Kung Fu Panda 4 is Painfully Mid

[Music] [Applause] [Music] I would just like to say I really despise being right kungu Panda 4 has finally been Unleashed onto the world and I was so excited to see it I took a very brief trip to the United States so I could see the film in all its glory and I got to say there were certainly some interesting story shakeups in this one though I still don't understand what a slot flight. net is real talk though DreamWorks can you stop making me wait an ungodly amounts of time to see your films legally like come

on I'm already British I need to choose a singular struggle here but yeah Kung Fu Panda four as they filmed that DreamWorks forgot existed until like 2 weeks ago when they realized they should probably Market their movie so they don't end up with a ruby Gilman situation again and the conversation surrounding this film from announcement to release has been strikingly split and for good reason too while it is true there are six Kung Fu Panda movies planned out Jesus most people accepted Kung Fu Panda free as the natural conclusion to a Trilogy and to Panda

Free's credit well it is is the weakest in the franchise well not anymore but I'm getting ahead of myself most people accept it as a satisfying conclusion and the film overall felt pretty darn conclusive so the announcement of her fourth Kung Fu Panda movie while not exactly unwelcome given it's one of Dre's most iconic and beloved franchises definitely left a lot of people rightfully skeptical and that skepticism only strengthened as more details about the film came out along with a frankly hilarious amount of leaks again as I mentioned in my last video talking about this

movie The Unfinished placeholder trailers for Kung Panda 4 were just dumped into my Discord server which then started a domino effect of them being being spread across the entire internet every time I walk outside I fear I'm going to get sniped on one of DreamWorks Asing ninjas these trailers included unfinished animation storyboards plot details they play Aller music with a Drake song it was terrifying obviously I can't show any of the leaked stuff because dreks was likely orbital strike my home it definitely made me incredibly skeptical of the film and I can't say it made

me very excited and when the trailer officially dropped I was even less convinced because it included nearly every leak scene I was already unconvinced by along with some new scenes that started to make me worry a little despite this four film beinged for a while it really felt like an unnecessary sequel on pretty much every level to me from the new villain looking very uninspired to the possible regression of post character Arc the complete absence of the Furious 5 Aquafina I was not very hopeful my bare minimum expectation for this movie was that it would

be a solid and entertaining installment of the franchise that just kind of went through the motions without the maturity or death of its predecessors and now that I've seen the movie for entirely legal means I promise I'm honestly shocked at how mid the film is if I had to describe it Kung for panda 4 feels like a first draft movie on autopilot cannot begin to describe how disappointing this movie was but I'm going to try also later on in the video there will be spoilers mentioned and I'll put up a disclaimer when the time comes

because there are some major problems with this movie that I cannot get into without spoiling it especially when it comes to this film's ending and how genuinely awful it is so for starters let's go over the obvious things first superficial stuff along with some actual concerns a lot of people had firstly the big question is Aquafina annoying in this movie remember SW shut the up uh yes she is still playing the exact same character she keeps getting typ cast as admittedly this is not her most infuriating role you can F this movie not having musical

numbers for that but overall I thought this was important to address just so people looking for an Aquafina tricker warning could be put at ease now the soundtrack of this movie Banger actually so go it all of the kungu pandm films have fantastic soundtracks and this movie really is no exception it's just that unlike the previous films the soundtrack for this one is its best quality now animation wise this movie is about umow of Kung Fu Panda free there really hasn't been much change here overall the film just looks fine from an animation standpoint the

lighting across the entire film is gorgeous I'll give it that but going off of art Direction it's nowhere near as striking as the previous film this was a concern I had with the trailer because a lot of the new characters did not fit the art style of Kung Fu Panda very well and overall despite the animation quality being on par there's something about the film that feels far more sanitized from a visual standpoint okay now on to the actually important stuff was kungu Panda 4 a necessary sequel I don't think so like at all did

it at least try anything new that I like on a conceptual level kind of but before that I got to get this off my chest this movie is fast like cars not that car this car Kung for panda 4's pacing is break neck you would not believe how insanely fast this movie plays out it's like watching a movie that is perpetually stuck at two times speed when the movie got to the 20-minute mark it generally felt like I had been sitting there for a good 40 minutes because of how hilariously inept the pacing is from

