Awesome / Kung Fu Panda

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

A showdown between Shifu's two best pupils.

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• For Dreamworks animated movies in general; this movie climbs the ladder of awesome when Po says "The warrior said nothing, for his mouth was full." History has shown that this was the film that marked when Dreamworks Animation grew its beard and quit being a wannabe imitator of Pixar that merely hit it lucky a few times but found its own voice and style that could match and potentially beat its rival.^note Unless you count Antz vs. A Bug's Life.
  • Nowhere was that more obvious than when the directors proposed the rope bridge fight scene and the animators told them that they didn't know how to do that. A lesser studio could have simply given up or ask "What would Pixar do?," but instead it was a moment of inspiration for the directors who essentially responded with "Great! That means it has never been done before!" That is the attitude a studio needs to challenge Pixar with its own voice.
  • Honestly, the fact that DreamWorks took such a bizarre concept (a panda that knows kung-fu) and made it work is indeed awesome.
• "There is no charge for awesomeness. Or attractiveness." Oddly, this could be considered a CMOA about CMOAs...
  Monkey: We should hang out.
  Not-So-Mysterious Panda Warrior: Agreed.
  • Becomes more awesome in hindsight, as the first scene with the Five and Po together in the sequel is indeed, them hanging out and having fun.
• No matter how much of a beating Po receives in Shifu's quest to make the panda quit, he keeps getting back on his feet and eagerly welcoming the next spar because he really wants to learn and to achieve his dream. It's this indomitable will that earns him some respect from his idols.
  • Of special mention is after Mantis' spar with Po. After Po is inevitably left a heap on the floor, Shifu and the five look quite assured that should have done the job, only for him to gesture for more. All of them have a rather understated look of disbelief.
  • To add even more awesomeness to his determination, Mantis beat him up so long, by the time he was done, the sun was setting...and they had started training at the crack of dawn.
• Master Oogway gets his CMOA in flashback, where he takes down a rampaging Tai Lung with a Bullet Time nerve strike pattern. That turtle was apparently blindingly fast to pull that kind of precision multiple nerve strike with just one hand. Against somebody who moves too fast to be seen himself. It’s also worth noting that in this scene, Oogway showed none of the trademark warmth or whimsy he’d displayed to this point. He just silently glared at the rebelling warrior, taking him completely seriously in a stark contrast from how he usually acts. He also manages to show another reason why he’s the Grand Master: since Shifu stumbled at the prospect of having to kill his adopted son, Oogway chose another way and non-fatally subdued him, ensuring that he would not only face justice for his crimes, but that Shifu would be spared the burden and pain of his son having to be killed.
  • Considering his age, it's only natural he gets one more in a flashback; when he first develops this world's entire concept of Kung Fu at the Pool of Sacred Tears. It's the only time you get to see him briefly (and we do mean briefly, it's only for a few short seconds) at his prime.
• After a very long lead-in describing and displaying the many precautions, restraints, and defenses erected to keep Tai Lung prisoner (in a facility built entirely for him, no less!) and the captain of the guards Tempting Fate by claiming no one could possibly escape, the snow leopard proceeds to do precisely that... with the aid of a single feather (from a character there to make sure Tai Lung was contained, no less!). Highlights include sweeping said feather into reach with his tail and using it to pick the lock, breaking his manacles free with the aid of the ballista bolts^note even though they are CALLED crossbows being fired at him, hurtling said bolts back at their source to kill the guards and give him a means to climb the walls (note also that he didn't throw them back, he kicked them back!), hiding on the underside of the wooden elevator to avoid arrows, leaping from one piece of collapsing stonework to another as it's falling into the abyss, and climbing a falling stalactite he'd clung to by his claws alone. Oh, and using the captain's own ammo to blow the doors off. Counts as both a CMOA and a perfect illustration of meeting your destiny on the path taken to avoid it, too.
  Oogway: One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.
  • To the jailers' credit, Chorh-Gom Prison is a genuinely well-designed prison with multiple failsafes and well-equipped guards, averting many tropes usually present in comedy films that would have diminished Tai Lung's achievement. Their only real mistake was firing the ballistas - everything else is a serious challenge that sells just how much of a threat this guy was to have made it out there alive.
