The Meditation Technique Hidden Inside Kung Fu Panda 3
Last weekend I took my 9-year-old daughter to see Kung Fu Panda 3. When the last Kung Fu Panda movie came out, she was only 4, and it was only her second time seeing a film in the theater. Needless to say, she was terrified. The scenes with Lord Shen — an evil peacock trying to take over China — were truly creepy. But that didn’t stop her from continuing to love the franchise, or from demanding to see the new movie at a luxury cinema where we could recline in leather seats and munch on gourmet mini-corndogs.
Parents love to complain about kids’ movies. But I have to admit that the Kung Fu Panda films are among my favorites. As a teenager, I grew up on Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Sammo Hung, and spent several years studying kung fu and T’ai Chi, so I appreciate the films’ use of wuxia genre tropes. I also confess a weakness for Jack Black’s over-the-top stoner-comedy stylings as Po, the eponymous panda.
While the previous two movies had great “messages,” as parents say, the new film seems to take the series’ philosophical bent to a new level. And while the message of the new film could probably be summarized by Friedrich Nietzche’s imperative to “become who you are,” the writers didn’t stop there. They actually provided a clue as to how.
