“Kung Fu Panda 4” is more than just a number; it seems to signal a mindset change for a series that hasn’t only been successful in the US, but also in the country it is purportedly about: China. The original “Kung Fu Panda” came out in 2008, a time when there wasn’t so much concern about matching ethnicity. Jack Black voicing the lead character of Po did not raise much concern. This film takes Po on a solitary journey where the new friends that he meets are voiced by people of East Asian descent.

The Kung Fu Panda series featured the voices of Dustin Hoffman as the elderly red panda kung fu Master Shifu and Angelina Jolie as Master Tigress, Seth Rogen as Master Mantis and David Cross as Master Crane. The characters voiced by Jolie, Rogen and Cross were members of the Furious Five. The other two members of the Furious Five are voiced by people of East Asian descent: Jackie Chan as Master Monkey and Lucy Liu as Master Viper.

While all four movies had diversity casting, this fourth film changes the nature of diversity, bringing East Asian voices to the forefront. Because “Kung Fu Panda 4” summons back figures from the past, you might want to review the first three films.

Kung Fu Panda

Set in an anthropomorphic version of Ancient China, a giant panda named Po Ping (Black), helps his goose father Mr. Ping (James Hong) run a noodle shop in the Valley of Peace. Po’s heroes are the Furious Five, kung fu masters–Tigress, Monkey, Crane, Viper and Mantis–who live in the Jade Palace.  The head master, tortoise Master Oogway (Randall Duke Kim), believes that Shifu’s former protégé, snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane) will escape from a prison in Mongolia and come to steal the Dragon Scroll to gain limitless power.

In preparation, a tournament is held to help identify the Dragon Warrior, the hero who will read the special dragon scroll and save the people of the valley. Oogway identifies Po as the Dragon Warrior, shocking both Shifu and the Furious Five. Shifu tries to discourage Po, but Po wins over the Furious Five with his cooking skills. Through Tigress, Po learns that Shifu had raised Tai Lung and has suffered from shame as a result.

Although Po seems to be a kung fu failure, Shifu learns that food is a great motivator. Of course, Tai Lung will be defeated.

The film was written by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger and Ethan Reiff. Mark Osborne and John Stevenson co-directed.

“Kung Fu Panda” was nominated for Best Animated Feature Oscar and Golden Globe (losing to “WALL-E”), but won an Annie Award for Best Animated Feature as well as nine other awards, including Best Directing and Best Voice Acting (Dustin Hoffman although James Hong and Ian McShane were also nominated).

“Kung Fu Panda” is currently (8 March 2024) streaming on Freevee, the Peacock and can be rented on Prime Video.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

You’ve probably been wondering how a goose, particularly a gander like Mr. Ping, ended up with a noodle-loving giant panda as a son. This is the story that gets you there and explains how the giant pandas were put on the brink of extinction. It begins with a tale, narrated by Michelle Yeoh, of the Peacocks ruling Gongmen City. Their discovery of fireworks bring joy to their people, but the evil Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), discovers it can “also bring darkness and destruction.”

Shen’s troubled parents consulted a soothsayer. She foretold that if Shen continued down this dark path, he would be defeated by a warrior of black and white. The young lord set out to change his fate. But what he did next, only sealed it.

Shen had the giant pandas killed, but his parents then banished him. Shen swore revenge and that he would eventually have all of China bow at his feet. Aided by an army of wolves, Shen has taken control of the palace that he was banished from and begins his rule of terror.

In order to defeat Shen, Po will have to find inner peace and that’s not easy for a giant panda who has suddenly realized that he was adopted and his parents likely died as a result of Shen. Yet at the very end, after Shen has been defeated, we learn that Po’s father survived.

The paper cut puppets used to illustrate the beginning of this tale are a lovely integration of East Asian traditions into animation. While I usually like the anthropomorphic animal animations, here, I thought the wolves looked more like hyenas.