• After she's shown to having eavesdropped on Po and Shifu's conversation from a roof, Tigress takes a moment before suddenly leaping off the roof, backwards, falling through the night towards the Valley of Peace below, completely calm, then adjusting herself to land perfectly safe on some roofs. The soundtrack of silent drums accompanying the jump also deserved a mention.
  "This is what you trained me for."
• Po's reaction upon learning the significance of the Pool of Sacred Tears. THAT'S the face of an artist seeing the Sistine Chapel in person, or a musician hearing Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 played to its full potential. This is where all doubts about Po becoming a true Kung Fu master are erased. He loves Kung Fu for the sake of it.
• Shifu's epiphany on how to train Po - he's been lost in despair since Oogway died (well, ascended, but that's not really how he's looking at it right now). Then, all of a sudden, he sees Po, this completely useless slob and idiot who he's supposed to train and who has failed every test, saving only his refusal to give up, and who has revealed that he hates himself and he hoped that Shifu could turn him into someone he could actually stand being. And what does he see? Po, using kung fu moves... to score some snacks. Then, he pauses, and faux casually tells Po about Monkey keeping his almond cookies on the top shelf. Cue Po ending up ten feet off the ground, in a perfect split, while eating cookies. As he stares in wonder, you can just see the light and hope come back as he realises just how he has to train Po.
  • The training itself is impressive, with Shifu tweaking every bit of kung fu training to incorporate food as a motivator. And it works. By the end of the montage, we get to see Po deflecting strikes from Shifu and pulling off demonstrations of extreme dexterity. We are finally seeing the Kung-Fu Panda!
    Shifu: When you focus on Kung fu, when you concentrate... you stink. But perhaps that is my fault. I cannot train you the way I have trained the five. I now see, that the way to get through to you... is with this. (shows a bowl of dumplings.)
    • The 'dumpling scene': Shifu has completed Po's training, and chooses to test his student's true skill. By stealing his lunch.
      Shifu: You are free to eat. (steals the food from Po's chopsticks: eats it) You are free to eat.
      Po: Am I?!
      Shifu: Are you?!
    • At the end of the "showdown", Po gives the dumpling back to Shifu. It's Mundane Made Awesome.
      Po: I'm not hungry... master.
• The fight between the Furious Five and Tai Lung on the bridge.
  • Tai Lung hands the Furious Five a solid defeat, despite all five of them being skilled martial artists in their own right and outnumbering him.
  • Tai Lung also gets a moment for when he reaches the bridge. He sees Tigress in a fighting pose, and he casually leans against the ropes and this exchange happens:
    Tai Lung: (smugly) Where's the Dragon Warrior?
    Tigress: (fighting to maintain balance) How do you know you're not looking at her?
    Tai Lung: (laughing uproariously) You think I'm a fool? I know you're not the Dragon Warrior. None of you are!
  • The Furious Five themselves prove their awesomeness at the rope bridge (even more so when you realize the 5 of them hold their own pretty well against the guy who just beat 1000 trained warriors). Especially Tigress.
  • Mantis was pretty awesome, given that he had to hold the bridge up while everybody else was fighting on it. He may not have played a big part but come on! He's a mantis and he held up a bridge with a monkey, a tiger, a snow leopard, a crane, and a snake! How awesome is that?!
  • Viper pulling the "stop hitting yourself" trick on Tai Lung.
  • Crane, beaten up as he is, flies the other four back to Shifu. All at once. By himself.
  • The Combination Attack. Face it, against anyone else, that would have dropped him instantly. In fact, it's pretty clear that the only reason it doesn't work is that the plot needs Tai Lung to win - there's physically no way he could have actually gotten out of that one.
  • Tai Lung uses his own reactive centrifugal force to build momentum while tied to the rope bridge, then cuts the line to redirect himself up and over the canyon to land in front of the Five.
  • In an Awesome Music example, the soundtrack that plays during the sequence is top tier.
• In a non-action way, Shifu retrieving the Dragon Scroll, using peach blossom petals. There's a serenity in it that never fails to impress.
• Tai Lung's climactic fight with Master Shifu, complete with flaming fists.
