For a much shorter and conceise review on Kung Fu Panda, check out The Gunn’s Kujng Fu Panda 4: Review, which is out now! For now, you are reading my in-depth dissection of the entire film’s plot, writing, characters, lore, and how I feel about it as a whole.
Kung Fu Panda 4 was met with extremely mixed reviews as of its debut, many calling it shallow compared to the other films, and a downgrade even when 3 was considered a drop in quality. However, I was told by some friends irl that the film was nowhere as bad as others made it out to be, so I promised to go to the film with an open mind and decide how I felt about it myself.
The Plot Summary:
The story begins with an introduction to a seeming throwback to the film’s first villain, Tai-Lung, as he appears on screen, but when it zooms in on him, we can tell there is something off about his face and voice. Later we are introduced to the Chameleon who displays her ability to shapeshift into any creature she wants and specifically shows off forming into Tai-Lung. We find Po fighting off some no-good stingray in a pretty sick Dragon Warrior outfit (one he wears at the end of the third film in the spirit realm), and putting an end to his ways, clearly showing he is still protecting the villages of China as a legendary warrior. He later bumps into Master Shifu who demands they talk, and reveals it’s Po’s time to give up the role of Dragon Warrior to someone else and become Spiritual Leader! Po is heavily against the idea, and even when they hold a contest to determine the new warrior, Po points at himself, electing himself as the chosen one. A semi-clear point has been made; he doesn’t want to change.
Po meets a crafty-thief fox named Zhen, AND OH BOY AWKWAFINA IS VOICING ANOTHER ANIMATED CHARACTER eghhhhhh… Like listen, no reason to hate on an actress doing her job, but I’m tired of hearing her voice in The Bad Guys, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Little Mermaid (2023), Migration, and Angry Birds 2 for crying out loud, like just hearing her voice over another animated character felt annoying. I’ve heard her voice elsewhere way too often, so now it was just boring, and literally, I would have preferred hearing my mother deliver her lines.
Anyways Awkwafina starring as some fox- erm, I mean our super cool character Zhen, who blatantly disrespects my boy Po, calling him fat and dumb and slow and yatta yatta, makes him slip on oil, which like personally, I wouldn’t accept that type of disrespect. After far too many childish shenanigans, Po finally ties her up with some metal chains and throws her rear end into jail. Personally, I think he should have just upper-cut her, but whatever, Po is way too non-violent in this movie considering his ‘method’ is literally fighting. Anyway after that side-mission, a flock of sheep comes to Po and announces the Chameleon is on her way to take over China, and Po just learned a minute ago that Zhen like apparently knows all about the Chameleon, so he frees Zhen and has her join his adventure to go find and stop the new villain all to Shifu’s disappointment.
The two have a scene where they kinda get to know each other, showing Zhen is much more mischievous and hyper whereas Po is more calm, timid, and optimistic, and yeah they work together fine for this film. They stop at a bar named the ‘Happy Bunny’ or something like that (which frankly just reminds me of the Snuggly Duckling from Tangled). They demand directions to the land where the Chameleon is, get into a bar fight, and Po finally does something cool by using his Staff of Wisdom and blasting the baddies with dragon chi energy. They take off on a boat, and we get some Zhen character development where she reveals she’s an orphan (just like Po) but honestly just like deja vu to Kung Fu Panda 2 with Po’s and Tigress’ character development scene on the boat, it is cut off early as they arrive to their destination. One thing to note is that Po actually had much to learn during his boat scene in Panda-2, and even shows some of his character by calling Tigress awesome and invincible, which she shows signs she doesn’t believe, opening a door to develop Tigress, but besides their hug at the end of the movie, kinda goes to waste for development as it is really not continued in the third film, and as unfortunate as it is too announce, doesn’t continue in the fourth film either.
Anyways the two (not gonna say duo, I seriously don’t think they had good enough chemistry to be a “duo”) run around the city as they are now wanted criminals, find refuge in an underground cavern where all sorts of thieves live, and the next day after their stay we see Po teaching Zhen one of his Staff of Wisdom techniques to her, kinda hinting as who Po is gonna turn the role of Dragon Warrior over to. They invade the Chameleon’s giant castle on the mountain (which honestly the whole invasion upon a high-up castle is just reminding me of Panda-2) Po and Chameleon get into a fight somehow honestly I forgot how but don’t really care lol, and just as Po is gonna reach for his staff, Zhen picks it up and hands it over to Chameleon! Bruh talk about a heel turn wowzers! (idk guess I didn’t expect it but I also didn’t feel that emotionally torn because it’s not like I cared about their partnership, I mean any basic WWE tag-team split-up has told a better betrayal story lol.)
