Western Audience Reception of Chinese Cultural IP in Ne Zha 2: An LDA and Critical Metaphor Analysis of Film Reviews

Abstract

This study examines Western audience reception of the Chinese cultural IP Ne Zha 2 through a mixed-method approach which combines Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). Specifically, this study collected 658 English-language film reviews from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes as raw material, after pre-processing, we identify three dominant thematic interest—mythological archetypes and family dynamics, artistic craftsmanship and immersive storytelling, and audience reception and entertainment value—alongside three central conceptual metaphors: physical force, journey, and orientational metaphor. Findings indicate a encoding-decoding dissonance, whereby the film’s critique of systemic authority is often reduced to a story of personal rebellion, and its artistic achievements are evaluated against Western cinematic benchmarks. The study concludes with strategic recommendations for enhancing the global communication of Chinese cultural IPs, emphasizing the balance between cultural authenticity and cross-cultural narrative resonance, and advocating for the establishment of independent aesthetic evaluation systems beyond Western paradigms.