General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Boonie Bears: Guardian Code

Boonie Bears: Guardian Code (熊出没·伴我“熊芯”) is a 2023 Chinese animated film, the ninth theatrical feature in the Boonie Bears franchise produced by Fantawild Animation. It was released in mainland China on 22 January 2023, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday, and became the highest-grossing film in the series.¹^•² The film was directed by Lin Yongchang (林永长) and Shao Heqi (邵和麒), written by Xu Yun, Cui Tiezhi, and Liu Zunjie, and produced by Fantawild (Shenzhen) Animation with Hengdian Entertainment, China Film, Wanda Film, and Lianrui Pictures.³^•¹

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title	熊出没·伴我“熊芯” (Xiong Chu Mei Ban Wo Xiong Xin)³
Release	22 January 2023, mainland China, Lunar New Year holiday slot¹
Directors	Lin Yongchang and Shao Heqi; production company Fantawild Animation³
Box office	$217,400,000 in China, the franchise's highest-grossing film⁴^•²
Series milestone	First Boonie Bears film to pass the 1 billion yuan mark, reaching 11.5亿元 (about 1.15 billion yuan) after 13 days⁵
Running time	96 minutes per the Chinese film database; 94 minutes on the Australian classification record¹^•³
Awards	Golden Dolphin Award (Silver), 15th Xiamen International Animation Festival; Bronze Best Animated Film, 20th Chinese Animation Golden Dragon Awards¹

Spoilers

Plot

The film follows the bear brothers Briar and Bramble, who lost their mother at a young age in mysterious circumstances involving a fire. Years later, logger Vick takes the bears to visit a Robot Research Institute on an island, where they encounter a white bear resembling their mother and uncover a clue about her disappearance.⁶^•³ The brothers become entangled in a kidnapping plot by a robot bandit gang, and Briar, who never came to terms with being abandoned, recognizes the white bear as his mother. As the villains surface, he learns the truth of what happened years before.¹

The central twist ties the mother's story to artificial intelligence: the filmmakers combined the mother-bear character with an AI setting and a memory-erasure premise, drawing inspiration from real-world robotics.⁷ The film also shows the mother as a novice parent learning to care for the cubs, a portrayal the directors built from the experiences of mothers on the production team.⁷

Production

Fantawild runs the series on a project system with parallel teams. Guardian Code's production team numbered more than 400 people, organized into specialized groups, with core creators in a separate group reviewing and correcting output at each stage.⁸ The visual effects work covered rain, animal fur, energy effects, lightning, shattering, ice, and exhaust effects, across 458 effects shots.⁵

The setting moved away from the series' northeastern forest to an island, which commentators noted broadened the film's visual range and audience.⁹ The mother bear's return was a response to years of audience requests; she had appeared only briefly in an earlier film eight years before, and infant versions of Briar and Bramble appear on screen for the first time.⁷

Box office and reception

Released in the 2023 Spring Festival slot, the film earned 11.5亿元 (about 1.15 billion yuan) in its first 13 days, becoming the first film in the nine-film series to cross the 1 billion yuan threshold and the first animated film to reach the top three of a Spring Festival box office.⁵ By mid-February 2023 its running total stood at 12.97亿元, and the franchise's cumulative box office passed 5 billion yuan.¹⁰ Box Office Mojo records $217,400,000 in China, with smaller international releases in Russia/CIS, the United Arab Emirates, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Colombia, Czechia, and Türkiye between 2023 and 2025.⁴ The Guardian called it the franchise's highest-grossing film and the second-biggest Chinese film of 2023 at the time of writing, behind The Wandering Earth 2.²

Critical response was mixed to positive. The Guardian's review found the plot points generic but well executed, praising the detailed CGI bear designs and lively action while noting wooden voice work in the English dub.² Chinese critics highlighted the film's fusion of science fiction with family themes: Chen Xuguang, a professor at Peking University's School of Arts, described it as an "animal kingdom" counterpart to Hi, Mom, arguing that the film answers whether humans can accept an artificial intelligence that has developed emotion.¹¹ Reviewers at a China Film Association seminar praised the mother-bear character's depth and the realistic rendering of a scene of Briar in the rain.⁹

Classification and content

The Australian Classification Board rated the film PG with consumer advice of "mild themes and animated violence, some scenes may upset young children", citing themes of parental loss, science fiction themes involving evil robots, and animated combat between robots, bears, and humans using laser light force and hand-to-hand combat.³ Common Sense Media described the English-dubbed version as a downbeat and often violent action adventure with little brightness in its story of two orphaned cubs.¹²

Place in the series

The Boonie Bears film series began in 2014 with Boonie Bears: Mystical Winter (熊出没之夺宝熊兵) and has released a feature in nearly every Spring Festival period since, becoming a fixture of Chinese New Year family viewing.¹³ Guardian Code was the first entry in which the mother of Briar and Bramble formally appeared on screen, eight years after a brief appearance in an earlier film, and it revealed the brothers' backstory.⁷^•¹⁴ Its success established a new single-film box office record for the series, surpassing the 9.77亿元 of Boonie Bears: Back to Earth (2022).¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Animated and short films › Animated films by country and region

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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