Trivia / Kung Fu Panda 4

• Actor Existence Limbo:
  • While Tai Lung appears prominently with Ian McShane reprising his role, Gary Oldman and J. K. Simmons do not return as the voices of Lord Shen and Kai, respectively. As such, the characters have far less screentime and don't speak.
  • According to Seth Rogen, who voiced Mantis in the previous films, he and the rest of the actors that voice the Furious Five - Angelina Jolie, David Cross, Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan - were not asked to return for the film, leading to some speculation that the Five would once again be completely absent as they have been in more recent materials. The Furious Five are indeed Put on a Bus for the majority of the film, and only appear briefly in the start of the credits without any dialogue. Rogen was credited in the final film for a brief scream, but it is likely this was just archival audio.
• Channel Hop: After the first two films were distributed under Paramount Pictures and the third under Twentieth Century Fox, this installment will be handled by Universal, following its acquisition of DreamWorks Animation in 2016, not long after the release of the third film.
• Content Leak: Several months before the first trailer's official release, two different unfinished trailers for the movie leaked online.
• Executive Meddling: The film is only 94 minutes long, shorter than Kung Fu Panda 3. This was mandated by certain Universal executives, affecting DreamWorks releases starting with Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. Their rationale for animated tentpole films being strictly 90 minutes was to ensure more showtimes for more money, and that they believed "children can't sit through a longer movie". And that was the only thing they imposed on the crew.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Burger King had a set of six figures in their Kids' Meals. These consisted of Tai Lung, Master Shifu, Zhen, The Chameleon, and two different figures of Po.
• The Original Darrin:
  • Jack Black voices Po for the first time since 2022's Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight as his usual voice double, Mick Wingert replaced him in DreamWorks All-Star Kart Racing.
  • Dustin Hoffman and Bryan Cranston voice Master Shifu and Li Shan for the first time since Kung Fu Panda 3 as the former's usual voice double, Fred Tatasciore, replaced him for Dreamworks All Star Kart Racing (much like Wingert with Black as Po) while the latter was replaced with Christopher Swindle for Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny.
  • Ian McShane reprises his role as Tai Lung after being replaced by Patrick McHugh for the Kung Fu Panda video game and Showdown of Legendary Legends, Andre Sogliuzzo in Legends of Awesomeness as an illusion created by Po and Pat Fraley for Legendary Warriors.
• Role Reprise:
  • While Jack Black has already returned as Po in the 2022 animated series Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight and James Hong is a consistent presence throughout the franchise, this film marks the first appearances of Dustin Hoffman and Bryan Cranston as Master Shifu and Li Shan respectively since Kung Fu Panda 3 eight years prior and the first time Ian McShane has voiced Tai Lung since the original Kung Fu Panda a whopping 16 years prior.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Mexican actor Omar Chaparro reprises his role as Po for the third time, replacing Miguel Ángel Ruiz who voiced him in other media.
• Troubled Production: Around two days after the theatrical debut, a Q&A between a /r/kungfupanda moderator and co-director Stephanie Ma Stine was posted to the subreddit that detailed some of the troubles behind the scenes that explains many of the film's flaws:
  • Early on in production, Kung Fu Panda 4 was originally a live-action/animated hybrid movie that featured humans, with Zhen and the Chameleon (originally called The Collector, something Stephanie was confused about since Kai was also called that) being human themselves and coming from a city called "Hu-man City." While the hybrid live action idea was cut some time before Stephanie came aboard, they kept the humans up until the second animatic screening. Concept artist Luca Pisanu posted a moment where Po, sporting a fighting stance, looks cautiously at the human Collector.
  • The original writers had written out a plot idea that involved Po and Zhen making a plan of hiding Po in a box. They would spend time building the box, have Po spend time hiding in said box, have the box be carried up to the Collector, and then have Zhen betray him as soon as he came out to fight. For twenty minutes of screentime. Stephanie managed to successfully cut that out, calling it a victory.