So then Po is sent flying out of the castle and flying off the mountain (just like Panda-2 when he is hit with the cannonball), except he is suddenly saved by his two fathers, Li and Ping, and then suddenly it clips to the three of them SAFE BACK ON THE MOUNTAIN?! Bruh how did the three of them even climb that high back up together?! Huge plot hole dude, kinda ridiculous. Anyway, Po says he’s gonna go back for round 2 with the Chameleon even though she has his staff, Li and Ping promise to fight the guards, but then realize they can’t because they are “two against an army” and then Zhen drops us with another extremely-basic line of dialogue “if we’re gonna against an army, we’re just gonna have to build one of our own” or something goofy like that. I will touch more on this movie’s extremely cheesy and bland dialogue later.
Po makes his way through the castle, once again showing bland action, like we never see Po just like SACK somebody in the face in this movie, like bro he’s so weak in this movie. Anyways he makes it to Chameleon, only to see she has summoned hundreds of villains and kung-fu masters from the series lore into one room, stealing each of their kung-fu skills… Like once again, how the heck do you steal kung-fu? You PERFORM kung-fu, it’s not like fictional magic where you just say a name out loud and suddenly POOF a fireball appears in your hand! Like Chameleon sucking in kung-fu energy is just so unjustly unexplained it’s just annoying and clearly just makes her powerful for plot reasons. Despite her power, she never even comes across as powerful or even that menacing despite the fact she has the literal power of Tai, Shen, AND Kai (plus more) all in her “arsenal”. She’s poorly written; we’ll discuss that later just like I mentioned at the top of this article.
Anyways Po and Chameleon go at it, he is blasted towards Tai-Lung’s cage where, okay, I’m putting my foot down here, at least the best part of the movie occurs. Pretty much Tai just calls Po a failure and that he should have never been elected as Dragon Warrior, and because of this small interaction, this is the best part of the movie, and it’s literally only because it continued a plotline for nearly 20 years old now, where the whole Po vs Tai-Lung started back in 2008. Of course, we could have gotten more word from all the other villains doubting and spitting on him, which would have made Po’s comeback even more cool BUT NO. The movie refuses to be awesome despite that being Po’s favorite word, and just gives us one fan-service interaction and then goes back to the cash-grab fight, movie, and villain that is Chameleon.
She uses a bit of the transformation of our favorite villains, but even then Po just kinda deflects every move until he is thrown into a pile of cages and just is kinda paralyzed because of that, therefore we never actually see Po kinda genuinely beat down and have to get back up and rise to the villain; he just kinda gets pushed in the corner. So then, our “favorite” character Zhen wields the staff, does the same trick Po taught her earlier, and somehow in ONE SWOOP, SHE DEFEATS CHAMELEON. BRUH!! Talk about anticlimactic like DUDE, one move that’s it? This is making me wish Kung Fu Panda took 13 episodes for one fight like Dragon Ball all of a sudden. Talk about jaw-dropping dumb.
Anyway, Po comes out of his cage and its revealed he could have gotten out all along, which just makes us Po fans look at him like he’s a dork because bro, you really just left the fate of the world in your little fox friend’s hands because you wanted to see if she would “develop”? This plot reveal was NOT necessary and simply clowney. Po does slap the Chameleon with his staff one more time, he frees all the villains from their cages, and we watch Po become tense as Lung, Shen, and Kai all approach him, looking as if they’re ready to tear him apart. But no, we get something really weird. Pretty much, Lung looks Po right in the eyes, and says “maybe Oogway wasn’t too crazy for choosing you as Dragon Warrior.”
BRUHHHHHH!! HE DIDN’T EVEN DEFEAT THE VILLAIN WDYM!!!!!!! The little Zootopia fox did! I think it would have been a lot cooler if Lung was still mad, but maybe if Po proved himself against all three villains, and finally they decided to stop and respect him, seeing how much more powerful he has become through his adventures and fights as a Dragon Warrior- since the story does reveal he has been around saving villages and all. The way Lung just pats Po on the back all of a sudden is just crazy when in his movie he was obsessed with the role of dragon warrior and then is suddenly skadoosh’ed away into the spirit realm by Po (where Po of course teaches us the moral of the story by beating him, but Lung doesn’t know that duhh).
