I liked the orignal but i gotta say this one surprised me and was a really enjoyable film. its a rare case where the sequel is better than the original
In Brightest Day...In Blackest Night
Green Lantern
6.17.11
I concur. I liked it better than the original, which I never thought would happen. =]
shareI could not really accept a villain that was a peacock! A snow leopard, yes. But a peacock with wolves and apes as his slaves??? No.
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I honestly can't see why people thought the original was better. This one made the first one look terrible, which is amazing considering the first one was brilliant. I think people were disappointed that it wasn't as silly, but I found that route refreshing. I also found the jokes to be wittier than in the first film. I actually found myself tearing up not only at the beauty of the animation and the musical score, but also because of the story. Great film. Can't wait for the next one!
You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
@quote MarshmallowMoo:I actually found myself tearing up not only at the beauty of the animation and the musical score, but also because of the story. Great film. Can't wait for the next one!
I agree completly with this.
I loved this film way more than the first one, but specially becouse this one, touched me in a ways that the first didn't. The family/adopted theme, how you should focus in the present and who you choose to be.
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sorry for the crappy english, still learning -3-
No, the first movie was much better in my opinion. The first movie you saw some development of Po from lazy cook to confident kung-fu master. The other characters in the first movie actually had some personality, they worked well as a team, they actually showed annoyance at not being chosen. You could see some parallels between Tigress and Tai Lung, why Shifu was emotionally detached, the pacing of the story was much better. And personally I thought the fight sequences in the first movie worked better.
The sequel, everyone is in Po's shadow, the Furious Five barely counted as even a foil to Po's silliness, the masters in the other city couldn't even be counted as two-dimensional. The villain Shen felt like a pale copy of Tai Lung - oh he's doing all this because his parents didn't love him, where did I hear that before?... like the first movie? The entire movie felt rushed and underdeveloped.
Not gonna say that the sequel was terrible but it was clearly not as good as the first.
Well, no, Tai Lung was doing what he did because he felt slighted--and entitled--to becoming the Dragon Warrior, a far cry from Shen thinking his parents didn't love him. If anyone was affected by emotion it was Shi Fu because he cared so much about Tai Lung, who himself though he should've been the dragon warrior.
BUT! I do agree with you that the pacing was off. I can only assume this was because of the switch in directors as the new director didn't know how to time the humor as well. The drama scenes worked very well and moved me and the humor scenes were funny as well, but they rarely co-existed as well as they did in the first movie.
Me personally, I thought Shen was more terrifying to some degree. There was a look of madness in his eyes whenever he got really perturbed about something. I dunno. He just looked creepy to me.
Just my one cent since I can't afford two.
Shen was a better villain for me than Tai Lung. I don't think Tai Lung ever killed anyone on screen, but Shen wasn't afraid to kill his own men. Let's not forget how quickly he murdered the Wolf Boss when he wouldn't light the canon.
You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
Shen is hands down better to me as a proper VILLAIN (you know, with a plan, an army of mooks, superweapons, personal against the hero etc.) .. and ALL of his decisions were rational, his own choices .. and he's still a monster - that's the way it's done ! his creepiness and Gary Oldman's voice didn't hurt either
Tai Lung was awesome too though
I think both parts were fantastic films and some of the best animated films I've ever seen
Yeah, they were both awesome in their own way I thought. Tai Lungs escape from prison cements his status as one of the bad@$$es of animated villians. But Shen was positively ruthless as well.
Just my one cent since I can't afford two.
Seconded!
They were both great villains - two different villains, but great.
Tai Lung was sheer power and strength, the fiercest warrior possible. So this was a proper villain for Kung Fu Panda 1 because the character itself was rather one-dimensional. Simply a great fighter that Po would have to stand against.
Shen was the great villian for KFP 2 because he was more complex. He had connections to Po's past. I agree with the poster above, he was another classic villain -- resources out of the wazoo, his henchmen, sheer power in numbers, an intelligent and cruel leader. Defeating Shen would require the teamwork of Po and the 5, now possible because of KFP 1.
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I respect people based on how they respect others.
