Is there really no such thing as creativity in Hollywood anymore?!?! Kung Fu Panda 4 just had it’s first trailer released, and it looks like and even worse craps show than The Flash or The Marvels ended up being.
This might very well be one of the dumbest movie ideas I’ve ever heard!
The first trailer for the newest and long-awaited Kung Fu Panda 4 movie has released today, and the movie looks as though it has taken a page right from the books of The Flash and The Marvels for being a complete and total disaster. And, to be honest, I really don’t even know what to say if the movie is as shockingly bad as it appears to be.
Now, before I get into this article, let me just preface this by saying that I’m a MASSIVE FAN of the Kung Fun Panda franchise. I mean, I’m not as a big of a fan where I will be going to conventions dressed up as Po or writing fanfictions about the movies online, but I really do enjoy watching these films ever 6 or 7 months or so as they are so unique in the world of animation.
It’s very rare where you can find a movie franchise to be as silly and goofy as a Spaceballs or Dumb and Dumber, yet also have the emotional depth and complexity of a The Godfather or Pride and Prejudice.
That just really doesn’t happen very often, which makes it even more surprising that not only is the franchises beloved by fans, but also the champagne-sipping Hollywood critics enjoy these movies too for not a single one of the three previous installments of the Kung Fu Panda movies has a critics score of less than 81% on Rotten Tomatoes.
And, with Dreamworks having a mini renaissance in recent years with the insane success of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2023) and How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2019), so I really thought that this new Kung Fu Panda movie would capture a whole different side of Po, his friends, the world itself, and be worthy of the title of being a Kung Fu Panda film. And then I watched the trailer…which was…really concerning.
I mean, I was very excited for Tai Lung to return (if not a little skeptical given how well his story ended in the first film), but seeing him essentially come back for what appears to be a single fight scene, get his “kung fu” powers stolen by him from the new villain, Chameleon, and then what looks like him getting discarded in favor of the Chameleon pretending to be him was a MASSIVE, MASSIVE red flag for me.
I’ve got other complains (which I’ll get to in a second), but did Dreamworks really not learn a thing from the failures of The Flash and The Marvels about bringing back fan-favorite characters for cheap nostalgia bait (The Flash) and lamely stealing/shifting past superpowers (Captain Marvel)?
If Tai Lung and Lord Shen, who is also rumored (but was not shown in the trailer) to be in this movie, both get their powers stolen from them and are only used for a few minutes of nostalgia-bait, then this is already a mortal strike against this film. But that’s not even the only complaint I have about this film from just this trailer.
(Dreamworks Animations-Kung Fu Panda 4-Official Trailer)
Aside from Master Shifu, where the hell was the rest of Kung Fu masters? Where was Monkey, Mantis, Viper, Crane, and Tigress? They are just as vital to the story of Kung Fu Panda as Po, so they should not be discarded as throwaway characters as it appears they were with not A SINGLE ONE OF THEM getting a mere second of screentime in the trailer.
The only person who was put on full display as one of Po’s companions was…I shuddered just mentioning her name…Awkwafina’s character. I really can’t believe I wrote that sentence. I don’t know what bozo thought it would be a good idea to cast Awkwafina, but her fox character was given center stage in the trailer.
Now, if it was really anyone other than Awkwafina, who might very well be the most annoying actress in all of Hollywood, I think I would be a little more okay with a brand-new character taking center stage. But to not even show a few seconds of the OG cast and have an Awkwafina be one of the main characters is almost too much for my brain to handle.
I’m not going to completely say this movie is crap just yet as this is just a trailer, but I’m not hopeful with how this trailer presented the story.
Images Source: Featured Images: (Dreamworks Animations) (KUNG FU PANDA 4 | Official Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Dreamworks Animations) (KUNG FU PANDA 4 | Official Trailer – YouTube)
