Critique: Kung Fu Panda 3 (Film) 2/2

Great Animation

 

The animation was beautiful.

The film starts with Oogway in the Spirit Realm. He has a staff shaped like the yin yang symbol. The fight choreography between Oogway and Kai was excellent. Oogway uses his staff to draw magic symbols that turned into attacks; Kai used his blades to pull two floating mountains to crash into Oogway, immobilising him. It looked fantastic.

Tigress is in new, elegant clothing. It’s showier than her usual utilitarian, practical clothing of the first film.

Kai’s design is fantastic. He has glowing jade blades attached to chains for weapons. His long hair looks like it’s been crimped. His horns are an artistic shape. It’s clear that serious time was spent designing his visuals. It was almost like more effort went into designing him than any other character.

The animation and sound of Kai blowing air from his nostrils matches how real bulls do it. Also, Kai climbing the mountain cliffs to reach the panda village with his jade blades was epic.

The dragon Po crafted flowed like a ribbon which was animated elegantly, especially compared to its name of ‘butt slap’.

 

 

Emotional Words

 

The words in this film were an emotional punch to the gut.

Oogway tells Kai, “The more you take, the less you have.” As the second film lacked Oogway, it’s been a long time since we’ve heard Oogway’s wisdom.

When the toddler gets her hands on Po’s tigress toy, she says, “Stripey baby.” When the toddler sees Tigress in the flesh, she says, “Big stripey baby.” Too cute!

Po asked why Li Shan lied about knowing qi. Li says it was because he “couldn’t lose you again.” Po responds, “You just did.” It was delivered in such a way that the audience felt for Po (the disappointment in his father) and for Li Shan (the disappear of losing his son) equally.

Ping says to Li, “Having you in Po’s life doesn’t mean less for me. It means more for Po.”  This is a mature attitude, great to see after Ping’s film-long jealousy.

 

 

Humour

 

There was plenty to laugh at.

Kai scared a goose into laying eggs, mirroring that people pass stool when scared. That was funny by itself, but the fact that this goose was male? Priceless.

Mr Ping is causes many funny situations. Like when Po picks up a frying pan to hit a jombie and Ping swaps it out for a tiny, useless one. Also, when they get to the secret panda village, Ping says, “This is the village? No wonder you keep it a secret.” BURN!

As they read the scroll, it is narrated in Oogway’s voice. So when the characters are shocked that pandas are mentioned, Oogway’s voice exclaims, “Yes, pandas!” This clearly wasn’t written in the scroll so to have it said within the words the scroll does actually contain was fun.

Li says, “We’re pandas. We don’t do stairs.” Po replies, “I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear those words.” Makes me wish I was a panda!

Po says funny things to the pandas. My favourite example is when he says, “Spring Roll Squad, time for some take-out.” Take-out as in the food and as in take out the enemy.

 

 

Clever

 

The creators did two really smart things that need to be geeked over.

Li Shan offers to teach Po to be a panda, because that’s how to learn qi. Po treats it like he did kung fu, i.e. with discipline. But being a panda is about fun, no rules, not trying too hard. This reversal is clever because to master qi, one had to master non-action (i.e going with the flow, not acting against nature). So the creators have brought an idea of Chinese culture and made it an integral part of the story.

Po does Wushi Finger Hold on Kai but it only works on mortals (and Kai is dead). So Po does the Wushi Hold on himself, because he’s mortal, whilst his arms are around Kai’s neck. This takes Kai to the Spirit Realm, too. Po found the loophole like a pro lawyer!

 

 

Call Backs

 

There were many call backs, not only to previous films but to jokes within the third, too. It makes the vibe of Kung Fu Panda 3 silly, a vibe vastly different from the first two films. Also, with so many call backs, this whole film felt like a recycle-and-reuse exercise.

 

There are too many repeated gags that are original to this film.

Mr Ping declaring, “Rats” when Li Shan ‘wins’ a conversation or situation. Ping and Po saying to each other, “You can fly?” The huggy panda declaring, “Let me get some of that” before embracing people. The old panda declaring to everyone, “He’s so handsome.”

They were all initially funny. However, the constant repetition washed them of their humour. They became annoying to hear. The creators should have either reduced how often each was repeated or pick one and only repeat that.

 

Here are a list of a few of the call backs to the previous films. They are there for humour. But it is clear there are too many of them.

Po teaches pandas fighting based on their individual strengths of non-fighting hobbies, e.g. hugs, ribbons and kick-ups. Just like how Shifu trained Po. Po tells everyone, “Good, again.”

Shifu unrolls a scroll a little bit and panics because looks blank, just like the Dragon Scroll was in the first film. Shifu annoyed po mastered qi so easily, just like Shifu annoyed when Po learnt inner peace so easily.

Po and Li both struggle up the steps to the Jade Palace, and then played with the kung fu relics, just like Po did in the first film. After Po instructs his first training session, the Furious Five slowly crawl onto the motionless screen, battered and bruise: just like Po after his first training session.

One goose says about Po, “He’s a loser.” Another goose says, “I think he heard you.” Po says, “I didn’t” to which the first goose says, “He said you were a loser.” Like how the Furious Five in the first film teased Po where he overheard.

 

There were two call backs that were beautiful and clever. A lot of the others should have been culled to enable these two to shine.

When Po and Kai are taken to the Spirit Realm, they turn into glowing petals. The same thing happened to Oogway in the first film when he went to the Spirit Realm.

Po tries the qi technique on a flower, just like Master Shifu did. The music that played for the same music when Po successfully did the inner peace technique. So the audience expects this qi technique to work. Hence Po failing, by subverting expectations, is very funny.

 

 

 

Like the previous two Kung Fu Panda movies, this one was funny and animated beautifully. It had some really smart ideas in it. But too much of the story was nonsensical and there were too many call-backs. However, these are issues of the wider film-making industry that were really popular in the years surrounding Kung Fu Panda 3’s release date. Creators need to cave into popular demand to stay relevant. Still, uniqueness has always been a selling point so the creators of this film shouldn’t have been afraid of doing things properly.