Just as Po the Panda took his fabled ancient China by surprise when he proved himself to be a skilled martial artist despite his size and attitude, the first Kung Fu Panda came as a shock for a product of Dreamworks Animation, who for years existed under Pixar’s giant shadow as a maker of artless, faux-edgy, banal pop culture referencing animated movies like Shark Tale and Shrek. In other words, a studio that wasn’t any good at making this stuff is suddenly playing ball. But how does it fare when it tries to repeat that success?
Toy Story 2 was a gamechanger for Pixar because it not only managed to be better than the original, it also set the bar for the studio’s future to do emotionally poignant stories with slightly heavier, more mature-minded focus. It remains to be seen if Dreamworks can live up to the latter, but the former is certainly true. Kung Fu Panda 2 tops its predecessor in mythology, purpose and ambition.
The smartest thing it does is to not fall into the trap of creating a bigger, stronger villain. The Ian McShane-voiced leopard from the first movie was already as scary and violent as a cartoon animal in a family film can get. The villain here, a genocidal peacock named Shen voiced with murderous glee by Gary Oldman, is nowhere near as formidable a fighter, but it's his dishonorable attitude that makes him such a great villain. Shen has invented cannons, proclaiming it as a great equalizer against the great kung fu masters that he thinks look down on him. He's a villain that fits that old adage of guns being something a coward uses to pretend to be a man. Who needs to work at being strong when you can just pull a trigger?
Starting where the first movie left off, Po is now the Dragon Warrior and fights injustice wherever needed with the Furious Five, a group of kung fu masters based on traditional Chinese kung fu styles: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen) and Monkey (Jackie Chan). After hearing of the murder of a powerful master in Gongmen City at the hands of Shen, the six confront the peacock to free the city, but there’s a hitch. Repressed memories of Po’s tragic childhood are coming back to haunt him. We find out in the gorgeous 2D animated prologue that a paranoid Shen thirty years prior, as the heir to the royal peacock clan, reacts to the prophecy that he will one day be defeated by a “warrior of black and white” by killing every single panda in China. Horrified by their son’s actions, Shen’s parents banished him from Gongmen. Now that his parents have died of broken hearts, Shen returns with advanced weaponry and an army of wolves at his command, ready to reclaim his throne.
The throwaway joke of Po being the son of a goose (James Hong) in the first movie is thus expanded into a full-on subplot that explores their relationship further and provides a great contrasting element between Po and Shen. Both of them feel like they have been abandoned by their biological parents, but while Po’s arc is to find his inner peace as an adopted child, Shen descends further into villainy because he can’t calm the fire ignited by what he perceives to be betrayal by his own parents. It’s loaded stuff, and results in great moments like one where Shen’s fortune teller (Michelle Yeoh) prays for Shen to find happiness and stop his mad path, to which Shen answers—delivered perfectly by Oldman to carry chills and anguish at the same time—“Happiness must be taken. And I will take mine.”
It’s unclear if the added pathos is the doing of acclaimed scribe Charlie Kaufman supposedly rewriting the script or because of the involvement of executive producer Guillermo Del Toro, who has made Dreamworks Animation his new home and is a story consultant on all of their projects starting with last year’s Megamind. In any case, someone did something really right.
Kung Fu Panda 2 is directed by first-time feature director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, who made her debut with the honor of being the first female director to direct a major Hollywood animated feature with a solo credit. She was responsible for the striking Genndy Tartakovskiesque 2D animated opening of the first film, and here she relishes the opportunity to put more of that in various flashbacks. There is also a difference in her approach to the action scenes, which are more fluid and interactive with the environments—seemingly inspired by the broad antics of Jackie Chan’s set pieces—rather than the more direct hard blows seen in the first movie. Though the first movie’s fights certainly look more badass, as Tigress says to Po at one point in this movie, “Hard style doesn’t suit you, anyway.”
The first movie paid homage to classic kung fu films by adopting a straightforward chopsockey premise: the unlikely warrior, the secret technique, and the master’s former student who thirsts for more power. The sequel still draws from martial arts cinema, but takes more from the dynasty epics in its tale of prophecy fulfillment and upholding legacies. As a result, the film feels bigger, classier and meatier than just a story of one guy’s ascension to become a skilled fighter.
"Kung Fu Panda 2" opens May 26, 2011 and is rated PG. Action, Animation, Martial-Arts. Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson. Written by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger. Starring Angelina Jolie, Danny McBride, David Cross, Dennis Haysbert, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Jean Claude Van Damme, Lucy Liu, Michelle Yeoh, Seth Rogen, Victor Garber, James Hong.
