Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

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For as much as I love the first 'Kung Fu Panda', I would probably say that in comparison, this one is actually much better. The first film remains the classic of the series, but this film follows through with character development, depth, better fight choreography and animation and continues the story nice and smoothly while simultaneously giving us an origin story on Po (Jack Black), our favourite martial artist panda. It also adds more great voice talent to the cast, and higher levels of drama and action. It's what a sequel should be.

When we last left Po and the Furious Five, Po was revealed to be the fabled, albeit unlikely Dragon Warrior by defeating the greedy snow leopard, Tai Lung (Ian McShane), who believed himself to be destined for the same title, but with wickedness in his heart. Since then, Po has lived a life of peace alongside the "Five", Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Monkey (Jackie Chan) and Viper (Lucy Liu), and his sensei, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), who one day advises Po that he will not be a true Kung Fu master until he achieves inner peace, and a lot of it has to do with a traumatic past that Po can't quite remember.

This ties in with our big baddie of the film, a peacock named Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), son of the rulers of Gongmen City who invent fireworks for purposes of awe and beauty. However, Shen discovers that the gunpowder used in fireworks can also be used as effective weapons. Worried, his parents call in a ram soothsayer (Michelle Yeoh), who foretells of Shen one day being stopped by a warrior of black and white (guess who). This leads to Shen using the newfound weapons against a community of pandas, and banished as a result of his violent tendencies. In his anger, he then assembles a wolf army to help him raid villages for scrap metal in order to build cannons that will hopefully help him take over China.

During one of their raids on a village, the Furious Five are called to action, and during the fight, Po recognizes a symbol on one of the wolf's armour that gives him flashbacks. Traumatic hidden memories start getting revealed, leading him to try to find out what happened to his real parents after his Dad, Mr. Ping (James Hong), the goose, tells him much to his surprise that he's adopted. In the meantime, Shen is starting to succeed in his mission by taking Gongmen city, and one by one taking down powerful Kung Fu regents Masters Thundering Rhino (Victor Garber), Ox (Dennis Haysbert) and Croc (Jean-Claude Van Damme).

The Furious Five are then sent to Gongmen City to put a stop to Shen's reign of terror, but Po is constantly distracted by his hidden past and how it ties in with Shen, and the symbol he keeps seeing within Shen's army. So the big themes of this film from the get-go involve Po finding out where it is he really comes from and how Shen was involved in his past, which is probably very obvious during Shen's backstory at the very beginning, but my apologies if I've breached spoiler territory. Even knowing, however, one can still feel for Po throughout the film and really route for him to succeed, and find the answers he's looking for.

I would probably say that this is, personally speaking, my favourite of the bunch. It does a very good job with delivering all of the good humour, inspiration and fun of the first one all while cranking the volume up on those things and adding more backstory, drama and action. I also frankly like the villain here a bit better. Oldman's wonderful voice acting aside, Shen reminds me a lot more of a Sauruman type from 'Lord of the Rings' and feels like more of a threat. Plus I just like the badass design of his character, and the idea that he uses his feathers as daggers.

As I mentioned before, I do love 'Kung Fu Panda', but 'Kung Fu Panda 2' takes everything that was great about the first one and cranks it up to vey satisfying results. Although the outcome is generally predictable (again, my apologies for spoilers, but remember, we have more to come after this) the ride is still a pretty great ride, and the addition of a more dramatic edge to things to make it a touch darker is a welcome one. And while the series doen's necessarily go downhill from here, I'd still consider this the best of what is, altogether, a pretty great batch of animated adventure flicks.

5/5

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