• Po's fight with Tai Lung is also full of awesome. Nowhere is that more evident than where the panda overcomes his foe not only physically, but philosophically — both of them end up reading the Dragon Scroll, but only Po understood its true wisdom. With that understanding came the knowledge that he never needed any special powers from a "magic artifact" — with the proper training, the very flaws his peers once scoffed at became the special qualities that made him worthy of being called the Dragon Warrior.
  • Everything leading up to that fight was impressive, but still mainly slapstick — Po used Confusion Fu and the environment against Tai Lung's raw power and agility. Then, after Po explains what the Dragon Scroll's really about, he takes on Tai Lung on his own terms —a straight-up duel of martial arts— and beats him. This is, by the way, the same Tai Lung that took down the Furious Five.
  • It's important to note that the fight has a recurring theme where Tai Lung attempts to use brute force in his attempts to get the scroll, only to be immediately punished for it. Tackle Po at the start of the fight? He ends up falling down the stairs and having Po land on him multiple times. Try to knock away the bamboo stilts Po is using? Po immediately lands right on him. Try to bite Po? Bites his own tail instead. Try to tackle Po again? His own speed causes him to get bounced a remarkably long way into the air. Martial arts like kung fu often have a philosophy of using an opponent's own force and aggression against them, and the majority of this fight is essentially Tai Lung's own violence and aggression getting turned against him, whether by accident or on purpose. It also demonstrates how, at his core, Tai Lung is just a thug who knows kung fu, and who primarily only uses technique when he's pushed into a corner, while Po, despite being relatively new to kung fu, has a far better handle on its core philosphies than Tai Lung ever did.
  • After Tai Lung looks at the scroll and realizes its contents, he gets absolutely furious and attacks Po with the same paralyzing strikes he pulled on the Five. All they do is tickle him.
  • Oh, and the high point of that fight is when Po counters Tai Lung's final attack, then finishes the battle with The Wuxi Finger-Hold:
    Tai Lung: You... can't defeat me! You... you're just a big... fat... panda! (Tai Lung throws a punch, which Po catches.)
    Po: I'm not a big fat panda. I'm the big fat panda!
    (Po lifts his pinky)
    Tai Lung: (gasp) The Wuxi Finger-Hold?!
    Po: Oh, you know this hold?
    Tai Lung: You're bluffing... You're bluffing! Shifu didn't teach you that!
    Po: Nope. (Beat, Tai Lung smiles nervously) I figured it out.
    (Tai Lung's eyes widen again in disbelief, then winces as Po flexes his pinky)
    Po: Skadoosh.
    (BONG!)
  • Just the fact alone that Po managed to learn the Wuxi Finger-Hold from having seen it, and even then he only saw the set-up and not the execution, since the only other character shown to be able to do something like that was Tai Lung himself with the paralyzing punch that he learned from Oogway.
  • Also of special note is the look on Tai Lung's face when Po makes it clear that he's using the Finger Hold. The Nigh-Invulnerable snow leopard who has been utterly decimating every character he's fought since escaping and who had an entire prison built specifically to contain him is now visibly terrified of what is about to happen next.
• In "Secrets of the Furious Five", Viper's rise to Handicapped Badass. Born without fangs, she learned ribbon-dancing to make her father, master of the poison-fang technique, smile but was too scared to actually perform in public. Later, at a festival, an evil gorilla whose armor rendered her father's fangs useless and broken is crowing about how there's no one to beat him when Viper shows up and tells him "No one beats up my daddy!" The gorilla mocks her and Viper utterly cleans his clock. "My deceptive dancing defies your poison-proof armor!" indeed!
  • This bit in particular just shows what a budding badass Viper is:
  Gorilla: A little snake with pretty ribbons? (laughs) Are you going to dance for me?
  Viper: If it'll make you happy... let's dance!
• A moment for Mr. Ping. The Dragon Scroll was a secret for a thousand years, developed by the greatest Kung Fu Practitioner who ever lived. Mr. Ping, a humble noodle merchant, inadvertently discovered the secret on his own, with no Kung Fu training, no master, without once stepping inside a dojo. Really nice there, Mr. Ping.
• A minor moment with the dinner scene (with the Shifu imitation). You can watch it six times, each time focusing on a character, and you'll be able to map out their distinct reactions. Animation has gone a long way from having a lot of shots of only one character moving and everyone else being a static background.

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