Am I the only pissed off by how useless the Furious Five are now? Tigress had SOME relevance by being Po's sort of Love Interest and now she's utterly pointless. I have never liked the Shonen Protagonist Stranglehold Po has on the story.
As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.The irony being that they're still more useful than they were in the first movie, where literally the only thing they did was lose to Tai Lung. At least here, losing has some plot significance, and they get more individual screentime in the process.
So to answer your question, yes you're the only one. The franchise is named after him for a reason. Get over it.
edited 9th Dec '15 7:21:11 PM by Berserker88
Im not the only one, there are many who think so too. I know it seems petty of me to say this but dont assume the films are universally beloved.
And at least Tai Lung was an amazingly Badass One-Man Army that allowed them to showcase their Badassery. Unless Kai allows for even more epic feats for them, they are useless. And they were also developed by growing closer to Po.
To be fair in KFP 2 they almost stopped Shen's plan until Po screwed that up. That was nice.
edited 9th Dec '15 7:52:51 PM by AegisP
As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.I don't think you have the right word. "Useless" would mean they didn't contribute anything in overcoming the Big Bad, which was kind of the case in the first movie, regardless of the awesome fight. They had cool scenes but in the end didn't do a lot in either training Po or defeating Tai Lung. The FF actually did quite a bit in the second though. As far as my memory serves, the only "useful" thing the FF did in 1 was help the villagers evacuate.
In 2, off the top of my head they:fought the wolves attacking the Valley, did that funny chase scene, busted out of Shen's palace after being caught (Mantis and Viper specifically), almost blew up the factory, and then there's the final battle where everyone dealt significant damage to Shen's army.
Admittedly, we didn't get any big spotlight on them(which is what I think you really meant), but they were waaay less useless in 2 compared to 1.
On 3, I feel like, from watching the trailers, the movie might focus less on the FF and more on Po and his family, so I can get why you think that they're not going to do much in this one. Then again, the KFP movies are notorious for Trailers Always Lie, so I suspect it's not going to be entirely the case. Personally, I don't care as much. I like the FF, but the lack of focus on them has never bothered me (like what Berserker said, they're not the main characters, and the cast is simply too big to put focus on everyone).
Plus, I've been wanting to see more Mr. Ping, I didn't care much about his character in 1, but man, I loved that goose in 2, especially when he was reminiscing about baby Po, that was just too sweet.
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I assumed you were just talking about everyone here, but thanks for insulting my intelligence.
To put it simply, if the Five were removed from the plot of 1, not much would change. If they were removed from the plot of 2, Po would have been slaughtered by the wolves in the village, or slaughtered by the wolves in the city, or slaughtered by the wolves in the factory, etc. Never underestimate the importance of taking out the Mooks. Not to mention Po's plan to free themselves from their shackles, which would have only been possible with the Five's involvement. Keeping everyone from being blown to smithereens is hardly what I would call useless.
Like I said, the cast seems to be split up for a good portion of this movie. We're going to have the A-plot of Po and his family, and the B-plot of the Five fighting Kai in the Valley (and in that weird desert ship place). So yes, they're all going to lose, that's not much of a spoiler, but there's plenty of potential for them to show their stuff in the process. And being separated from Po will help give them more individual development too. If that's not good enough for you, then too bad. This is his story, not theirs.
I suspect you're going to end up disliking this movie too, which is a shame, but that's what you get for having unrealistic expectations.
edited 10th Dec '15 4:32:56 AM by Berserker88
I'm glad to see more of Mei Mei too, though I was hoping for something more along the lines of actual scenes from the movie. Apparently that video is meant to be a parody of a certain Chinese(?) music video though, so I guess it explains the silliness, haha.
Having gone one year to animation school I can just imagine what a pain it must be having to animate six different 'main' characters simultaneously, not to mention when they all have vastly different and unique ways of moving. I thought the films balanced nicely between Po and the Five's screentime while obviously giving more to Po. And I think this film will give some decent screentime to Tigress as well considering she's staying in the panda village with Po (the tipo fan in me squeals). What I am hoping for is that Shifu gets more screentime again since he was pretty absent from the last one, though it's understandable as we had him and Po training and bonding in the first, then Po'd train and bond with the Five in the second.
A discussion I want to throw out there though is, what do people think of the creators apparently planning to make in all six films out of this series? My first reaction to that was that it's gonna turn into Sequelitis, I mean, six movies? Seeing the dedication and heart that's gone into the first two and what definetely appears to be the case for the third one as well however makes me hopeful they're going to keep said dedication up, though it does make you wonder how they plan on, for every film, make a more interesting/challenging plot, greater villain and greater lesson/achievement for Po than the last one. It's definetely possible though, what matters is if the creators won't grow tired of doing their best for the 'same' story, over and over. I mean, if all six KFP movies turned out successful, won't that be the first time it's ever happened to an animated film series that went on for more than three movies?
I might just be ahead of myself though as I'm not sure this was confirmed, I just remember seeing it mentioned several places.
edited 10th Dec '15 3:00:25 PM by Lancelot07
It depends on how you treat it.
If you treat each movie as a saga of epic proportions, and constantly try to one-up the previous installment, your "epic" movies will quickly start looking ridiculous.
If you treat each movie as merely a chapter of a bigger story, you can pull off more than 6 movies. Think of a show that had over 26 episodes and was good from start to finish. If each episode was 1.5 hours long.
Treat your sequels as chapters of a bigger story, and you will avoid Sequelitis.
edited 10th Dec '15 5:27:23 PM by KlarkKentThe3rd
That is exactly how I feel about it as well. It seems to be what they're going for too, judging by how closely tied together all these movies are, 2 and 3 especially. This series already feels more like one big story to me than a bunch of separate stories.
That, and the fact that there is simply a ton you could do with Ancient China and the Wuxia genre that has yet to be explored. What's the Emperor like in this world? The Imperial City? How about a Tournament Arc? Bottom line: I can think of at least three more film plots easily.
i honestly feel like the KFP movies are the best thing that Dream Works has done since El Dorado, which I consider their Magnum Opus.
i was expecting to be underwhelmed when I watched the first movie after seeing a bunch of REALLY lackluster films from them in the few years after Shrek (flushed away, shark tale, and bee movie), but was surprised to find it was actually very well-told and mechanically solid, and then the sequel came out which was also awesome and a legitimately meaningful continuation to the first film that was arguably even better.
i have faith that KFP 3 will also be pretty good.
edited 11th Dec '15 3:35:08 PM by wehrmacht

I think I saw Kai being hit by a spiritual energy-thing shaped like a Chinese character too.
Of course the marketing team goes and asks for something like this
. (facepalm) Though it's funny to hear Jack Black sing.