Kung Fu Panda franchise

Yeah, that's actually a pretty good comparison.

Tai Lung is the most straightforward and textbook of the series' villains, but I wouldn't say he's weak. If anything, I feel like with Tai Lung they showed you can do more will less (compare Obidiah Stane in the first Iron Man, one the MCU's least ambitious or original villains, but also one of its strongest), whereas with Kai they showed sometimes you just do less with less.

3 was probably the most redundant, and less climatic than 2, but I did kinda like the premise with the pandas, and how it sort of reversed Po's usual Fish out of Water dynamic by having him completely in the zone in the panda village (with Tigress and the others completely baffled). The thing with Po's two daddies was actually kind of well done as well.

I sorta agree with an earlier comment on wanting a spin off film that focuses on one or more of the Furious Five, or even just poses as an ensemble film, especially since it felt like they treading a bit on old ground with Po by 3.

Edited by Psi001 on Nov 4th 2019 at 6:55:43 PM

Why are the Furious Five (and later some of the Kung Fu masters) the only ones who don't have normal names? Po is allowed to keep his name. Oogway and Shifu have normal names. So why do these select characters have only psecies names?

Other kung fu master characters with minor roles also have species names. There's a Rhino, an Ox, a Croc, a Bear and a Chicken in the sequels.

And Master Mongrel, a dog, in the "Secrets of the Scroll" animated short.

So, I guess technically, Po's title is "Master Panda", but he prefers to go by Po and the Furious Five are his friends, so they oblige.

Well, Po is too modest for fancy titles.

Edited by BrightLight on Nov 5th 2019 at 3:30:24 AM

It's weird, though, because those characters definitely had those names before they were Masters. Heck, Tigress had it when she was a kid.

I think we can call the Furious Five's names (and the fact that they don't seem to have given names outside of them) a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness, and everyone else's names the result of the writers Sure, Why Not?-ing it into a naming convention.

Meanwhile in Paws of Destiny, everyone just calls Po "Dragon Master."

Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 4th 2019 at 6:41:42 AM

It makes you wonder what will happen once they run out of species.

It pisses me off to see how little the Furious Five matter to Dreamworks. Their one fight in KPF 1 was the highlight of the movie for many.

Shifu vs Tai Lung was the money scene.

One of the reasons it stinks, in particular, is because the writers of the series are very good at characterizing them even with the small amount of focus. Imo, Tigress' plotline with Shifu is the best character are in the entire series.

We really ought to have gotten an show where Po and Furious Five have adventures together with loads of character focus and a good running plot that got use out of all of them (Legends of Awesomeness, meanwhile, was pretty much shit) - something like the Secrets specials in tone but spread out.

Actually, Paws of Destiny is pretty much exactly how a Kung Fu Panda show should be written, IMO, except that show is about a bunch of OCs. And I like those kids, don't get me wrong, but it's still a shame we didn't get a show like that for the main characters (and instead ended up with got Legends of Awesomeness).

The strangest thing to me about the series as a whole is how everyone is treating pandas as harmless herbivores, even Po. At one point in 1, he laments how he doesn't have claws like Tigress... but pandas DO have claws, and lots of sharp teeth. They are still bears, after all. An angry panda is perfectly capable of mauling someone.

And it's not like they held back with the claws and teeth on other animals, but pandas are the ones who got the cute and cuddly treatment.

I’d love for a panda character to forgo chi in favor of hand to hand combat of the pragmatic kind.

Right. That's another thing these movies tend to do: depicting pandas as fat, weak, and rather inept at fighting. In real life, a bear, even a panda, would be quite a formidable opponent even for a tiger.

Pandas are an oddity in the animal kingdom. They're in Order Carnivora but don't actually use their digestive system better attuned to digesting meat.

They also have almost no sex drive, hence why they're endangered.

Well, they do mate, obviously (and they've obviously survived this far for many thousands of years), but they don't tend to do so in captivity.

It's not that they don't have a sex drive, it's that they are very picky about when and where they mate, which is very hard to replicate in a zoo.

I can only imagine how the villagers intend to rectify that issue...

Oh, and they are endangered because their habitat is shrinking rapidly, not because of their breeding habits.

Well, when there’s a genocidal warlord out to exterminate your species, I suppose that WOULD limit one’s habitat.

Edited by Berserker88 on Nov 6th 2019 at 2:16:54 AM

It's a shame Legends of Awesomeness didn't capitalise on the Furious Five, only giving them one or two episodes each and otherwise just leaving them as imperious peers for Po even worse than they were in the first film. They seemed to catch on Tigress would be the Breakout Character though, she got reasonable limelight, even if there's a lot of Early-Installment Weirdness compared to how the later movies depicted her.

Yeah, I imagine the imperious peers attitude would get pretty old in a longer series.

When nearly every episode has the 5 getting rescued by Po after getting their asses kicked, yes it does get old very quickly.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 6th 2019 at 5:29:29 AM