Kung Fu Panda 3 cast- a critique by Cellspex

Full-text transcript of the Kung Fu Panda 3 review:

[00:00:00] Julie Deity’s another stand alone review. I know what dimension is this hit is so grateful to finally have a movie that breaks that pattern of January, only releasing terrible schlock and award nominees. Yep. So glad no other animated film was released that would support such a horrible trend. Certainly none that deserved any sort of attention or had any legit reason to be in theaters. Nope. Just good old DreamWorks returning to being not awful. All right. I know in the past I’ve been a little hard on DreamWorks and it’s only because I’m prone to this inconvenient habit of having opinions, a side effect of being a human being with a pulse and a brain. And I originally had this whole Prelude essay about how I’m totally not a DreamWorks hater and how some people are just prone to certain aesthetics and or get twitches over a certain over modern dialogue styles. Oh, and by the way, did this movie do that thing? You know, that thing that DreamWorks does with the trailers and the giving away of all of its rich jokes? Why, yes, it does. But that there’s totally nothing wrong with liking movies that aren’t perfect. And do we sit too much stock and how well the things we like are liked by other people. And do you think the reason our culture focuses on the negative too much is because of our education system? And if it weren’t for those stupid little Xs on our pop quizzes, it’d be perfect.

[00:01:12] So we obsess over them and take everything we did right for granted. And this was getting really convoluted. So maybe we should just talk about the movie way back in the ancient days of the 2000s. And no, I’m not going to call them the shots and you can’t make me. There was a turning point in DreamWorks history where they went from a string of more wacky movies, which is totally OK, is a style of movie, if that’s your thing, to not abandoning their more exaggerated, sillier sentiments, but also starting a series of less comedy and more character introspective stories with atmosphere to the brim. And that turning point was oh oh steers. And I love this movie. It’s beautiful. It’s atmospheric. The dialogue started natural. The action was well choreographed and exciting. The music is outstanding. Po and Schieffelin sympathetic, well-developed character arcs and most impressively approach the overdone Chosen One trope in a way that was not infuriating. Like some Oh my God, this movie was terrible. How much do you have to feel for the Once Upon a time interpretation of Peter Pan to be more pleasant and in line with the source material? And that was the one where Peter Pan was secretly this really old guy kept little girls in cages and turned to Michael and John into hit hitmen.

[00:02:32] I made that sound a lot cooler than it actually was anyway. The original Kung Fu Panda was a spectacular movie. Kung Fu Panda two was arguably even more beautiful, even more atmospheric. The action, it was still amazing. There was this great theme of martial arts versus gunpowder. PO was coming to grips with the fact that he’s adopted and Gary Oldman was this fearless peacock with a friggin feather blades and it was awesome. But then the main story was uselessly drawn out and devoid of any intrigue because it was the other half of the chosen one trope with the preemptive murder. And the entire film was one really slow build up to Poe learning what was told to the audience in the first thirty seconds. So no, I didn’t like it as much as one, but it was still one of the best animated films of 2011. Granted, not an amazing year for animation besides the obvious. Oh right. The actual movie. We’re going to talk about Kung Fu Panda three springboards off of the sequel beat of two with the reveal that his father is still alive. And there’s a secret Panda Village Legend is played by Bryan Cranston and is basically what the entire panda series is good natured and occasionally amusing. Sometimes a little silly isn’t perfect, but is surprisingly predominantly earnest and Erico extremely lovable and in line with the other films.

[00:03:48] Every facet of the animation is absolutely gorgeous. This whole series has pretty much been the epitome of the fantastical needs, romanticized realism. I mean, just everything from the backgrounds to the Chinese influence to the character designs and expression, to the fight choreography. It’s all just so pretty. And what seems to be a growing trend narratively, this film seems to be following a very similar pattern based on something those prophesies to defeat a certain villain. The Furious Five have some cool action scenes, but only Tigress gets any moments of character. And Paul has to master a brand new skill and a ridiculously short amount of time that other masters have spent decades learning. The skill for this movie is CZI a concept fundamental to Chinese philosophy and medicine that in fiction is often just interpreted as ninja magic. I can just do whatever you want it to do. Basically the force. This is important because the new villain Kai is capturing other masters chee and turning them into jade zombie slaves. That is really cool, as is his weapon. But unlike other villains, Kai doesn’t leave that strong of an impression. Despite being voiced by the great J.K. Simmons note. If you’re going to have your villain have a personal connection to one of your regulars, that should be thematic. Or narratively relevant in some way.

[00:05:02] In fact, the movie is only real weak points are some of the miners story elements. Note the following is going to be minor spoiler territory, but nothing. Anyone who’s seen the trailers couldn’t really guess, especially since if you’ve seen all of the trailers and all the clips released, you’ve basically seen the entire movie. First of all, it is known that Imer repeated, not leiker of words like destiny and prophecy used in movies. But I like the first movie serious approach to the incredulity of the whole situation, which I feel largely retarded of its clichéd feel. This was what I thought didn’t really work in two and in three. It’s not needlessly drawn out as two, but it’s somewhere in the middle. There is a mention that ugly selection of him is the Dragon Warrior might not have been a coincidental quirk of fate. But then there’s also that thing at the very end of the movie that when you combine ninja magic with the last minute post skill might make certain things happen that some might perceive as similar to Deus Ex in the Makina. In addition, when the film actually starts, it is announced that Shifu is going into retirement and that PO is going to be the new teacher because he’s the Dragon Warrior and it was pacified. He would be I would understand him teaching as part of his training to intrude kung fu students like he was in the secrets of the Furious Five.

[00:06:15] But no, he’s going to teach the Furious Five who have been doing this a lot longer than him. Yeah, sure. Whatever. It’s not like you need training to be a teacher or anything, says the former teacher. This doesn’t really make any sense, except that it has to set up that pose eventually going to teach the Panda Village how to fight. But I know that this film’s point isn’t to endorse unescapable. Fates are inborn, magical insta talents. The intent has always been more along the lines of don’t just assume you can’t do something without trying. And what you might perceive as a disadvantage might be a strength. Even this movie’s take on teaching Don’t Be Meby You resonates very strongly with me. I was surprised that the whole PO rediscovering the family he never had does not lead to any sort of conflicted between my old life and new life drama, which I appreciated. You do fear for a second that he’ll backtrack a little bit in his maturity, which to a degree is understandable, but he never once forgets his mission or his previous family. They also just didn’t want to repeat to know the whole to Dad’s conflict is completely reliant on post Gustad Peng, who is naturally anxious of losing podia his new family.

[00:07:20] But of course, he comes to peace with it and almost no interaction with PO, but through a truly magnificent scene about parenting with Lee Shan, because in the end, that’s really what this film is kind of like. Dragon two, it’s a series of excellent character moments. Just any scene with characters spending time together or talking with each other is very impactful. Even the fun scenes have a lot of character, like watching people react to all of the customs of the Panda Village and see how full of joy and relief he is. No stares. The breaking story isn’t ases or unpredictable, but mostly I was enjoying it too much to care. Even the Ninja magic allows for some incredible looking moments, including a mind blowing opening sequence, even though by its nature, the Ninja Magic does rob the film of some of its hand-to-hand combat time. But the real reason this series has thrived is because PO is the protagonist. And while he can be silly sometimes, most of the time he balances childlike enthusiasm with growing maturity and sincerity excellently. This series is one his DreamWorks absolute best with intense action that always brings it back to character, just not for the various five. So nice to see you back on top DreamWorks and I look forward to seeing what you’ll do. Meet the true meaning. They see me when they dance

[00:08:40] And have lots of fun.

[00:08:47] I’m sure it’s going to be fine.