Every Journey to the West adaptation, in one list
All 18 of them, spanning 1958 to 2024 — translations, Chinese and Japanese screen classics, animation, manga, a graphic novel, an album, and two games. Grouped by how you’d take each one in, oldest to newest inside each group. Every entry has its own guide.
Read
Arthur Waley’s Monkey (Grove Press, 1958)1958
The version people mean when they say they’ve read Monkey.
Dragon Ball (1984–1995)1984
Goku is Sun Wukong, right up until he isn’t.
Saiyuki (1997– )1997
Four beautiful men in a jeep, with guns and cigarettes.
Katsuya Terada’s The Monkey King2005
Possibly the most extraordinary art anyone has made from this book.
Yu’s The Monkey and the Monk2006
The real translation, at a fifth of the length.
American Born Chinese2006
The Monkey King as a parable about wanting to be someone else.
The Anthony C. Yu Translation, revised2012
All hundred chapters, and every footnote you didn’t know you wanted.
Julia Lovell’s Monkey King2021
The one to hand someone who has never read a word of it.
Watch
Havoc in Heaven (1961/1964)1964
Ink painting that moves, and the most beautiful thing made from this book.
Monkey (1978–1980)1978
Camp, dubbed, and permanently lodged in a generation’s memory.
Journey to the West (CCTV, 1986)1986
The version a billion people grew up on, wires and all.
A Chinese Odyssey, Parts One and Two1995
The one that argues the book is about loss.
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons2013
Slapstick that turns, without warning, into body horror.
Monkey King: Hero Is Back2015
A broken Monkey, a small child, and ninety minutes that earn the ending.
LEGO Monkie Kid (2020– )2020
The Monkey King, retired, mentoring a kid with a delivery scooter.
Listen
Play
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West2010
The pilgrimage as post-apocalyptic science fiction, with Andy Serkis as Monkey.
Black Myth: Wukong2024
Sixty hours of being the Monkey King, and an argument about what happened after.
Also out there, and not the pick
These come up every time this novel does, so leaving them out silently would be its own kind of dishonest. None of them is on the list above, and here is the actual reason for each.
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)
It is the only film in which Jackie Chan and Jet Li fight each other, which is a genuinely good reason to watch a film. It is not a reason to watch it for this: the story belongs to an American teenager who falls through a portal, and the Monkey King is the costume the plot is wearing. Come for the fight, and know that is what you came for.
The Monkey King trilogy (2014, 2016, 2018)
Three enormous Chinese blockbusters, with Donnie Yen and then Aaron Kwok under the makeup, and set pieces nothing else here can afford. They cover more of the novel than most films dare and they are almost impossible to recommend without a paragraph of caveats — which, for a list whose whole job is to hand you one thing, is disqualifying.
The Monkey King (2023)
The frictionless option: animated, ninety minutes, family-safe, and the easiest thing here to start on a weeknight. The trouble is that Monkey King: Hero Is Back is on the list above and does the same job with far more feeling, so this is only the pick if the deciding factor is how little friction there is between you and pressing play.
American Born Chinese (2023 series)
Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan doing Journey to the West a year after the Oscars is a real draw, and it is the most ambitious live-action Western attempt at this material. But it adapts a book that is already on the list above and finishes what it starts in about two hours, which is the version to reach for first.
Monkey Prince (2022)
Gene Luen Yang putting Sun Wukong’s son into the DC universe is a real hook, and for a superhero reader it may well be the most fun thing on this page. It asks for DC-continuity fluency to land its jokes, though, which is a narrow door for someone whose starting question was about a Chinese novel.
W. J. F. Jenner’s Journey to the West
The other complete English translation, and the standard one inside China — a genuine alternative to Yu for a reader who wants all hundred chapters. It is listed without a buy link on purpose: no publisher or bookseller listing could be found to establish which edition is in print now, and this site does not point you at a book it cannot pin to an edition.
Start with the biggest question
Which translation should you read? puts Yu, Lovell, Waley and Yu’s own abridgment side by side — complete against cut, 1,896 pages against 320.