It is rare for a sequel to outdo its predecessor while providing a new entertaining story with familiar characters. In the case of Kung Fu Panda, it’s not only as good as before but most of the time, it’s an improvement. The original Kung Fu Panda movie was a really good and entertaining martial arts comedy with a bit of an artistic Chinese lean. This movie is a lot like that, but it manages to take what made the original work and try things that are riskier, but pay off big time in the long run.
Po has earned his title as the dragon warrior and has been fighting evil alongside Master Shifu and the Furious Five for quite some time. However, a new threat has entered china as a peacock named Shen, who was banished from his homeland is out to destroy Kung fu by using a metal weapon that shoots out fireworks. When Po and The Furious Five get the word about Shen’s appearance they head off to a distant land to stop him in his tracks, but there may be more to Shen as Po discovers that he may have had an impact on his past life. Po will need to find to look deep inside himself to find his inner peace in order to put an end to Shen’s disastrous mischief.
The movie is clever in not repeating the same lessons and story arcs that were already introduced in the previous incarnation as everything from the characters to the story continues off from where the original started. It’s really satisfying to see The Furious Five and Shifu finally respecting Po as his own warrior and the way each of the main kung fu warriors work off each other action-wise is both entertaining and satisfying. Not only that, there is a brand new storyline that manages to dive deeper not only for the world-building of this movie but also deeper dive in exploring different sides of the characters we didn’t get to see in a movie. Some of the moments are so tragic and deeply sympathetic that you may find yourself emotionally invested to the point of shedding a few tears here and there. I know right, a Jack Black movie that can actually make you emotional is quite a feat for the filmmakers to accomplish. The movie continues along with having many reconizable names in the cast including but not limited to Jack Black as Po, Angelina Jolle as Tigeress, David Cross as Crane, and Dustin Hoffman. One of the big breakout characters is the villain Shen played by Gary Oldman who is not only subtley funny and surprisingly complex, but he is an example of how you can take something elegant like a peacock and make it a huge threat to Po and The Furious Five.
The animation has all the great chinese inspired visual style that fans have come to know and love. In some ways though, the style may be arguably even better than before with it’s impressive camera angles and more interesting set pieces for our characters to visit. I have already mentioned in the last movie of how an amazing job Dreamwork's did with creating kung fu action that has outstanding simulated movements and having a greatb amount of detail put in to the specific kung fu actions of each character. The character designs are great and they have much more expression given to them due to how serious the story can get at certain points and they pull it off flawlessly as you can feel the weight of the waves of emotions they go through. The backgrounds blend so much better with the characters and they feel gigantic in their execution especially when it comes to the kung fu action moments. Hanz Zimmer and John Powel return once more to score the soundtrack for the sequel and they really have got their work cut out for them as they return with providing Chinese inspired tunes with your traditional epic composed movie score. They also rocked it with the emotional bits as the music plays out exactally as a dramatic scene should with no cheating shortcuts.
Kung Fu Panda 2 takes everything that was great about the original movie and either builds upon or even improves on it’s story, characters, visuals and even music to make something that still is in tone to what the original movie introduced us with while giving us a much more funny and deeply satisfying story that is sure to entertain kids on one level and speak to adults on a whole other level. This superior sequel has certainly set the standard for the franchise and it’s exciting to know that there is still more that can be told in this ever entertaining Dreamwork's Animation phenomenon.
(Final Grade: A-)