the minute the movie begins it is determined to fry your cerebral cortex it is bizarre I obviously can't use examples from the legally sample Clips I have because I'm already in hot water with DreamWorks as it stands but the movie continuously jumps from one scene to the next not giving any character moment of the few that're actually are and story reveal any time to breathe it's like the Cinematic equivalent of waterboarding we had to keep playing back some scenes because we just had no fuing idea what was happening half the time it all goes by

so quickly that your brain can barely register what's happening it's like watching an officially licensed Kung Fu Panda content farm video on YouTube kids where Jack Black sings Baby One More Time at the end and what's more shocking about this is that Kung Fu Panda 4 is the shortest film in the franchise clocking in at an hour and 20 minutes there's enough plot and interesting ideas here that could easily be played out in a movie that has an extra 15 or even 20 minutes added on to its runtime regardless of some of the ideas here

being genuinely interesting or even good on paper none of it has done any justice or has given any time to be fleshed out and this is the movie's largest problem the pacing is horrendous there's a big difference between having a fast-paced movie and a fastpac movie that twist the viewer's neck 180° every time the scene changes but even disregarding the poor pacing there is so much about this movie that feels incredibly off compared to the first three for starters everyone's concerns about the Furious 5 being gone were completely founded because they are nowhere to be

found in this movie until the credits not a mid- credit scene they show up for the credits Lord have mercy my goats are washed within the first five minutes of the film they have a 10-minute sequence explaining the fous 5 were all out doing their own things and it is such a fast and confusing scene truthfully I have no idea why the five were just completely absent from this movie especially when the director Mike Mitchell basically lied through his tee te and said that not only were the five definitely going to be in the film

but that the film would also bring back every single character from the previous movies this is a very misleading statement because while yes everyone does return the movie doesn't actually do anything with them a huge part of this movie's marketing came from the idea of Po fighting all of his previous foes who are in fact just the new villain the chameleon in Disguise but that never happens taong at least gets actual dialogue but Shen and Kai don't even speak and there's never any moment where po genuinely believes he's fighting his old enemies or whatnot he

finds out about the chameleon at the start of the movie it's only when Po and a chameleon first fight that she turns into taong Shen and Kai but they are only brief Transformations this movie's marketing is incredibly misleading and it removes a large part of my interest in the film's story not helped by how much of a wet napkin the new villain actually is I was skeptical about the chameleon from the beginning and can I just say that for a franchise that is renowned for having some utterly fantastic villains the chameleon is not only just

a disappointment she is a up of biblical proportions in the previous movies you get the villains deal and their motivations immediately you're shown how badass they are what they're capable of they have an all consuming presence on screen they get sh done the chameleon no Source none her entire gimmick is transforming into anything she wants but unlike how the trailer suggested the film would play out she doesn't have any unique power she just transforms into stuff it's only later in the film do you actually get the scene where she steals the Kung Fu of everyone

trapped in the spirit realm it would have been far better if she had some new way of going into the spirit realm from the very beginning of the film as opposed to needing ugu's staff if you switch this scene with tylon getting his power stol and you put it at the start of the film this not only establishes the chameleon as a genuine threat it also actually displays how terrifying her powers are obviously the script would need to be Rewritten but this is a far better and more effective opening scene than the one we got

and it would lead to the chameleon actually having a commanding screen presence because otherwise she's just a pathetic fraud with no Menace whatsoever the scariest thing she does is kicks someone down a flight of stairs after turning into an elephant compare that to Ty Long's Prison Break Shen straight up killing Master Rhino hell even Kai had a fantastic opening by defeating master ugue and every other Kung Fu Master in the spirit realm and stealing their Chi the chameleon is such a lame villain with a ton of potential that is never tapped into especially when you

realize hoing easy she goes down spoilers in 3 2 1 POS usage of the staff throughout the whole movie is insanely frustrating he never uses it and the only time he does use it until the very end of the film is during a bar fight with a bunch of nobody's even though as shown by the finale the chameleon goes down in two hits from the and yet po never uses it until the plot just demands that he does this not only shows us how much of a fraud ass the chameleon is it's also just horrible

writing this thing is so overpowered the film just constantly forgets that PO can use it until they have to wrap up the story genuinely what is the point of the chameleon if they go down in two hits to a weapon po has had from the end of the last movie what is going on did the writers fall asleep the film seems to be prioritizing constant jokes as opposed to actual storytelling which just doesn't work with Kung Fu Panda there's none of the emotional sincerity and maturity that Define the previous films it's a movie designed purely

