Kung Fu Panda 3 Review
Cheers to a trilogy well made. I’m happy to report that Kung Fu Panda 3 did not disappoint. It was funny, heartwarming, inspirational, mystical and kung fu-ee.
Kung fui?
Kung fuyee? Eh, whatever.
It was an enjoyable, albeit uninspiring end to a trilogy that I consider to be one of the best movie series of all time. But unfortunately, sequels kneel in the looming shadow of the their predecessor. The question is, how did Part 3 compare to the original Kung Fu Panda?
Maybe this is an unfair question since Kung Fu Panda is one of the finest works of cinema ever created.
I mean it.
It sounds funny to say. I mean, Kung Fu Panda? The kids movie? Yes. Yes it is. There are few movies that can compare to Kung Fu Panda or that can equal it’s use of foreshadowing and character development. There is literally not a single scene in KFP that doesn’t belong. Everything means something. So while it may sound like complaining when it comes to Part 3, it’s really just comparing a good movie to the awe inspiring original.
A hero is only as good as the villain so the saying goes. In Kung Fu Panda 3, we’re presented with Kai, a chain wielding spirit warrior yak.
Got that? A chain wielding spirit warrior yak! It’s awesome. The problem is that Kai is simply not an interesting character. He’s more akin to the terminator than anything else.
In the original Kung Fu Panda movie, Po faced off against one of the greatest villains of all time, the treacherous Tai Lung, voiced to great effect by the always terrific Ian McShane. The awesome thing about Tai Lung was that he had a terrific story arc. He was a well fleshed out character, but more importantly, he was also scary. He had a backstory that shadowed Po’s own tale perfectly. You could also tell that everyone was terrified of Tai Lung. He wasn’t just some simple kung fu master, he was a killer. It’s kind of a dark story when you think about it, which is why it was so effective.
No such luck with Kai though. Kai has all the bad guy stuff going for him. He’s huge and muscular, he has cool green blades on chains and jade zombies warriors known as jombies that he can control with his mind. But he just isn’t a scary character. It’s played for laughs that when he appears in a mystical sphere of green energy, no one has ever heard of him. Sure it’s funny, but it’s forgettable. On the other hand, Tai Lung had some good laughs when he finally confronted Po, but up until that point he was still terrifying and formidable. The best thing that Kai has going for him is his theme song that rifs on Imagine Dragon’s I’m So Sorry. It’s a nice touch that made me laugh every time Kai made an appearance. But aside from that, he’s forgettable. All we get from the storytelling end is that he used to be friends with Master Oogway and then suddenly turned evil for no good reason. Yay for storytelling.
The rest of the movie plays out just as you expect it to. Po finally finds his real Dad and is led to a secret village which is where the last of the pandas live. Po will have to learn one final lesson in order to defeat Kai, and he won’t be able to do it without his family and friends standing beside him. This is all well and good, but you don’t really feel that Po learned anything all that spectacular. Even the fighting felt uninspired. There wasn’t a single fight that made me go…
It was all just kind of…meh. But having said that, Kung Fu Panda was still much better than most kid movies out there. It was way better than the disastrous How to Train Your Dragin 2 which made me feel like the script was written by a key-clicking robot and not by real human beings with real emotions.
Did Kung Fu Panda 3 live up to the original? Not really, but it did complete a great trilogy. I’m usually not one that likes more than three movies in a series like this (I’m looking at you Toy Story 4), but in this case, I think I would welcome more Kung Fu Panda into my life.