Tai Lung wasn't anything like Shen. Tai Lung never accused Shifu of not loving him, but simply of not being too weak to question his master's decision. Also Shen's character had a great deal more depth, both in personality and in background.
Also, I was quite surprised to find in the sequel that the five WEREN'T in Po's shadow any more than they had been in the first movie. Po is still considered to be the dragon warrior, like in the first movie, but he isn't outshining his fellow warriors in fights. (It makes sense that, while he can hold his own in a fight, he is going to struggle in some respects to match up to the ultra-trained group of warriors he has joined.)
The story of the original movie was pretty generic, though very well executed. The sequel tries for something a little more ambitious.
Agreed fatpie42.
Honestly I think Tai Lung's weak point was his personality. With Shen, you get the rage, the lust for power, everything that made Tai Lung such a great bad guy, but the element that I always felt was missing in Tai Lung was an actual personality. I felt like Tai Lung was an archetype and Shen was an individual. For example, that scene where he is practicing what to say to Po when he enters...hilarious. It gives you a different side of this already multi-dimensional villain. And no, I am not talking about cheap laughs here, I am talking about the fact that you get to see some quirks that Shen has, not just the obvious fundamental failings (parents didn't love me, can't take correction, etc). Tai Lung feels like they took every classic Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan kung fu movie villain and rolled 'em into one, complete with the cheesy melodramatic dialogue we would expect from such characters "At last! A worthy opponent" "Shifu taught you well...". That's not a bad thing, in fact it endears those of us who love those old kung fu movies even more to the movie. But as fatpie42 said, the sequel goes for something a little more ambitious. Shen was just truly unique. One minute he's a bloodthirsty killer, and the other he's an insecure ruler trying to fit into his own crown. In many ways a more likable and consequently more despicable villain.
Don't get me wrong, Kung Fu Panda is one of my favorite movies of all time. But if the point of a sequel is to advance the plot and the characters without screwing up everything that made the original so good, then Kung Fu Panda 2 is probably one of the BEST sequels ever.
Well said, Randomlynx! The first movie was better...
You clearly missed the point of Tai Lung if you think that he did what he did because Shifu didn't love him. It had nothing to do with Shifu in the slightest. It had to do with the fact that he felt entitled to be the Dragon Warrior and that when he didn't recieve that status from Master Oogway, he got pissed off and took it out on everyone. He's a basic animated villain. An awesome one, no doubt, but basic. In fact if anything, Tigress is the one that felt sadness from not being loved by Shifu in the first one.
Now Lord Shen is a completely different character. He wasn't loved by his parents and he was told by the soothsayer that a panda will defeat him so he tries to turn pandas into an extinct species (which is how it relates to Po's past). When he finds out that there's one more panda, he puts all his focus on him and yous ee his fear throughout the film.
Lord Shen is a more complicated character than Tai Lung ever was and the two are nothing alike. Personally Lord Shen is one of the greatest animated villains in film history (at least to me that is) while Tai Lung is just an awesome kick-ass villain.
P.S. The second movie's better.
Agree with pretty much everything you said. Not as good as the first because of those reasons.
This was sqeaky sequel. Not bad, but certainly not great. I enjoyed it nevertheless.
not me.
the character set ups were interesting but in some parts, felt overly long. Could have used a stricter editor.
The first movie was perfectly paced for a kids movie.
Also, in this one, not much is done with the Furious Five characters - an opportunity missed in the sequel.
Personally I think KFP 2 is much better than the original if you can understand everything in it, which require a certain age. I agree that the furious five didn't get much attention here, but we have seen many changes of Tigress. From the cold, serious, "hardcore" character we saw in KFP 1, she has become more sociable and fun-loving, as seen when she encouraged Po to continue putting more bean buns into his mouth. She also showed her compassion, which has long been repressed by her sad childhood and the strictness of Shifu.
But I was a little dissappointed at the end. When the screen moved to some far-away place and a huge back appeared, I was hoping that was the Soothsayer taking care of Shen, still alive and finally realized his mistakes. The Po father being alive thing should have been a post-credit scene.
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