (p. 128). In addition, the father remains stuck in the same state of poverty throughout the film. He does not change or grow, which makes his story feel static and unresolved. Even the humor, such as the cockroach killing scene, relies on “bad taste” (恶趣) to ironically expose the weakness of small people, but it does not fix the broken story structure (p. 126-127). In the end, the film uses a visual trick, showing countless CJ7s running, to suggest resolution. However, this feels hollow because there is no strong narrative action to support it (p. 128). Without a meaningful core, the film’s imaginative scenes lose their emotional power.

The scholarships on CJ7 reveals its layered meanings and contested reception. While Yang Bin critiques the film’s fragmented structure and emotional gaps, others like Guo and Fu highlight its moral and affective dimensions. Chew situates it within Hong Kong–China cultural exchange, Tan critiques its role in ecologically intensive digital fantasy, and Hui raises concerns about the flattening of cultural nuance through translation. Rather than a simple children’s fantasy, CJ7 emerges as a culturally negotiated text shaped by conflicting interpretations of identity, narrative, and social values.

Comparative Analysis

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American sci-fi film directed by Steven Spielberg. Compared to CJ7, although the two films were born in different times and cultural contexts, with the former telling the story of a suburban American family in the 1980s, and the latter focus on the underclass of urban China in the early 21st century, they both revolve around a similar central theme: the emotional bond between a lonely child building an emotional bond with an alien being that transcends race and language. To compare these two films precisely because they both start from a child's point of view, but use very different cinematic languages and emotional appeals.

In terms of characterization, both CJ7 and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial feature a child who is emotionally lonely due to an incomplete family structure. Despite being in different classes and possessing different family economic conditions, in CJ7, Dicky lives in poverty with his father and suffers from bullying and ridicule at school; while in E.T., Elliot's parents have just divorced and separated, and he often feels neglected and has difficulty communicating with his mother or siblings. In both films, the unexpected arrival of E.T. and CJ7 as alien lifeforms symbolizes a kind of "emotional substitution", in which the protagonist fills in the missing affection and loneliness in the encounters and relations with the "alien", and also ultimately obtains spiritual growth due to the separation from the alien (e.g., CJ7's death, E.T.'s return to his home planet), and further deepens the emotional connection with his loved ones in their families, especially at the background of the single-parent family. Besides, in both films, the alien beings are described as non-aggressive, peaceful beings. Unlike many classic sci-fi works that portray aliens as dangerous or hostile, the extraterrestrials in both films are gentle and caring; CJ7 never harms anyone, and even sacrifices himself to save Dicky and his family, exemplifying loyalty and kindness. Similarly, E.T. is curious and gentle, seeking only friendship, connection and healing, not conflict. By changing the common stereotypes of alien threats, the peaceful nature of alien life reinforces themes of trust and understanding, the alien presence actually serves as a bridge in human relationships.

Backlighting

In terms of photography style, most of the shots in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial use backlighting to create soft, realistic silhouette shots with smoke to reinforce the mystery of the sci-fi theme, supplemented by soft-focus and low-angle lenses to bring the audience into the children's subjective perspective, but also because of the slightly lower quality of the picture with a strong sense of nostalgia texture. In contrast, CJ7 uses digital photography technology, high color saturation, the film uses a large number of close-ups to emphasize the exaggerated expressions of the characters and humorous rhythms, along with a large number of CG shots and fast-paced editing style to achieve the usual comedic effects of director Stephen Chow, but also incorporates the classic Hong Kong film elements of martial arts.

Low-angle shot

The Kong Fu Element in CJ7

Though CJ7 and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial were born in different times and cultures, they share a similar creative ambition - to build a character full of fantasy but emotionally real for children. The directors of both films, Stephen Chow and Steven Spielberg, tried to bring the unattainable "miracle" into the real life of children through the image of extraterrestrial beings. Due to the technological limitations of the time, E.T., produced in the early 1980s, lacked the CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) and dynamic visual effects that were available by the time CJ7 was released in 2008. However, this absence of digital animation led to a clear contrast in visual effect between the two films. CJ7 presents a fully computer-generated alien character with highly elastic movement, exaggerated facial expressions, and shape-shifting—such as suddenly inflating its belly or got pressed extremely flat on the ground—contributing to a cartoonish style that enhances the film’s comedic tone and appeals to a child fantasy. In contrast, E.T. used a practical muppet model designed by Carlo Rambaldi, with animatronic mechanisms to simulate real-life expressions. The use of a physical creature on set created the interaction between the alien and the little actors, this reliance on tangible special effects contributed significantly to the film’s desire to create a more believable visual experience.[2]

The creator of E.T.

Finally, a key difference is the emotional tone of the ending. CJ7 concludes with the unexpected back-to-life of the CJ7, reinforcing a sense of miracle and delivering an idealistic optimism for both the protagonist and the audience, which still maintains the over-exaggerated comedy style. In contrast, E.T. ends with the alien’s departure from Earth, while Elliott has grown through his relationship with E.T., the ending carries a bittersweet tone, emphasizing that growth often comes with separation and loss. Two stylized but children's sci-fi movies each come to a close with the powerful contrast between the two film's end credits, one an '80s disco hit by Boney.M and the other a lilting, grandiose orchestral soundtrack.

