Kung Fu Panda 4 Review - Out of Touch
Written by Rei Caldombra 3/11/2024 Video version: https://youtu.be/3tUnXq3Xwj4
I’ll give my non-spoiler thoughts first, then get into the details of the movie for anyone who doesn’t mind spoilers. This is a lukewarm movie lacking originality and feeling like it was just going through the motions. It is not terrible but continues the downward trend of the Kung Fu Panda series. It feels similar to the 3rd but worse. Like the last movie, it is not that the plot feels out of place or forced. It makes sense that a continuation would go in this direction. The problem is the overall execution and feel of the movie. There is not much tension, dramatic weight or rich themes. It’s an average at best movie on its own but as a sequel it is a far cry from the heights of the first two movies. I don’t especially recommend it as it's just that plain. If you just want to go see a movie without thinking much about it, then go ahead and see it. There’s some enjoyable stuff here. But nothing is interesting or deep. Depending on your investment in the series, it could harm your overall feelings on the series. Whether this would change your feelings on the previous movies depends on the individual I think. For me I believe this does not ruin my ability to enjoy what came before, but it's possible it could for you. I don’t think it's so terrible that it would ruin it for a lot of people though.
Spoiler time
Bringing back the villains did not do anything of substance for me. Tai Lung was the only one to get lines, and his just did not sit right with me. In general he felt like a sloppy forced inclusion. But at least he got to defend himself a little, everyone else popped out just to get one shot and thrown into a cage. That felt degrading, especially to Shen. This is the point of contention where I could understand this movie hurting the earlier movies. Seeing especially Shen but also Kai go down effortlessly just sucks after seeing everything they were capable of before. Both of them being in the spirit world is also weird, how the spirit world works is not explained well at all. And all of the past villains bowing to Po just because he defeated the villain who took their skills just does not feel right. Maybe you could view it as them losing and regaining their skills made them feel some humility, but that is another thing that was not set up. If bringing back the villains was an attempt to inspire nostalgia and do fanservice, it totally fails. This point also does not feel very interesting or original because of the last movie. We already had past kung fu masters be brought back, this feels a lot like that again but with villains instead.
Speaking of villains, our main villain Cameleonul is totally lacking in substance. She is a mob boss manipulator that also has magic powers. There’s some nice visuals with her chameleon body and shape shifting, I can give a compliment here. As usual with animated movies, the animators are doing their job great while the creative side is bringing down their work. At least Kai got a little bit of backstory that makes clear sense. I don’t buy her backstory that no one wanted to teach her kung fu just because she was small and didn’t seem suited for it. I can get this point if they had set up that Mantis is an outlier but I don’t believe that was set up. In this world where there are tons of capable small creatures, including Shifu which they went out of their way to say is well known outside of the valley, I don’t buy a chameleon being turned away from every kung fu teacher she went to. I didn’t feel the respect for kung fu in this one that the previous ones did, even the 3rd. She is not very interesting or engaging as a villain. She carries no dramatic weight due to how little set up she has as a character. Her pathos is very underbaked and did not make you feel anything for her the way we did with Tai Lung and Shen.
Her connection to Zhen is very loose as well even though it is an important part of the movie. Zhen I do not have much to say about because she also feels very standard. She is a street rat who grows to be better, with a regretful betrayal leading to her switch. There is nothing novel here from the world of Kung Fu Panda that makes her more interesting. Her bond with Po is fine and functional, but again does not elicit much emotion.
At the very least Po’s strength did not feel undermined like the other older characters in the movie. Throughout the final fight and most of the movie he was never really on that much of a backfoot. He did lose his staff which took away his spirit world powers, but that did not detract from his skills. This is a positive when it comes to the portrayal of Po, but a negative for the feel of the movie. There is not much tension in this movie, partly because Cameleonul didn’t feel like that much of a threat to Po.
Minor gripe is that I have seen enough of the standard “country bumpkin reacts to the hustle and bustle of the city” scenes and there is nothing great about it here. I don’t think they did enough to differentiate it from the usual crime heavy city you see a lot. I like the running of the bulls as the police chase joke, but that was it. I also thought the movie was the least funny. Not much to go into detail here, just didn’t care much for the jokes. Like 3 this movie does not have well placed drama and comedy like the first two movies did, but 3 at least was funnier when it was trying to be.
I want to conclude by touching on the behind the scenes information that we recently got. A lot of it is just sad and terrible. A common criticism now is that the decision makers behind a lot of entertainment media are terribly out of touch with their audience and the creative process.
This idea of people being out of touch and what we get from the behind the scenes explains a lot of how this movie ended up. Do keep in mind that info like this should be taken with caution, but I believe this is credible. Many of the ideas that were originally going to be part of the movie simply sound terrible. Cost cutting made the movie lose out on things that would have made it better. The Furious 5 could have had a rematch against Tai Lung, or we could’ve seen how they fair against Shen or Kai. Shifu could have reunited with Tail Lung and had an interesting exchange that validated Tai Lung acknowledging Po as the dragon warrior. These are the kinds of scenes that could have given the returning villains actual substance and reason to be there outside of power sources. Zhen already felt underbaked, but just what we got was hard to get put into the script. Chameleon and Zhen weren’t even going to have a backstory at all. My respect goes to the creatives behind the scenes who actually know what they are doing and try to make the products the best they can be in the situation they’re in. Also remember to be civil and not attack people over this. I’m not going to tell you “it's just a kids movie, chill” because media that is suited for kids should not be viewed as lower and not deserving of high quality. We were all kids once and the best content for all ages can appeal to adults just as well, which Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2 do well. I will say to remember that a single movie in general is not something you should harass people over. Be critical of these stupid decisions but keep it civil. Thank you for reading!