“Kung Fu Panda 2” was nominated for Best Animated Feature (losing to “Rango”), and was nominated for nine Annie Awards, winning Directing in a Feature Production (Jennifer Yuh Nelson) and Production Design in a Feature Production. (“Kung Fu Panda” writers Aibel, Berger and Reiff also wrote this screenplay.)

“Kung Fu Panda 2” is streaming on the Peacock, and available to rent on Amazon Prime Video.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

This film begins with Po running up stairs to become part of the DreamWorks logo. We then are plunged into the Spirit Realm, a place with floating boulders and Oogway is contemplating Inner Peace when he is confronted by an old adversary, a warrior yak named Kai (J.K. Simmons).

Oogway comments, “Our battle ended 500 years ago.”

Kai tells him, “Five hundred years in the Spirit Realm, you pick up a thing or two.” Kai wants to do more than that. “I have taken the Chi of every master here.”

Oogway warns, “When will you realize, the more you take the less you have?”

With Oogway’s Chi, Kai can now return to the mortal world. Yet Oogway knew it was not his destiny to stop Kai, but he had already set someone on that path. That someone is, of course, Po.

Po, with his sidekicks, the Furious Five, are heroes, celebrating in the Valley of Peace.

Po is running around with the Furious Five, but while they are friends, not everyone is behind Po’s mind set. Po has to ask, “You guys aren’t doing the dramatic pose, are you?

Mantis: “Do we have to strike a pose every time we land?”

Po: “You guys, never underestimate the power of a dramatic entrance. I’ve heard about some masters who can win a fight just by throwing open a door.”

Shifu tells him, “Before the battle of the fist comes the battle of the mind. Hence, the dramatic entrance.”

Shifu’s dramatic entrance is also his exit. He announces he will retire from teaching an Po will now be the head teacher. Yet Po’s first attempts to teach the Furious Five are disastrous because he’s trying to be more like Shifu. Yet Shifu reminds him: “If you only do what you can do, you will never be more than you are now.”

Shifu defines “Chi” as “energy that flows through all living things.”

The Valley of Peace is soon threatened by the jade zombies who are animated remains of the kung fu masters whose chi are in possession of Kai. The key is to learn Chi, which Oogway learned from the pandas. From this he was able to defeat Kai. Po’s biological father, Li Shan (Bryan Cranston),  shows up and tells Po he can teach him Chi, but Po must journey to the secret place where he and other giant pandas  live in peace.  Mr. Ping, threatened by the possible loss of his adoptive son’s affections, follow Po and his father.

To defeat Kai, Po will have to learn Chi and journey to the Spirit Realm and back.

What is important here is Po’s bonding with his biological father and Po’s gaining possession of the Staff of Wisdom.

This is the first film of the franchise not to be nominated for an Academy Award and the first not to win any Annie Awards (it received four nominations. The original writers Aibel, Berger and Reiff returned for this screenplay; Nelson co-directed with Alessandro Carloni.

“Kung Fu Panda 3” is streaming on Netflix and available to rent on Amazon Prime Video.

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)

At this stage, Kung Fu Panda is like American comfort food with some East Asian attributes. It isn’t truly Asian American–being written by people who are not Asian American, but series is full of appreciation for East Asian traditions. This particular film  brings more East Asian voices to the forefront. Po continues his spiritual journey, but now, Shifu tells him he must choose and train his successor as the Dragon Warrior and then become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace. As it turns out, the Furious Five are away as the Valley of Peace, and Po’s first nemesis, Tai Lung seems to have returned, causing chaos at an iron mine.

In reality, the new villain is a shape-shifting sorceress, the Chameleon (Viola Davis). The Chameleon is collecting the “Kung Fu” from every master villain. Yet she also needs the Staff of Wisdom that Po received from Oogway.