Both CJ7 and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial demonstrate how science fiction can serve as a powerful medium for exploring childhood emotions and healing.

Alternative Interpretation

Looking at the article, "Narrative Analysis of Stephen Chow’s: Starting from CJ7" by Yang Bin, one of the main critiques levied is the lack of structure within the movie. One of the examples stated above to illustrate this seemingly disconnected nature of the movie is the alien CJ7, and how it is treated more like a prop or a toy rather than a character (Yang, 128). Yang Bin claims that CJ7 does not push the plot forward as an independent character, and the key plot points that are driven by CJ7 seem random, like reviving the father, Ti (Yang, 128). Yang Bin also critiques the development of Ti, saying how he doesn’t seem to change and grow as a character, he is static from beginning to end (Yang, 126-127). Although we agree these are things that happened in the film, we do not agree that these are critiques. Instead, we would like to dispute these claims by saying the lack of structure surrounding the alien creature and the father was intentional. We believe that all of these things in the movie was to convey to the audience that a good portion of the movie is imaginative, completely imagined by Dicky Chow.

There are two scenes to prove this. The first is the scene after CJ7 revives Dicky’s dead father, where Dicky finds Ti sleeping next to him, as if nothing ever happened (Chow, 1:16:15). The father was revealed to us through a pan shot, at first we only see Dicky until the camera pans up to show his father next to him, building anticipation.This part of the movie was always strange to us, because when Ti wakes up next to Dicky we see him unnaturally clean and proper, all of the dust and grime gone from his face and shirt, almost as if this is an idealized version of Dicky’s father. The other evidence is the obvious one, at the ending starting from 1:23:10, the movie starts being very fantastical, with Dicky seeing a UFO in the sky and a horde of CJ7’s running towards him. Thus, from this, one can see the reason for the disjointed nature of the film and the father’s static role. The disjointed nature is because everything is from a child’s imagination, and the father’s static role is because he really did pass away. Perhaps CJ7 was a coping mechanism for Dicky to help him through the alienation he felt at school and the trauma of losing his father. This would make this children’s film seemingly really dark, and perhaps this is further emphasized by the fact that Dicky and his father do not get good endings (none of them get the girl).

However, this is a pretty common reading of the movie. The article from Yang Bin does not mention this however many reviews of the movie online think this is the reality as well. What if it was not all fake? What if instead of being an imagined reality everything was real from the beginning? We wanted to add this portion because despite our previous point refuting the point made by Yang Bin, the conclusion is quite a common one, so we wanted to see if we can go against the grain and try and find an opposite viewpoint. We did learn in class how a piece of media becomes art when it has multiple messages or even conflicting messages, otherwise it will be propaganda. With that said, are there any scenes in the movie that help prove that CJ7 and all the fantastical elements are real? At 34:00 minutes of the movie, we see Dicky complaining of the rotten apples in his house, and in response CJ7 transforms the rotten apples into fresh one. We see the apples from a low angle shot, so that the audience can see the apple silhouette better and see how rotten they are. Well, at 42:50, when Dicky wakes up from his dreams, we see the apple in his mouth and it looks fresh, despite being eaten and with blemishes from being exposed to the air for too long. So was CJ7 real? And why the inconsistencies?

We believe that all of these inconsistencies in the movie show that this is not as dark of a movie as we thought. If CJ7 was completely imagined, the ending becomes quite dark, with Dicky being without a fatherless and alone. This dark tone does not fit the tone of the movie, where everything is a lot more fantastical and fun. With these inconsistencies the movie becomes more positive as it shows that there is a chance that CJ7 was real, that Dicky’s father was returned from the dead, that Dicky might not be alone after all at the end. This movie felt like a celebration of children’s imagination. How even while leading a dreary and hard life like Dicky’s one can still find joy and warmth in many places, like his father or an alien that falls from the sky.

Conclusion

Despite the lukewarm reception that CJ7 received from critics and audiences, and despite CJ7 becoming one of Stephen Chow’s lesser known works, we believe that this movie is a very important piece in Chow’s repertoire of films. Like we discussed before, reception for this movie was very mixed, with the poor structure being one of the main critiques. However, we see this ambiguity as intentional, creating space for imaginative interpretations of grief, resilience, and childhood fantasy.

This film is important not just because it marks a transitional moment in Hong Kong cinema, but also because many Chinese Gen Z grew up with CJ7 toys and remember watching the movie as children. So CJ7 is not only a children’s movie but also a story that still feels meaningful as we grow older. And it is for this reason that we believe that CJ7 is such an underrated Stephen Chow movie. Despite being less popular, being one of the few children’s movies in Chow’s repertoire allows it to stand out despite its reception and popularity.

In the end, we recommend CJ7 to anyone interested in family films, children’s fantasy, or Hong Kong–China co-productions. It may not follow a typical storyline, but it gives a warm, creative, and heartfelt look at how people, especially children, find hope even when life is difficult.

References

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