As per internet regulations, I’ll start off with a short form. Kung Fu Panda 2 is a pretty good film with an intended kids or family audience. It’s got a bunch of laughs for all ages, it has good acting, and the animation is well done even if the 3D is superfluous. The story and characters got a good showing and it didn’t just rehash the plot from the first movie. They’re still plugging away at the ‘heroes journey’ arc, so no terribly original concepts – but they execute it well, so it’s worth applauding anyways.
Right, onto to the nitty gritty details.
I’d like to start by congratulating Dreamworks on making one of their only sequels ever that didn’t suck, and one of the few out there in general that lived up to the original. I don’t think Dreamworks could stand toe to toe with Pixar yet, but the good news is they’re definitely learning.
There was a rumour floating around that the main villain of the first Kung Fu Panda movie wasn’t intended to be near as sympathetic as he turned out to be. In fact, it’s not so much a rumour as directly stated in the commentary. They hoped to make another run of the mill ‘muwahaha’ villain to be killed at the end of the movie without any cause for concern. This was actually the source of the mildly odd ending of the first movie, where it looks like from the characters involved they’d aim for an ending in which they redeem the villain in some form – but instead they opted to have the titular character obliterate the bad-guy (of course not on screen, but all the same, no trace remains). A lot of fans found the background they included for Tai-lung, the nasty in question, a large plus of the movie because it wasn’t painting things quite so black and white, main character aside. It turns out Dreamworks heard of all this and incorporated it into ‘Lord Shen’, the new nasty. It works well, especially because they didn’t rehash any of the reasoning for why he was sympathetic.
A further thing they picked up on was how well received the original 2-D opening was. Thus we see a return of that art style in a number of scenes in the movie and it flows well with the whole piece, creating an interesting visual distinction between things that are taking place in the past (or imagination) and things in the present. This made the transitions clearer in a story where they’re meant to be jumping between past and present frequently.
Now it’s the nature of the past elements that truly impressed me; it’s surprisingly dark. Dreamworks has always been more prone to using words like ‘kill’ or ‘death’, and even visual presenting them in what are primarily kids-and-family movies than most of their competition, but it’s a rarity to see a concept like genocide and mass murder crop up in a film of that nature and not seem horribly out of place. Even typing it now it seems like it shouldn’t work, and even if it does from a narrative angle it should’ve been hell on earth trying to push that past a board of investors. But none the less they managed to do it and in a manner that I feel is remarkably good for the genre. Exploring some of the more dark concepts in films targeted at kids doesn’t make them scary or incomprehensible to the audience, it just means you need to be clear in how you present them. And if done right (see Up, How to Train your Dragon, Mulan) it can allow the narrative to be both more diverse and include valuable lessons and morals.
I’ve honestly never been entirely certain how many kids are likely to pick up on those morals, but that just brings me to the second benefit of taking this route. If the movie explores those aspects it can reach a broader audience and I feel animated film needs a helping hand in doing so. They’re definitely capable of being enjoyed by all ages; they just need to be made with the level of dedication expected of every other movie. The lower standard that seems to exist for ‘kids movies’ needs to disappear if we want to both have the pleasure of seeing good movies more often and knowing that the younger generation isn’t being spoon-fed crap because the industry can get away with it.
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