Awesome / Kung Fu Panda 3

"Am I the son of a panda? The son of a goose? A student? A teacher? Turns out... I'm all of them. I am... The Dragon Warrior."

All spoilers are unmarked.

---

• Oogway and Kai's fight in the opening scene in the Spirit Realm. Of particular note is how Oogway's attacks are created by means of writing giant hanzi symbols in the air.
  • The 'mortal realm' has some fairly generous 'comic book physics' - like all kung-fu settings. But part of what makes (both) battles in the Spirit Realm dazzling is that leverage and gravity bend to the will of the combatants. Kai can brace himself on thin air and hurl mountains at Oogway: and Oogway can shatter them to harmless rubble.
• Po running through the Valley, actually jumping from roof to roof (and into the clouds) and speeding ahead so fast that it took the Furious Five some time to catch up to him. A clear example of his improved Kung Fu skills and confidence in being the Dragon Warrior.
• Li Shan managing to beat Po's dumpling record. He later boasts that it was only his warm-up.
  • Keep in mind, we've seen Po stuff 40 bean buns in his mouth before. Now, we see Li Shan stuffing 103 dumplings!!!
  • Not to mention, Li Shan also swallows his dumplings, something Po couldn't do in the previous movie. This cements Li Shan as truly being better than Po in eating.
• As villainous as it is, Kai's ability to take away chi from his opponents and turn them into his own personal zombies is pretty cool in itself.
• Kai's fighting style is very unique and different from Tai Lung and Shen. Tai Lung's style was a relentless hail of brutal strokes, while the latter largely relied on grace, finesse and precision. Kai has the raw strength of Tai Lung and apparently more considering Tai Lung fell to him and the speed of Shen, but he combines it like an unholy lovechild of the two prior villains and is absolutely awesome to watch in combat, mortal or spirit realm.
• The sheer fact that, despite Oogway's attempts to Un-person Kai, he near instantly makes himself as much The Dreaded as Tai Lung was in the first film. To punctuate this is the one villain that Po had to essentially kill himself to stop, and even that didn't do all of it.
• In the beginning, Po was an awful teacher to the Furious Five... however, when training the Panda Village in using their own talents as weapons, he turns them into a Badass Army in half of a day.
  • The whole training montage has him turn some of their supposedly mundane talents into weapons.
    • In particular, during a "break the board" training, Bao is able to break the board with a dumpling.
  • Po's plan to have the Panda villagers distract Kai's Jombies so he can get close enough to him and use the Wuxi Finger Hold was a really good idea. The only reason it failed is because nobody knew you had to be mortal for the Hold to work on you.
  • During the attack, Li Shan and Mr. Ping form a battle suit together and land a hit on Shifu... using a frying pan.
  • More awesome from Li Shan: while cheering Po's charge upon Kai, he pauses to look away from the fight, but Shifu doesn't. Without looking, without paying any attention to the fight at all, Li Shan blocks a flying kick from his son's master.
  • Tigress battling a Jombied!Master Croc while keeping Lei Lei out of harm's way. Lei Lei even managed to land a hit on him.
  • Mei-Mei battles multiple jombies, making quick work of the group and making Kai very dizzy.
• Po using the Wuxi Finger Hold to send himself and Kai to the Spirit World to save his friends. Note, Po admits later he didn't think there was any way back from that and didn't hesitate to do it!
  • The "Eureka!" Moment that leads up to this: "I can't send you to the Spirit World, but I can take you there..."
  • Notice how everyone is scared to their spot when Kai approaches. When Mr Ping and Li Shan see their son pounce onto Kai and prepare to perform a Heroic Sacrifice however, they both make an instant beeline for them.
  • A subtle one, but look carefully at the scene building up to this where Kai closes in on the pandas. Nearly everyone, despite standing their ground, looks terrified of Kai. Tigress however, is giving Kai one vicious Death Glare.
• The Final Battle: Unlike the previous movies where Po defeated the Big Bad all by himself, here Tigress, his family, and the Panda Village all transfer their chi to Po, giving him a Golden Super Mode and a golden dragon Animal Battle Aura that mimics his movements! He proceeds to overwhelm the previously unstoppable Kai, destroy one of his swords, and finally destroying him completely. The fact the Spirit Realm is beautiful and breathtaking to look at adds to it.
  • Not to mention Po smashing Kai into the Spirit Realm's mountains is displayed in a series of shots which look very similar to Po's "fight" with Tai Lung while both were falling down the stairs to the Jade Palace, so long ago.
• Tigress managing to race all the way and find the secret Panda Village... while injured.
  • Made even more impressive by the fact that you can see her physically pulling herself up into the village... meaning that she presumably clawed her way up the massive 90 degree cliff through sheer strength because the elevator was hidden.
• Kai's arrival at the Jade Palace, emerging from a cloud of green mist, with his glowing eyes glaring straight at the Jade Warriors as he lumbers towards them, ominously swinging his blades so they scrape against the ground while his theme plays. It's one hell of an entrance. Afterwards, he sarcastically says "Nice" when he sees Oogway's statue, but the way he smiles, one could easily use that clip to describe his entrance itself.
• Shifu then snarls, "How DARE you set foot on these grounds!" It's just one line, but his glare and the glares of his students make for an impressive sight. When Kai mocks them for loving Oogway, Tigress snaps that he's not worthy to speak the late master's name.
• Kai's arrival at the panda village is also impressive... until Po (possibly recalling Shifu's earlier words about how a Dynamic Entry can end a battle before it even starts) responds to the entrance with what amounts to "eh, it was okay." He then proceeds to keep interrupting Kai's threats; the true awesomeness of the moment is how effectively Po deflates Kai's ego.
• The battle between Kai and the Jade Warriors. After some initial verbal sparring, Kai attacks and the Jade Warriors spring into action, and they manage to keep Kai on his toes in a flurry of lightning-fast fighting.