  • Mike Mitchell, the director and executive producer, had total creative freedom with the movie. He and the studio wanted the film to include a more comedic and jokey vibe, like the Furious Five's comical side missions explaining their absence from the plot, which made it into the final product. Stephanie was vocal about wanting the film to stay truer to the tone of 1 and 2, to the point of losing her temper over it multiple times, but she was dismissed as a "new 'nobody' starting out in leadership'' and had her creative opinions constantly swept under the rug.
  • Despite Stephanie and other animators and crew members wanting to include them, they were initially not allowed to use the Furious Five, Lord Shen or General Kai at all in the film, due to the reduced budget making their big-name voice talent too expensive, ^note According to Stephanie, a producer told her that one line from Angelina Jolie as Tigress would have cost around $20 million, though this was likely exaggerated and they were only added at the very last minute when the marketing team insisted on it. While the animation team was ecstatic to include the characters, there was still disappointment that they would only be non-speaking cameos, while the limited time and resources meant that their models and rigs were far less detailed and intricate - with Stephanie effectively comparing them to being made of sticks and glue - compared to the more prominent characters in the film.
  • Mitchell insisted against giving Zhen and the Chameleon any backstories or motivations at all, despite everyone up to the studio executives wanting to include them. He only relented after the second test screening, however, they were too far along in animating to add anything but Chameleon's few lines on the subject.
  • Another point of Stephanie's intervention was Zhen's redemption. In the original script, after Zhen betrays Po, she suddenly shows up again during his battle against the Collector/Chameleon and helps him a bit before quickly disappearing. Stephanie insisted on Zhen's redemption being a bigger moment, only for the writers to roll their eyes and say they hate those kinds of scenes. She insisted again and they said that it "happens off camera." They sighed and seemingly relented after the third time she insisted, saying they "won't enjoy writing it," but they never did (indicating they lied to get her off their backs). She stated in a separate answer that the writers generally hated anybody who poked holes in the story, insisting they were wrong and didn't know what they wanted. Mitchell eventually agreed Zhen needed a redemption scene, tasking one of the associate producers to write it, taking only a day. Stephanie volunteered to storyboard it and, after noticing that it was all dialogue, had Trey Buongiorno re-storyboard it so that it had Po and Zhen fighting, which Mitchell finalized.
  • The 2023 Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes prevented the crew from doing rewrites or recording new voice lines. When both were concluded around November 9, 2023, the crew was still expected to stay in Los Angeles and finish the film before the planned March 8, 2024 release date, despite major gaps in time. 80 animators had to work simultaneously to make up for the lost time. ^note Refer to Question and Answer 30 in the Q&A
  • Nico Marlet, the character designer for the previous films, worked on the film for only a week, then left and refused to come back.
• Sequel Gap: Released about 8 years after Kung Fu Panda 3.
• Swan Song: This and The Wild Robot are the last two films animated fully in-house by Dreamworks Animation, afterwards they will outsource a portion of their animation to other studios like Sony Pictures Imageworks.
• What Could Have Been: According to the interview by Stephanie Ma Stine:
  • SungWon Cho (ProZD) was among the Asian actors pitched by Ma Stine to join the cast, to fulfill Universal's insistence for Celebrity Voice Actors in their tentpole films ^note Refer to Question and Answer 31 in the full Q&A. He was denied, but Ma Stine's other options (Ke Huy Quan and Ronny Chieng) were accepted.
  • Zhen originally had more distinctive facial markings, similar to the wanted poster sketch drawn by character designer Euni Cho. It was the reason her species, a corsac fox, was picked out from other Asian foxes. ^note Refer to A43-45 in the Q&A
  • In response to a second screening audience, wondering about the purpose of Po's latest journey, Ma Stine pitched a premonition about Shifu's kidnapping at the hands of The Chameleon. Po or Master Shifu would have received it, prompting Po to try and circumvent fate, only to fail due to The Chameleon's cunning. This was primarily motivated to allow Master Shifu to reunite with Tai Lung, eventually bidding farewell to his student on good terms. However, none of this made it into the final film, despite being "loved by the executives".
• Word of God: In her Discord interview, Stephanie Ma Stine stated that, per production designer Paul Duncan, Shifu used Chi manipulation to restore Oogway’s staff to its original state before it was broken by Tai Lung.

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