Kung Fu Panda franchise

They did say that the tone of the series will be more aligned to the movies than Lo A was, so that gives me more hope for a more likable Po.

As far as continuity goes, it'll probably take between the first three movies. I don't know if they want to step in any toes in case a fourth one is made. They could also just kinda make their own continuity and not worry about trying to tie in to any movie specifically.

I don't quite know when the trailer for the new show dropped, but I like the looks of it.

Po actually seems like himself, which is a relief.

Wow, looks like my prediction on what the new series would be like was pretty darn close, including a better Po! Love that we’re seeing more stuff with the panda village and chi, with some Chinese mythology thrown in too. I shall remain cautiously optimistic.

While Paws of Destiny looks like it has better more authentic quality than Legends of Awesomeness, I'm not hyped about the premise, which sounds kinda gimmicky.

I think Legends of Awesomeness had a good premise, as in basically smaller scale takes on the movies' formula into Saturday Morning cartoon format, just execution ruined it. A lot of other film based cartoons copied the Recycled: The Series direction, but it sometimes had great results (eg. New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh). It had okay resources; decent humour, funny villains, obvious lower budget but still passable animation and voice actors. Some episodes did actually hit the mark more or less, just not enough. With more of the movies' depth and characterisation, and maybe more of an Ensemble Cast format in place of the "Po acts like an ass and screws up over and over" formula, it could have been a memorable show.

I could argue it was part down to the show being made before the second film was released and they didn't quite have down how the characters would develop, but even then they could have strived to make the cast more likeable and even post-Kung Fu Panda 2 they did little to alter accordingly and gave us laughably out of character episodes like "Forsaken and Furious".

I don't really get why neither show really wants to focus on the Furious Five though. In the new one's trailer they don't appear or get mentioned at all while even in Legends of Awesomeness they only got sporadic Days In The Limelight, otherwise reduced to Po's stuffy peers.

Edited by Psi001 on Oct 3rd 2018 at 1:12:50 PM

I fucking despise Legends of Awesomeness and KFP 2. Its like the writers of both things went, "Well, lets let the OTHER team write about the Furious Five." and then went "Oops" when neither of them did.

I'd rather read fanfics because they do wonders with the character and the setting and that's a pretty damning statement to say of any given canon work.

Wait you hate 2?

That’s like the best of the trilogy.

The 5 was actually in a lot of it even if they didn’t get much focus aside from Tigress.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 3rd 2018 at 8:09:09 AM

Let's be honest here: the Five pretty much only exist so they could show off all of those cool animal kung fu styles. Had they just rolled them all into Tigress, little would change, but the action scenes wouldn't look nearly as good with just her. So I'm not expecting them to ever get any more action than they did in KFP2 (which was their biggest role in the three by far) unless there's an outright Furious Five movie, not a bad idea at all mind you. The only LOA episodes I consistently like are the ones focusing on them though. Shame there weren't more of them.

It's no surprise fanfiction does a better job of it. Fanfiction doesn't have time and budget constraints. It can basically do whatever the hell it wants.

Edited by Berserker88 on Oct 3rd 2018 at 8:42:01 AM

Yeah, disliking the second movie is an opinion I haven't seen very often. It's my personal favorite of the series, but I'd be interested to hear why others may think differently.

Anyway, I've only seen a single episode of Legends of Awesomeness, and even then it was only about half-way through. It was the episode where Po comes across one of the rhinos who was a guard at Chorh-Gom Prison, but lost his job after Tai Lung's defeat shut the prison down. The rhino wanted revenge against the Dragon Warrior for putting him out of work, but he had no idea that it was Po. I thought that was an interesting premise, and showed that Po's victory had some unintended consequences. From the few episode premises I have gleamed, they seem to have some interesting ideas. I guess the problem as those who have watched the show can contend to, is that the writing and characterizations fail the execution. Hopefully, the new show will do the series a bit more justice this time around.

It's a Vocal Minority I come across every now and then, but I personally have yet to hear a better reason than "it's too dark". It's my favorite as well.