• It's a small one, but take a closer look at Po and Tigress' sparring scene. When they sparred in the jail in the second film, Po could barely touch her without being propelled to the ground. Now, while Tigress is still beating him, Po manages to gets a few upper hand moments, making her having to work a bit more for her victory. He's been improving.
  • Not to mention, it's apparent that Po could kill Tigress if he actually wanted to. He had her in a Wuxi Finger Hold right there!
    • Despite that, Tigress doesn't even flinch.
    • Which is another one for Tigress and Po's relationship. Tigress neither flinched nor tried to get out of the potentially lethal hold, because she knew Po would never fully use it on her.
  • Before his sparring match with Tigress, Po is incredibly upset after finding out his father lied to him, and he does what he does when he's upset: he builds a dummy of Kai and trains. Even at his lowest, Po is too disciplined by this point to sink back into old bad habits.
• The implication that Oogway could come back from the spirit world if he ever wanted. Can you say movie four?
• Given how tremendously powerful Kai is, anyone landing blows on him becomes this. Barring Oogway and Po, the only ones to noticably slow him down are Shifu, Tigress and Crane.
  • Shifu is the only one other than Oogway to actually compete with him, and even seems to have the upper hand at points. He's only defeated so quickly because he was distracted by the revelation that Kai had defeated Oogway (and his Fragile Speedster tendencies).
  • Tigress landed pretty much the only attack that actually staggered him, through his guard no less. He even pauses for a moment and provides her with a look of respect.
  Tigress: How's that for a "little kitten"?
  • Crane deserves credit for even being on this list. He's never been noted as being the most powerful of the five, yet he takes on Kai alone and manages to slow him down briefly. He even makes a pretty credible attempt to escape, which almost worked.
  • In spite of Kai beating down Shifu, possessing his students and destroying the palace, Shifu goes out defiantly; hissing to Kai that no matter what he tries, there will always be someone throughout time who can stop him.
• The ending of the film and possibly the series. Po is now the Grandmaster of the Jade Palace and the de facto leader of the entire Valley of Peace. And he's teaching every single member in the Valley the technique he mastered. As the camera pans around Po and his students, he stops and takes it all in with awe. Po was once a slacker playing with his dolls in his undersized bedroom, and was despised by the Jade warriors. Now he's their leader and teacher, even teaching Shifu. He didn't just defeat Kai, Shen and Tai Lung. He became the legendary warrior he dreamed about when we first met him. He came such a long way, and now, is truly the Dragon Warrior.
  • Just the scene alone when Po pauses, looking at everyone in sheer admiration of what he has accomplished before turning around and being greeted by Shifu in the way that a pupil greets his teacher. That insecure, chubby, clumsy panda has not come a long way, he has ascended to a different plane altogether.
  • To reiterate, Po is teaching everyone in the Valley chi techniques. The next bad guy who decides to screw with the Valley of Peace is in for a serious surprise.
• Oogway finally reveals the reason he choose Po to become the Dragon Warrior. It wasn't just to be an Action Hero. He saw within Po the capability to evolve Kung Fu, create a chi cultural restoration and then bring the two styles together. In other words, he wanted Po to basically become a Magic Knight sage-teacher.
• Po - as a panda and the Dragon Warrior - indeed is possibly the strongest chi master that ever existed. Not only because of how easily he defeated Kai. When Oogway mentions that Po could go back, Po hesitates for a second before instinctively drawing the very symbol that Oogway did at the beginning. Only that Po's symbol grows easily up to three times the size of Oogways symbol, to the point where it lights up the entire spirit realm. True, most of the chi is borrowed from Po's friends, but HE is the one who controls this much power without even really thinking about it.
  • In fact, he is such a natural that everything he does with chi seems to happen without thinking once he gets the hang of it. His transformation into the Dragon Warrior? That massive dragon? Giving Kai his chi? He does it all gracefully without ever having learned any of it and instantly gets it right in the most awe-inducing way possible.
    • As an extra touch, he still does this while bumbling around, making cracks and just acting like his usual comical self, defying the idea that Po had to "mature", get serious, or stop acting like himself to become a master.
  • In the same vein: Oogway drew his symbol with double his own size and it became three times bigger when he released its power. Po's symbol is smaller than the head of his staff and the final size must be at least a hundred times bigger than that. If the drawn size does matter in any way, think about the massive power that he would have been able to wield to fight Kai. And that he didn't even need to do that to defeat him.
• Tigress being able to fight while holding onto Lei Lei, topped by her encouraging the baby panda to get a whack in. "Do it!"
• Despite being the Butt-Monkey throughout most of the film, Master Chicken does get one little moment of badassery upon being revived, reflexively holding up Master Bear with one wing.
• One deleted scene from the movie has Po introduce his father to the Furious Five, who are using a training session to deliver a cup of tea to Shifu. Po even joins in, showing off his improvement by effortlessly navigating through the training equipment that gave him so much trouble in the first movie, and manages to balance himself on a row of spikes as he hands Shifu his tea.
• The fact that the Pandas were able to learn to fight in as short a time as they did, and actually put up a decent fight against Kai as a distraction. Kai himself is both genuinely amused and impressed by it. When two pandas launch a successful aerial attack on Crane, he's actually grinning even as he lets out a laugh and a 'Seriously?' at the display.
• The ending scene, where Po is teaching his art to the entire Valley of Peace...to the tune of "Kung Fu Fighting" sung (partially) in Chinese.