Kung Fu Panda 2

[King Simba]

Well, it's been released, and it appears to be getting good reviews. 8O I gotta say, I didn't expect it to be getting such good feedback already.

Here's the official trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTtDn2W39Sg

It doesn't come out here until 10th June apparently, but I know it's out in the US already. Has anyone seen it yet? :curious:

I liked the first one, but when I first heard about there being a sequel I wasn't so sure. It just seemed so predictable plus with Dreamworks' track record on sequels, it made me feel quite skeptical. But after seeing these reviews, I feel a bit more hopeful about it, so I may just give it a shot. We'll see. ;)

And if I am to see it, I might just wait until next month when I'm with Leor, assuming that it's not dubbed, of course, but since Shrek Forever After was dubbed, I can only guess Kung Fu Panda 2 will be too. :\

[Revo]

I saw it last night, and wanted to come here and give my first impressions of the movie... but I was too tired and so I'm doing a review of it now in the following morning :p. Just for the record, I haven't seen any other reviews of the movie, so my opinion of it is still unstained by external views. Sorry for the long post, but Kung Fu Panda 2 (KFP2) made me think a lot.

Just for context, my opinion about the first movie in a nutshell: It was good, not thanks to the storyline or atmosphere, but thanks to the brilliant action scenes and a few good characters.

In short: The movie was really good. I was expecting to like it, seeing how easy I am to please when it comes to action-based animated movies. But I totally didn't expect to like it as much as I did. In my opinion, it surpasses Kung Fu Panda (KFP). KFP2 feels like the movie KFP was always meant to lead up to. I'll get into more specific stuff, so if you want to know absolutely nothing about the movie before you see it, you probably don't want to read any further. I'll do a proper warning before I get into actual spoilers, though ;).

It probably is just my own short-sightedness, but it was not until after the beginning of KFP2 that I realized how little we actually know about Po. All the information we get about him in KFP is that he's clumsy, obsessed with kung-fu and lives with his goose-father, who is quite obviously not his real father. I think it was the right choice to take the story in the direction of Po's self-discovery. And as cliche'd as that theme is, it does not feel cliche at any point. The storyline felt fresh all through KFP2. I really liked the rather dark turns the makers decided to take with the story and atmosphere, it makes this movie stand out significantly from the first one, in all the good ways possible.

KFP2 is about Po and The Furious Five, there is not much Shifu in this one. And even in the Furious Five, the only character they decide to develop is Tigress. The other four feel very much like sideline characters. And again, I feel this was a good decision. Not only would the movie be too clattered if they tried to develop all of them, Tigress already has the biggest fanbase and is arguably the most interesting of the Five, based on what we have seen from KFP. And if you have seen The Secrets Of The Furious Five before seeing this one, you will notice that Tigress and Po share a lot of similarities in their backstory, which helps build their relationship in the movie. The relationship between Po and the Five is very confusing in general, but I can't get more into that without spoilers.

The balance between action, drama and comedy was excellent in my opinion. The jokes were unpredictable and funny, had great timing, and only once did I feel that the comedy stole a little heft of dramatic urgency from the scene. But overall, and humor is very well-placed, and the balance felt very peculiar. They already had a good balance in KFP, but here it felt a lot more unique. There's a collection of great, unexpected one-liners too :p :lol:

I also like how they blended 2D animation with 3D here. In KFP they only had 2D in the beginning of the movie as an introduction, but in KFP2 they use it throughout the movie in droplets, using it for the memory and dream scenes. I don't think there's anything more I need to say about the animation. By now, everyone expects an animated movie to have excellent animation, especially if it's an action-movie, and KFP2 certainly meets the expectations. The fight choreography is just as good as in KFP.

The villain was decent, if a bit dull. He didn't maybe feel quite as menacing as Tai-Lung in KFP, but was still a worthy opponent none the less. The ending felt really awesome, fitting, satisfying and had great closure. One of the things that made me throw my hands up in thanks to the makers, was that they left a lot of the symbolism subtle, even though it wasn't very vague. There is a fair amount of intertwined symbolism in the movie, which in many other movies is wrecked by dangling it in front of the viewer's face, saying "Oh yeah! See what a clever symbolic connection we pulled off there, huh!?". KFP2 doesn't do that. In points where you are totally expecting a cheesy line or exposition, they leave the symbolic connections alone in the viewer's head, which is where it works best.

Also, I was very surprised to notice after the movie that it was under 1½ hours long, because it didn't feel that short or crammed up at all. It felt long, but not at all in a bad way. This is evidence of excellent pacing, which i would say is one of the best things in KFP2. There is a lot of stuff happening relatively fast, but it doesn't feel rushed. They hit all the key points in the right spots. They even took a very dark and melodramatic turn in a phase where I totally wasn't expecting it. But it complimented the pace perfectly.

By far, the worst part of the movie are the last 10 seconds, where they lead up to yet another sequel. After seeing such a worthy follower to KFP, I wouldn't in principle mind them taking this further. But they do it in such a way that made me almost yell at the screen "Aw come on! Are you kidding!? Do not tell me this is the direction you're taking this! Please don't do this!!" :ohno:
I much rather would like to pretend that those last 10 seconds of the movie don't exists, and infact that's exactly what I'm going to do :kiss:.

Oh, and did I mention the score is by Hans Zimmer?

So in conclusion, I think KFP2 improved on every aspect from KFP, except in the areas where KFP already shined.

!!Spoilerific comments ahead!!

I wanted to touch further upon the relationship between Po and the Five (or Tigress really, who is the embodiment of the Five as far as character development goes). At the start of the movie they establish that the Five treat Po as their superior. This makes sense, because at the end of KFP they bow down to him as master. And he is the dragon warrior after all. They come to him in battle when he calls them, and their first solution to any major problem is to ask Po what to do.
But it still seems that atleast Tigress is superior to Po in many ways, both combat-wise (atleast while Po has lost his inner peace, which may downsize his fighting skills) and experience-wise as a leader. So it feels very weird and out of place the way she keeps treating him like her master. This tension is of course remedied in the part where they have an argument and Tigress easily takes control of the situation over Po. That just makes me wonder why she wasn't a more prevalent leader character before, maybe working aside Po. Why did she go along with those bad decisions before without a peep, if she always had it in her to rebel against Po?

I guess one possible explanation might be that she has feelings for Po. This is not at all unprobable, seeing how she virtually sacrifices herself for him near the end. Another explanation might be that Po is still just learning to be the leader and gaining experience, and that is why Tigress is letting him do what he wants.

Although we can probably assume that by the end of KFP2 when Po finally reaches inner peace, he is now at the level of Shifu (since Shifu said that it was his final lesson) and probably superior to Tigress in combat aswell.

[Sharifu]

I saw Kung Fu Panda 2 yesterday, and I liked it. Not sure if I liked it as much as the first. But it was interesting to see where Po came from and why his father was a goose. :p I actually liked the villain. Maybe it's because I like birds, but I thought he was a very cool looking character. I also like the 2D animation used throughout the film, but I especially like the cut-out shadow puppets used in the beginning to tell the story of the peacock villain. It gives a very ethnic Chinese feel to it. Also, the kung fu fighting scenes are pretty cool to watch. I guess like the first one. :p I enjoyed the film. I'll probably buy it on blu-ray.