Without the Furious Five, Po is forced to rely upon a thieving corsac fox, Zhen (Awkwafina), to guide him to the Chameleon. Along the way, he’ll end up at a mountain top bar run by an elderly Granny Boar (Lori Tan Chinn), get help crossing a body of water by a fish in a pelican’s mouth (Ronny Chieng as a green arowana called Captain Fish) and hide in a den of thieves ruled by Sunda pangolin Han (Ke Huy Quan).

Po’s adoptive father, Mr. Ping won’t be left behind and neither will Po’s biological father, Li. Together, they try to insure the safety of their son and a different kind of two dad situation.

The fight scenes are well-choreographed and fun. If you’ve been waiting for killer bunnies, the bunnies in this film aren’t all trembling dumb bunnies. There’s a fun threesome voting for “slow and painful” death who have teeth worthy of a carnivore. Without the Furious Five, things move a little more quickly. The gentle humor that has characterized the series is still there as well as the lessons to be learned. Universal Studios has even provided a YouTube video of Po meditating.

While within the film itself, the casting of Awkwafina works, but her voice is so recognizable and already featured in films like last year’s “The Little Mermaid” (Scuttle) and “Migration” (Chump) as well as the 2022 “The Bad Guys” and the 2021 “Raya and the Last Dragon.” I wish they had gone with someone else.

This film was co-written by Aibel and Berger who wrote the previous three films with a new writer on the team: Darren Lemke (“Shrek Forever After” and “Shazam!”). While there is no representation of people of East Asian descent amongst the writers, the film is co-directed by Mike Mitchell (“Trolls”) and Stephanie Ma Stine (“She-Ra and the Princesses of Power”).

I would rank them as follows:

• Kung Fu Panda ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Kung Fu Panda 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Kung Fu Panda 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Kung Fu Panda 3 ⭐️⭐️

The Question of Diversity

At the time of the first film, having White actors voice characters of different ethnic origin, even if the character was an anthropomorphized animal, was common. The 1994 animated feature, “The Lion King,” had Tony Award-winning Broadway star Matthew Broderick voicing Simba (along with Jonathan Taylor Thomas as the younger version).  James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa, his father, and Jeremy Irons voiced Mufasa’s younger brother, Scar. (Moira Kelly voiced Nana). No Asian American voices were featured, I believe.

So having Jack Black voice a giant panda and Dustin Hoffman voice a red panda wasn’t an issue in 2008. The main villain, Ian McShane, was a snow leopard. The people of East Asian descent were given secondary roles such as Lucy Liu (Master Viper), Jackie Chan (Master Monkey), Randall Duke Kim (Grand Master Oogway) and Mr. Ping (James Hong).  African American actor Michael Clarke Duncan voiced a Javan rhinoceros (Commander Vachir).

The 2019 3D animated version of “The Lion King,” which came out after the first three “Kung Fu Panda” films,   had Donald Glover voicing Simba, James Earl Jones as Mufasa, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter as Nala. There seems to be a special effort to have Black actors as the lead characters’ voices. I don’t believe this version had any actor of Asian descent voicing any parts.

In 2023, having people of non-Asian descent voicing characters in anime doesn’t seem to raise eyebrows now either.  The lead voice actors for Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” are Luca Padovan as the titular boy and Robert Pattison as the heron. Of the main cast which includes Christian Bale, Mark Hamill, Willem Dafoe and Florence Pugh, only two, Karen Fukuhara and Gemma Chan, are of East Asian descent. Dave Bautista, who is part Filipino, also voices a character.

Is this important?  If it is important to one ethnic minority, and the movie community accepts this, then shouldn’t that standard be applied across the board? Otherwise, that would seem to indicate that one ethnic minority holds some kind of special privilege.

I do appreciate that the Kung Fu Panda series keeps is voice actors and has continued with the same ones, as opposed to the recent voice cast changes in “Chicken Run.” “Chicken Run” did, in its voice casting changes add diversity in terms of ethnicity, but diversity goes beyond ethnicity.