So then all the villains just kinda bow their heads in respect, AND SO DO SHEN AND KAI LIKE WHATTT!!! Bruh, Shen literally murdered Po’s bloodline, but then suddenly he appears in the fourth film, has no lines, but then bows his head in respect to Po who didn’t even finish the story?! (Not even Roman Reigns bowed his head down to Cody Rhodes who rightfully defeate him, and all the bloodline did was make him bleed, BUT NAH SHEN KILLS HIS FAMILY BUT JUST RESPECTS HIM NOW!)
Breaking down the film and it’s flaws:
Now if I was the writer, maybe I’d have Shen say something like “I respect you now, because you taught me something no one else could” which of course would be finding inner peace and moving on. After all, it is seen Shen pretty much accepts his death at the end of Panda-2. So instead of each villain having their shot at wrapping up THEIR story, they just make a cameo and go back to the spirit realm. None of them throw hands and it’s actually crazy. There were so many ways to bring these villains back in an amazing manner and make the fans go crazy over them returning BUT NAH! They leave just as fast as they appeared.
And this sucks so much because I got hyped whenever I saw the three bad boys appear on screen, but they contributed nothing except me wanting to watch the movie just a tad more as I saw Lung’s cameo in the trailers. Their cameos could have been SO COOL, even if they were seen only on the sidelines. Imagine if they were all imprisoned next to each other during the climax battle, and they each discussed their backstories on how they fought with Po, giving us a Spiderman: No Way Home type of scene. Or heck, maybe they all are on the sidelines as they are shown doubting Po, just like how Frieza, Cell, and the rest of the Dragon Ball villains were shown to be doing in hell during Dragon Ball’s Buu arc, but no, that’d be way too much fan service. Like poor Ian McShane, Tai Lung’s voice actor, probably got the news he’d get to continue his iconic voice for Lung after nearly 20 years, only for him to spew some plotless lines besides the one where he calls Po a failure, aka the best part of the movie.
The Chameleon herself is also an extremely wasted villain. Besides her jank magic system and extreme lack of visible motivation for why she wanted to take over “ALL OF CHINA RAGHHHH”, she’s barely a menace. In the first film, Lung looks over Master Shifu in a thunderstorm and wipes the floor with his little red panda butt, Shen threatens kung fu masters saying his “parting” gift will be their guts “parting” all over and staining the wall, and Kai is seen to have stolen the chi of legendary warriors, even of Oogway himself and all the Furious five besides Tigress. Chameleon just takes one of her enemies and throws them down a staircase. Wow. So evil and menacing compared to our previous villains. Lung thirsted for greatness, Shen thirsted for validation, Kai thirsted for power, and Chameleon just kinda wanted it all but had no strong motivation for why besides “I was small and nobody thought I could do kung fu.”
I just feel like the writers and producers didn’t even care about Po and the Kung Fu Panda lore in this film, and they just kinda soft-restarted the whole continuing storylines in sacrifice of a new direction, kinda like how Pokemon did in Pokemon Black and White. Yeah, Ash had his past experience in the show, but he was more of a dork than ever and acted like he didn’t know anything, and that’s exactly how Po was in this film. Po has struggled with being spat on by his role models (Furious Five) in the first film, meeting the man who murdered his parents in the second film, and learning his father lied to him about knowing Chi in the third. Po endured defeating the best Kung-fu master trained by Shifu, moving on from his past and man-handling ignited cannonballs, and defeating a beast in the spirit realm while becoming the Dragon Warrior. All these insane “canon events” all lead up for Po to… Act like a dork the entire movie.
Like could Po not have trained Zhen as he dropped trinkets of information about his past adventures, calling out our favorite movies? No, we saw him master the spirit realm in the last movie, but then he chokes on blossoms and can’t focus on anything but “dinner with peas” becauseeeeee it makes the kids in the audience laugh. Like even then those jokes are fine but you have to realize a good majority who will enjoy Kung Fu Panda were born in the 2000’s as we saw the series bloom. We all want to see a new, fulfilling chapter in this character’s story, but no, we do not achieve nothing satisfying out of this new chapter.