Ironically, I believe that episode you watched is actually the first in the series chronologically. You can tell because they re-open Chor-Gom at the end after several villains have already been sent to it. (Which is another problem with the show because they start treating Chor-Gom like the local jail ten minutes away, as opposed to the maximum security multi-day journey it was for Tai Lung.) But you're right, the writing and characterization is its biggest issue, especially in regards to Po, who is often portrayed as a lazy, selfish, Jerkass that causes most of the problems he has to solve. The rest of the cast get off somewhat better, but there are still some oddities here and there. Again, the episodes focusing on the tertiary Five tend to be the best just because they don't have a lot of character to screw up in the first place.

But to give LOA some credit, the fight scenes tend to be pretty well-done, it does have some real gems every now and then, and a lot of the villains are quite entertaining, including said rhino.

Edited by Berserker88 on Oct 4th 2018 at 3:15:34 AM

Well there were some episodes where Po was portrayed just fine and everyone else kinda sucked ("Forsaken and Furious", "Sight For Sore Eyes").

The biggest problem with the Five in the show was that too often they were just The Dividual, a collective of stuck up peers that either had to put Po in his place or be taught to lighten up, basically just Snobs Vs Slobs. The episodes one of them was spotlighted individually tended to be better (besides some Early-Installment Weirdness for Tigress), but the already mentioned problem was that these were so rare. Only Tigress got palpable limelight per season, the rest got one or two episodes the entire series. It's a shame because episodes like "Chain Reaction" and "Mama Told Me Not To Kung Fu" worked pretty well, even Po tended to be handled better when they were proper characters he could bounce off of.

Add to that them suffering from The Worf Effect so often so didn't they even have their badass cred (since Po was usually the guy in limelight and thus the one with a shortcoming to overcome, he usually got to redeem himself by stopping the bad guy, obviously since the Five's introspective were MUCH rarer, they seldom got the glory).

The episodes that focused more primarily on the villains like Taotie and Fung actually tended to be more memorable, I think the writers had a better idea what to do with them and Po's chemistry with them tended to be a lot better handled. They even got some touching send offs in the last season.

Edited by Psi001 on Oct 4th 2018 at 3:06:14 PM

You know, I wasn't even sure if LOA had a real ending or if it just...ended. I never watched it all the way through to find out. I'd be curious to see the final season at least if only to see some of these sendoffs you mentioned. In general, the show was a lot better with its original characters than the canonical ones.

Wasn't the series finale Po fighting a dragon?

Nah that was midway through the series. The last episode in airing order was the "Emperor's Rule" two parter consisting of a large amount of the Rogues Gallery, though the last one in production order was "Po the Croc", which had Fung and the Croc Bandits (the main recurring villains) pull a Heel–Face Turn.

Yeah, a big plus point with the show was a lot of the ancillary characters weren't faceless crowds like in the movies, and we got loads of amusing original characters, not just the villains, but more diverse characters like Constable Hu. They also tended to get Mr Ping right. Somehow all these guys seemed to get more care than the actual main characters like the Furious Five.

Edited by Psi001 on Oct 4th 2018 at 3:14:12 PM

Lets not mince words they are props.

But even props serve a purpose. They're well-designed and fun to watch in action.

I guess I was closer to the end than I thought because I remember seeing the "Enter the Dragon" two-parter and know about the "Emperor's Rule" two-parter even though I never watched it. Well, if it's that easy to catch up, then I just might.

I'll give "Enter The Dragon" props for being one of the episodes that tries to make the cast a bit closer to their warmer sequel counterparts. The Furious Five aren't stiffs in that episode and genuinely feel bad for Po when he screws up and gets lambasted. It also looked liked Po had much more earnestly learned from his mistakes in that one.

Of course it didn't stick.

Edited by Psi001 on Oct 5th 2018 at 1:40:56 PM

KFP 2's my personal favorite too. Not only did it give Po some backstory but I thought Shen was a good villain, too.