The voice cast of “Kung Fu Panda” has always included people of East Asian descent (Chan, Liu and Hong)  and with “Kung Fu Panda 2,” the director was a Korean-born woman, raised in the US, Jennifer Yuh Nelson. Nelson had been the head of story for the 2008 “Kung Fu Panda.”

In “Kung Fu Panda 2,” the Furious Five return, giving us Liu and Chan. Of course, Hong returns as Mr. Ping. The main villain here is a white peacock voiced by Gary Oldman, but Michelle Yeoh begins the film as narrator and is later revealed to be a wise goat Soothsayer.  Po’s Panda Dad is voiced by Fred Tatascore.

In “Kung Fu Panda 3,” the two important character that are introduced in this film are voiced by White actors. J.K. Simmons voices the villain and Bryan Cranston voices Po’s biological father. There is a Black voice actor: Al Roker gets to voice Dim to Willie Geist’s Sum.

Yet the new additions to the Kung Fu Pand world in this fourth installment, are people of East Asian descent: Awkwafina as the corsac fox Zhen, Ke Huy Quan as the Sunda pangolin Han, Lori Tan Chinn as the Granny Boar and Ronny Chieng as the green arowana Captain Fish (that lives in a pelican’s mouth).  African American aren’t excluded from this diversity plan: Viola Davis voices the main villain, The Chameleon, and is the first person of color and the first woman to voice the main villain in the movie series.

Representation does matter and, unlike “Chicken Run,” the action of this series does take place in a country that isn’t predominately White. While keeping Black and Hoffman, the new additions to the cast promise a possibility of more East Asian voices being heard. It is nice to see the move being made without public pressure.

The Journey

While the movie’s title clearly tells us this is the fourth cinematic installment on the franchise that started in 2008, fans of the franchise also had three television series (and one holiday special on NBC in 2010): “Legends of Awesomeness” which ran for three season (2011-2016 on Nickelodeon except for 2016 on Nicktoons), “The Paws of Destiny” (2018-2019 on Amazon Prime Video) and “The Dragon Knight” (2022-2023 on Netflix).

For “Legends of Awesomeness” only Lucy Liu and James Hong reprised their voice roles with Mick Wingert voicing Po and Fred Tatasciore as Shifu, Kari Wahlgren as Tigress, Amir Dalai as Crane, James Sie as Monkey and Max Koch as Mantis. This series has Po and the Furious Five defending the Valley of Peace from different villains while Po learns more about the history of kung fu and meets other kung fu masters.

“The Paws of Destiny” takes place after the events of “Kung Fu Panda 3” and Po now goes on adventures with four panda cubs (Nu Hai, Jing, Bay and Fan Tong) when they find a mysterious cave beneath the Panda Village. The young pandas gain the Chi of Kung Fu warriors: Blue Dragon, Black Tortoise, White Tiger and Red Phoenix. using these powers, they must stop the evil bearded vulture Jindiao (Steve Blum) and also protect the Forbidden City against the Komodo dragon Shi Long.

“The Dragon Knight” takes place after “Kung Fu Panda 3” and “Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny,” and Jack Black now voices Po instead of Mick Wingert. Po leaves his home and journeys  with brown bear Luthera (Rita Ora as an adult, but Kai Zen as the young Luthera), the Wandering Blade,” as she seeks four elemental weapons.

In this context, we can see the film “Kung Fu Panda 4” by using a story without the Furious Five isn’t such a departure for the franchise. The first film was about Po’s becoming the Dragon Warrior, the second film about him finding inner peace, the third is about him becoming a teacher and finding Chi after he finds his biological father and the fourth is about him taking the next step, becoming the spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace and finding a successor as the Dragon Warrior. In between, he’s had a lot of adventures with the Furious Five, but the latest ones in “The Dragon Knight” have been without them.

The new direction from at least the casting seems to be one of greater prominence and inclusion of voice actors of East Asian descent and that comes without coercion from the court of public opinion. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the franchise’s future project.

“Kung Fu Panda 4” is in theaters as of 8 March 2024.