This movie can be summarized in one sentence; a karate panda goes on an adventure and stops evil shape-shifting villain from taking over China. Like, there isn’t much to it, it’s really not that deep of a story. Like there’s not even a moral of a story or even a lesson. I thought the moral was going to be you have to change and move on in life, which was kinda hinted at with Mr. Ping saying he changes the menu from keeping it bland, but when the whole “we’re not so different, you and I” plot line drops between Po and Chameleon, saying these two characters aren’t that different, it’s just super corny because we’ve seen barely any progression of these two characters sharing similar backstories. Do you know who DID pull off the “not so different, you and I” plotline well? Po vs Shen in Panda-2.
Also how come the Furious Five are like literally NOWHERE to be seen in this film? This is an insane miss considering the five literally started this series, and now all of a sudden are irrelevant. The only funny thing about this is Po makes a joke that Mantis not trying to get his head bit off by his bride, a nice reference to the second movie where Mantis wishes he’d live long enough to see himself get married and have his head bitten off. Anyways Po just made “plot excuses” for why Dreamworks didn’t want to pay the voice actors to return, BOOO!!!
Aghhhhh this movie just leaves me SO DISSAPOINTED because oh how good a Kung Fu Panda movie could have been when you had 8 years to cook on it; I mean Panda-3 came out in 2016! We just had the absolute banger that was Puss in Boots: The Last Wish back in December of 2022! If this film had the same love, passion, and care Puss had, this movie could have been seriously amazing. Giving the villains cameos but absolutely no substantial growth or story-ties sucked, like this was THE time to redeem characters luke Tai-Lung and give them their character arc, but no, that would be too deep. The entire script of dialogue for a majority of characters feels like what Instagram comment sections make fun of, where I could have sworn Po was gonna have Chameleon appear behind him at some point, and he was gonna mutter “she’s right behind me, isn’t she?”. The fight scenes were boring which is crazy considering the other films have had seriously well-choreographed fight scenes and stakes, each one showing Po hitting near rock-bottom and death; Tai-Lung having the upper hand in kung fu, Shen having Po cornered with his shap and canons, Kai nearly sucking all his chi in the spirit realm), so it felt like Po had just lost all his skill for fighting which once again is INSANE considering he kinda breaks the fourth wall in this film and calls himself the “Kung Fu Panda” (remember what I said about cheesy dialogue?).
Resolution:
Before I grade this movie, you wanna know who CARRIED the film? That award goes to Mr. Ping and Li Shan babyyyy! Honestly, the dad’s two chemistry and antics, although mostly useless, were a fresh break away from the main plot. They brought a lot more comedy to the table because of their completely opposite personalities, being frankly useless when it comes to combat and taking on the threats of the story, and they both show how much they care for their son. Ping walking into the bar thinking he could just do restaurant owner talk, but then Li having to come in and make hot-air threats as he secretly was hurting as he squeezed and broke a cup in his hand was goofy and cute. So honestly, give it up for Mr. Ping and Li Shan, because they were the most refreshing and enjoyable part of the movie! Would love a complete side story or even a film featuring these two goofs. When the main protagonists of a franchise become stale, it can often be a good move to focus on some other characters, kinda like how Dragon Ball: Super Hero did with Gohan and Piccolo.
So yeah, in conclusion, I walked out not too happy with how they treated Po as a protagonist, not even feeling like him passing the torch was that satisfying, or even passing it to that enjoyable of a character. The villains’ returns were completely wasted which I’m def losing a few minutes of sleep over tonight, I didn’t find the comedy that funny, and WOW cutting the entire Furious Five was just soooooo cooooool. Yeah, they appear at the end and train Zhen just like Po was trained in the first film, but even then, since Po is the leader of training now, wouldn’t he just train Zhen how he sees fit? Mhmm whatever. I have to rank this a 2.8 out of 5. The best part of the film was the animation tbh, and although I don’t prefer it to the past film’s animation, it looked bright, shiny, and fresh, and I know animating the Chameleon was a pain in the butt to work on because of her shape-shifting animations, so respect to the animators for that.
BUT GIVE IT UP FOR MR. PING AND LI SHAN
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-Caleb Gunn, Writer, Actor, Artist, and ‘Self-Proclaimed’ Celebrity
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