"Kung Fu Panda" - Talkback (Spoilers)

I just got back from seeing this movie on the IMAX and I was greatly impressed by it. At first I was kind of iffy about it but then I thought I should give it a chance and I am glad I did.

The Characters were memorable I especially loved Dustin Hoffman's Character, for an old guy he really knew how to fight and he had some of the best lines. I really liked the Tigresses design and the Snow Leopard too.

The backgrounds were beautifully done as well it just gave a great feel to the movie that many animated movies seem to be laking these days.

Definitly worth seeing.
 
Well, the movie was well animated, and the action sequences were astounding, much better than I see in some actual martial arts films. The five warriors were all very fun, though it's a shame Monkey was so underused. And man, was Tai Lung awesome! Easily the best character in the movie and one of the coolest villains in quite a while. It's rare for me to actually like a villain, but Tai Lung made it easy.

That being said, I just didn't really enjoy the movie due to the two main characters. Po was one of the most excrutiatingly annoying heroes, ever. It felt like chinese torture every second he was onscreen, which made for a painful viewing. Master Shifu wasn't much better, for some reason he just bored me to tears and I couldn't care less about him. Considering they are the two main characters, it was just not fun, it just made me root for the villain, which was a moot point since it was obvious that Po would beat Tai lung in a humiliating way with some annoying deus-ex-machina. Again, just not fun. :sad:

Overall? Not as bad as I expected, but I didn't enjoy it as I thought I would. The action scenes and some amusing characters, with Tai Lung especially stealing the show, made it watchable, so at least it wasn't a waste of my money.
 
I kind of hear you about Tai Lung. He was given an understandable motive for his behavior (although of course there's no excuse for his brutality), and I thought he was way too easily defeated by Po. And of course his defeat had to happen, but I'd have liked it better if Tai Lung had surrendered rather than get blown up or whatever the heck his fate was. If there is a sequel (and you know there will be) or if there is going to be a TV show, I hope he returns. He's got issues and it'd be interesting to watch him work through them.

But I disagree about Po. He was really cute, and I guess I have a weakness for good-guy characters who take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. Master Shifu was redeemed by Dustin Hoffman's great voice work IMO. But yeah, I think Jackie Chan was tragically underused. It would have been nice had his character kind of attached himself to Po out of sympathy and tried to help him out; more screen time with him, and less with Shifu, might have improved this film.

But of course this film is going to be huge. I read it's on track to make 60 million this weekend. :eek:

Just wanted to add that this horrible, horrible trailer was run before KFP - a trailer advertising a movie about these three flies, who are named Alvin, Simon and Theo...oops, sorry, Nat, I.Q. and...can't remember the third pest's name...but they all want to be astronauts. And the film is in 3D and it was truly the most awful trailer I have ever seen. I thought it was a parody at first, and not a very good one. I closed my eyes near the end and started humming to myself to drown out the damn thing. One of the flies said "Awesome!" Gaahh. How do people get films like that made? They must have the right politics or something, I guess. Acckk.

There was also an extremely unfunny trailer with Steve Martin advertising the next...oh god no...Pink Panther movie. It was lame. I have seen the original Pink Panther movie, and it's great. The Panther himself is great - slinky, sly, elegant and only a bit klutzy. He totally matched his ubercool theme music. Now he's apparently been recreated as this gawky bigfooted character with no grace at all. Bleah. And the Inspector Clouseau character has also suffered. In the original film he was genuinely dashing and debonair - but accident-prone. He wasn't the pinhead with the lousy French accent he is today. Man, some things belong in the past and ought to be left alone. And that fly film needs to be swatted.
 
Just saw it today, and it was easily the most gorgeous 3D animation I've ever seen. The fights were especially fluid and beautiful, though the 2D prologue & epilogue were even more so.

The humor was great, too. Not a pop-culture reference or a bit of bathroom humor to be found! And, of course, the greatest finishing quote in all recent cinematic showdowns.
 
Seeing it in about an hour or so. I'll write a review afterwards.

EDIT: Pretty grood. The first fight scenes I've seen where you can actually tell what's happening. :P Po is just the best.
 
Took my girlfriend to a Saturday matinee last weekend. Better than I had envisioned, to be honest.

I am guessing Po was adopted, and surprised no one else picked up on the odd parentage.:eek: Tigress comes off as being jealous that Po was the chosen one, not her. I think part of the reason Tigress was drawn more masculine was that they wanted to make sure the viewers paid attention to the lead character. If Tigress was drawn more to resemble Angelina Jolie, that might draw a few more drooling fanboys, sure, but it would also distract from the plot!

The fanboys can wait another two weeks until "Wanted" opens, and they can cream their shorts all they want over Angelina.

We left as the credits rolled so we didn't see Viper's, well, expression of love. Dang! That's twice I've missed something!!:eek:
 
Well, during the end credits, Tai Lung is shown popping out of a mound of dirt, so maybe that signifies that he got buried by the earthquake(?) triggered by the finger hold. Or something. Or maybe he got blown into dust. But I hope not.
 
After watching it myself, all I can hope for is that the other sequels to come will follow in the same good streak. Dreamworks ought to have learnt their lessons by now about sloppy writing, ala; Shrek the Third :shrug:
 
This thread has consistently surprised me. For sure, I thought this thread would be full of "Bah, another lame talking animals CG film" and "Dreamworks sucks", but most everyone seems to like it- some LOVE it. Is it really that good? (I'm not playing devil's advocate here, I'm legitimately asking, as I haven't seen it yet)
 
I really enjoyed it. The animation was the most fluid and well-choreographed 3D I've seen. Plus, there's the ultra-slick 2D intro and ending.

The movie isn't played out as a parody of Kung Fu movies as much as it is a true Kung Fu movie that happens to be funny.
 
I know this is a really late comment on this film since I saw this film at my campus theater showing. But here they are. This movie has beautiful and stunningly choreographed sequences, but I feel it was good but not great. I find most of my thoughts on this film pretty much run parallel with Roger Ebert's thoughts, with one addition. I didn't really think the voice behind Tai Lung really fit. The voice behind him did find, but something a little darker would've been more memorable, since that was what he was being built up as.
The story is too much on the predictable side and only less than a handful of characters do anything noteworthy in the story. Like Ebert, Po didn't exactly floor me with his charisma either.
For what it was, it was really good; but it's not going to be remembered as one of the greatest cinematic animation films of this decade or anything; like say The Incredibles.

about ***1/2-**** feels right.
 
I thought Kung-Fu panfda was pretty good, I mean Its Deffinantly got the best VA's of an animated movie for 08. & the story was pretty entertaining. I like how the Furious Five were each based on an actual Kung-fu style. But still Nothing beats Wall-E.

I gotta say though...Its Deffiantly one of the top 3 animated films of the Year in my openion!:D
 
Well, since this thread has been bumped:

I finally saw Kung Fu Panda recently (yeah, I know, I'm tardy to the party), and I enjoyed it. I really did. A lot more than I thought I would. My initial thought coming into it was "Yeah, another CGI talking animal movie with celebrity voices. Hoo-boy", but I found myself drawn into the story and genuinely feeling and routing for Po. It was pretty good, I must say.

If I had any complaint about KFP, it's that I wish that The Furious Five had got to do a litle more. I get that it was Po's story, and he had to be the one to save the day, and I have no problem with that, but for the Five to be Kung Fu Masters, they seemed to have been a bit muted in the film, plus we only got to see fleeting glimpses of their indivdual characters, especially Master Monkey. Given that Monkey was voiced by THE Jackie Chan, I expected him to get a few more lines and scenes than he did.
 
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