Kung Fu Panda 3

Saw Kung Fu Panda 3.  This film focused on a supernatural threat in the form of a buffalo who can steal the Chi of his enemies, transforming them into jade puppets of themselves.  Simultaneously to this, the father of Po (the kung fu panda himself!) reappears to take his son back home.

I found the adoption angle the most interesting but they dispense with it fairly quickly.  I'm not adopted, but it feels selfish to me for the long lost father to suddenly come back into the life of an adult stranger who they did not raise, expecting connection and time together.  In this case, the father gave up Po to save him from war, but again: these are now two adults.  I feel the relationship would be cordial at best.  I found the absurd outrage of Po's adoptive goose father both funny and completely understandable.  Anyway, we don't really dig into that.

The film has a theme of understanding ones self.  Po is explicitly told to think about this by his master and saves the day by building on the strengths of his friends.  Again though, the adoption thing makes it difficult.  His biological father teaches him how to "be a panda" but, to get too serious for a moment, this feels weird and bio-truth-y to me.  I feel like Po's already doing a pretty good job of "being a panda" by virtue of just actually being a panda, you know?  What's to learn?  This sort of feels like a boy being taught to "be a man" or some garbage like that.  Ok, but this is probably reading a little too deeply into it.

The film is alright, however I liked the second one better than this one.  There are fewer fight scenes because the antagonist has this almighty power of just being able to be-jade his opponents, so there's not much fight going on.  There's some gorgeous mixtures of 2D and 3D animation during the training sequences that reminded me of the ballet bits in An American in Paris, with its giant fabrics and swaths of color.  The film made me squirm a lot but children's movies often do that to me.  It's on a little weaker footing with its incoherent bouncing between parentage and knowing ones self, but it ends nicely, looks good, and is fairly pleasant, so ok.