Edited by theLibrarian on Oct 5th 2018 at 12:03:33 PM

God its sad that you just went "Yup, they are props :D " Berserker. They could be so much more if the writers just gave a fuck about someone besides Po. Which is odd because I LOVE PO. He's awesome but I dont feel he can carry a movie on his own. Let alone 3. The only reason I like the 3 one is because I had already lost all energy to be cynical at it. And I love Po's Bio dad And Ping is awesome there too. And the final battle was cooler.

I admit I like KFP 3 because it makes good use of some of the supporting characters, such as Po's 'two daddies' and Tigress. Not that I think Po is bland or anything, but I think the franchise works better looking at it's whole ensemble, especially since Po has already had thorough Character Development.

Something like what Disney does with Winnie The Pooh, in that there is a de facto protagonist there that is an ongoing focus, but there's just as many stories focused on Tigger, Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, etc as the main character.

I'm just being realistic. The series is named after Po, it is primarily focused on Po, and now that he's become a master of chi and basically the new grandmaster of kung fu with a whole slew of students, I don't expect him to go away any time soon. These movies are roughly an hour and a half each. Trying to give every member of the Five as much attention as Tigress, let alone Po, is just flat-out unfeasible, especially when each movie also introduces new characters to focus on instead.

Now, there are three ways I could see them potentially getting around this. A: Give them more shorts or a TV show that gives them more episodes. B: Give them their own movie. Or C: Keep giving other members more individual attention in other movies, like how 2 focused a lot on Tigress and 3 had that bit with Crane and Mantis. I don't think that's quite what you're looking for though. B is definitely my favorite option if only because I love Secrets of the Scroll and would be hyped to see an entire movie of Tigress interacting with the other members, exploring their pasts and motivations, etc.

Edited by Berserker88 on Oct 6th 2018 at 11:54:45 AM

I guess the thing is that with three movies and a TV show, you'd have expected them to get some major attention by now, especially since the franchise doesn't do a bad job with a lot of other supporting characters (even the show gave palpable development and limelight to some of it's original characters).

One could argue it is Po that's kinda the root of the problem there, besides maybe Monkey, none of the other four really have distinct chemistry with him. While I would like to see a variation of focus, I do agree that they really need to have a dynamic with the main character to work.

One idea from the aforementioned Pooh example that could work is having something like Pooh's Grand Adventure, an ensemble focused story that works as something of a character study for the whole group and how they interact.

Edited by Psi001 on Oct 6th 2018 at 8:56:26 PM

Well, they do have some. Two of the shorts are centered on them and we at least know all of their backstories, plus those few episodes of LOA. None of that is mainstream though, so the casual viewer probably doesn't know much of anything. I'd be up for that idea. Po's Grand Adventure?

And Tigress Too.

I'm actually surprised I haven't seen that gag before.

I haven't seen the third, but I honestly preferred their involvement in 2 to 1? In KFP 1, their role was "be mostly jackasses to Po and then get brutally humiliated by Tai Lung to prove Po is the chosen one". In KFP 2 they at least got to be part of the action throughout, even if ultimately they can't make much of a difference in the final battle.

I really wish the TV series' could have been more like the pair of Furious Five direct-to-video specials (even if they contradict each other) with that Samurai Jack-esque art style that would've looked so much better on a TV budget than full CG that just looks like "the films, but worse".

I said before that you could remove all of the Five except Tigress from the films and it wouldn't change much. Let me amend that by saying that you could remove the Five including Tigress from KFP1 and it wouldn't change much. Seriously, you could make that same plot functionally work with only Shifu and Oogway. It wouldn't be nearly as good, but it could work. KFP2 is the Five's best appearance to me because trying to remove them from the plot results in Po dying horribly several times over because they were instrumental in saving his butt a whole lot, even if he ultimately saved their butts in the end. You could maybe squeeze that victory by with just Tigress, but it's pushing it.

I'm not sure what about the shorts contradict each other exactly. Only thing I can think of is Crane inexplicably looking younger in the second short than the first even though it takes place years later, but I can write that off as an artistic thing. Otherwise, they seem to match up fairly well.

Edited by Berserker88 on Oct 11th 2018 at 5:38:26 AM