Another Animated Disappointment: “Kung Fu Panda 4” is predictable and lacks creativity

When I saw the trailer for a fourth “Kung Fu Panda” movie, my expectations were immediately low. There wasn’t a reason to make this movie, because the plot was resolved in Kung Fu Panda 3, so I thought that the movie would be uninteresting because there didn’t seem to be a story to tell. 

After sitting through the 94 minute film, I decided that while it wasn’t awful, it was certainly not a masterpiece compared to the other films in the series.

The movie centers around the main character, Po, learning of an evil tyrant in a distant city, and deciding to go there to defeat said tyrant. He is eventually successful and returns home as a hero much like the previous three films. The plot isn’t original at all. It’s very similar to the plot of Kung Fu Panda 2, where Po travels to a far away city to defeat another villain who took over the city. The two movies being so similar shows how the filmmakers were out of ideas.

The horrendous dialogue and voice acting were not a promising start to the movie. There was a ton of fake enthusiasm as well as cringy lines about friendship, peace and honor. The first 20ish minutes of the film were uninteresting and contributed nothing to the movie.

Fortunately, the movie does get better. We see Po, who is voiced by Jack Black, learn that he has to give up his role as “Dragon Warrior” to someone else so he can become spiritual leader of the village. However, this seemed poorly written, as the first three movies made it sound like there was only one dragon warrior. Po has no interest in doing this, and straight up refuses to give up his position. The whole premise of him not giving up his position goes against his personality set up in the previous films. Po is supposed to be generous and kind and at the start of the movie he just acts greedily.

It feels like the filmmakers just made something up so they would have a plot, showing that this shouldn’t have been made.

Soon after Po refuses to give up his position, we meet Po’s sidekick, Zhen. Zhen, played by Awkwafina, is a thieving wolf who Po befriends after defeating her when he catches her trying to steal artifacts from the palace in which he lives. The film didn’t do a great job of introducing her, especially when she is such an important character, Po merely sees her and chases after her — and that’s the entire introduction to an extremely important character.

And Zhen’s character was extremely predictable. She is the exact stereotype of an antihero. She has a troubled past but through the help of the actual hero, she is able to become a better person. This makes her character kind of boring yet also pretty annoying.

Speaking of villains, the one in this movie who simply goes by “The Chameleon” — played by Viola Davis — was the worst villain in the series. The movie provides a vague and convoluted backstory for her, only telling us that her life as a child was awful and she somehow learns how to shapeshift. It felt kind of lazy that they couldn’t come up with anything better than having a bad childhood as a backstory considering how the previous three villains’ backstories are much more interesting.

One part of the movie that I didn’t hate were the action scenes. While most of them were pretty short, they were some of the few bright spots in the film. The final fight specifically was one of the few parts of the film that I enjoyed watching. The battle was the most cinematic part of the whole film, it was engaging and not completely predictable unlike the rest of the movie. Unfortunately it went downhill again after this.

The entire movie was so predictable that the brief moments of actual entertainment weren’t enough to save it.

Simply put, this movie didn’t need to be made. The franchise had already been wrapped up after “Kung Fu Panda 3”, it didn’t need a sequel, The whole film felt unnecessary and forced.