for kids that ignores the appeal the franchise hand towards older audiences and has very little respect for what came before I mean there's a whole subplot involving Po's Dads going out to find him for some reason and it's such pointless garbage because they don't do anything meaningful over the course of the film you can remove them and the events of the movie play out the exact same way I have no idea why they are here their scenes together are not funny I don't get what the point is this is precious time that could be spent

flushing out the other parts of the film that desperately need some extra impact now conceptually I do like what's on display here the whole plot of the film revolves around po having to find a successor that he can train to become the next Dragon Warrior and trying to embrace this inevitable change in his life when he's not ready for it Mike Mitchell did state in interviews that come from had a four is sort of a love letter to the first movie and you can tell just with how many parallels there are and I like this

idea in concept Po's Journey began by being frust into a role he was not ready for and him struggling to let go of that role is an interesting idea and po being a teacher to train the next Dragon Warrior is absolutely something I can get down with but as of all things the problem lies in its execution Kung Panda 4 has poke Clinging On to being the Dragon Warrior and really struggling to find his inner peace in general the way this film handles Po's character Arc is really disappointing and flies in the face of the

previous two movies I'm sort of going to repeat what I said in my trailer analysis video here because I was pretty much right on the money with this Po's whole Arc in kungu Panther 2 is about overcoming his childhood trauma the loss of his parents and the attempted genocide of his people by Lord Shen finding his own inner peace the finale of con Panda 2 is an emotionally powerful conclusion and led to poke growing as a character healing from his trauma and not letting the past Define him and distract him from the present po Arc

is what made that finale so satisfying and it's a big reason why Kung from Panther 2 is commonly seen as the best film in the franchise it's just Peak fiction po struggling to find his inner peace something so important to him in the second movie and having it played out as a joke really doesn't sit right with me and his whole spill about how the Dragon Warrior is who he really is really doesn't feel right Kung Fu Panda fre is generally kind of forgotten about in this movie like a pretty much every turn it acts

like the third film just didn't happen aside from bringing back Po's dad Po's entire conflict in that film stems from him having an identity crisis brought along from him being given a new role as a teacher to the Furious 5 along of how he feels regarding his adoptive and biological dads and you want to know what conclusion he came to my the son of a panda the son of a goose a student a teacher turns out I'm all of them then we snap back to kungu Panda 4 and it's like I'm watching a version of

Po who hasn't progressed since the first movie someone who likes the maturity and depth of a character who had a perfect Arc spanding fre entire movies someone who hasn't faced his trauma and healed from it and found their inner peace someone who doesn't know who they are or where they belong in the world that's why already finding the answer I'm overall left incredibly disappointed with where this movie takes the series and handles its characters Zen the new character is nothing to write home about just Aquafina typ casted garbage and look is it really a spoiler

to say that she's going to be the next Dragon Warrior like should I really care about saying that it's so obvious from the film's plot synopsis to her constantly being tied to PO to the parallels between Po and Shifu you can see this coming a mile away and I would have hoped there would be some moment where I can genuinely feel like these characters have developed a strong enough bond to justify such a choice but because of this movie's insane pacing no scene between them has any impact I don't feel I should care at all

about anything going on between them like this is the problem com from Panda 4 fails to make you care about the story and the characters within it is a fast-paced colorful kids movie that cranks out a thousand jokes per scene with a staggering number of Misses on my ad and seems to just disregard the core appeal of the franchise and what made it work in the first place I'm not saying this is an awful move I've seen worse no doubt but kungu Panda 4 is a DreamWorks movie on autopilot I do not believe this movie

was made in good faith or as part of a plan it is so ungodly messy that I just refused to believe it there were six films planned for this franchise but no one actually wants to acknowledge why it possibly took them this long to finally make another installment and that's because I genely believe they were content with free being the conclusion for ises nothing remotely interesting enough to justify its existence and while it isn't a total disaster it is a mindboggling disappointment on almost every level DreamWorks I sure hope that cool looking robot movie of

yours is a slam dunk because you guys are not doing too hot this year and this is coming from someone who knows the inconsistency is part of dreamworks's charm anyway that's all for now play yakaza or something [Music]