Kung Fu Panda 3 is a 95-minute animated martial arts comedy, and it is the third time DreamWorks has asked Jack Black to carry a panda through a crisis of identity. Directors Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni deliver a beautiful film that thinks less than it looks. It is the weakest of the three, and it still works.
Trailer, via Universal Kids.
A Villain With No Face to Lose
The film opens in the Spirit Realm. Master Oogway fights General Kai, who has taken the chi from every other dead kung fu master. Oogway warns him that someone is destined to stop him as Kai takes his own. Kai then uses that stolen chi to return to the Mortal Realm, where he is enraged to find history has forgotten him.
J.K. Simmons voices Kai. The creators wanted him distinct from his predecessors, and Nelson explained why.
You can’t go brawler because Tai Lung was brawler. You can’t go smarter because Shen was smarter. Where can you go? You have to go supernatural, bigger, and even more intimidating.
Kai is the first supernatural villain in the series. He is also the thinnest. Tai Lung wanted his father’s approval. Shen wanted to erase a prophecy. Kai wants a legacy he was denied, which is a fine idea the script never lets us feel.
Po Is Named Shifu’s Successor
Master Shifu announces his retirement from teaching and names Po his successor. Po’s first attempts to teach the Furious Five fail. Shifu, who predicted the calamity, tells Po to be himself and master chi.
Disheartened, Po returns home and meets a panda named Li Shan, who got a message from the universe that his son was alive. Both quickly realize Li is Po’s biological father. They bond at once, to the dismay and jealousy of Mr. Ping, the goose who raised him.
Bryan Cranston plays Li. James Hong returns as Mr. Ping. This is the movie’s real engine, and it is the part that works. A goose who raised a panda and a panda who lost one are not fighting over a boy. They are fighting over what a father is, and the film knows it. Both actors sell it without straining.
Black remains fully committed. Dustin Hoffman’s Shifu gets less to do than in either previous film. Angelina Jolie’s Tigress, Seth Rogen’s Mantis, Lucy Liu’s Viper, David Cross’s Crane and Jackie Chan’s Monkey are present, capable, and mostly waiting.
The Jade Zombies Attack the Valley
Kai’s jade zombies hit the Valley of Peace. The group learns that Kai and Oogway were once allies. Kai saved Oogway after an ambush left him injured, carrying him to a hidden panda village in the mountains. There the pandas taught Oogway the art of giving chi. Kai began stealing chi for his own gain, and Oogway banished him to the Spirit Realm.
Li offers to take Po to the village to learn chi so he can defeat Kai. Shifu and the Five stay to protect the Valley. Mr. Ping goes along, driven by jealousy toward Li. In the village, Po meets other pandas, and Li tells him he will teach him chi once he has learned to live as a panda.
Then Kai demolishes the Jade Palace and absorbs the chi of every living kung fu master, sparing only Tigress, who escapes to warn Po. The stakes go up. The movie does not.
Recasting Cost the Studio Real Money
Production was not smooth. DreamWorks Animation announced in April 2013 that Rebel Wilson, Cranston and Mads Mikkelsen had joined the cast. Mikkelsen did not last. By April 2015, Simmons had taken over the role, which had been rewritten. Wilson was gone five months after that, replaced by Kate Hudson because the schedule had stretched. The studio had to reanimate scenes it had already finished so they matched what Hudson did with the part.
Hudson plays Mei Mei. The reanimation was expensive, and the character still feels bolted on rather than built in.
| Element | Kung Fu Panda 3 | What it needed |
|---|---|---|
| Villain | Kai, the first supernatural antagonist | A motive the film lets us feel |
| New parent | Li Shan, Po’s biological father | More scenes with Mr. Ping |
| New panda | Mei Mei, reanimated for Kate Hudson | A reason to be in the movie |
| Setting | The hidden panda village | More time inside it |
That is not a knock on the craft. Nelson and Carloni worked with producer Melissa Cobb, writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, and Guillermo del Toro as executive producer. Carloni came aboard as co-director after Nelson asked for a stronger “the director’s bench” so the film would finish on time. He had been an animation supervisor on the first film and a story artist on the second. That is a real bench, and the film looks like it.
The Box Office and the Reviews
Kung Fu Panda 3 premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on January 16, 2016. It got a limited release in China on January 23 and opened in the United States on January 29, released by 20th Century Fox. It grossed $521 million against a $145 million budget. Reviews were generally positive for its visuals and narrative.
The visuals deserve that. The Spirit Realm is the best-looking place the series has built, and the panda village is warm and specific in a way the Jade Palace never quite was. The narrative deserves less. Po’s arc here is not a lesson he learns but a title he receives, and the film treats that as an ending when it is really a beginning it does not want to write.
Two Series and a Fourth Film Followed
Two animated television series followed: Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny in 2018 and Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight in 2022. A fourth film, Kung Fu Panda 4, reached theaters in 2024. The franchise clearly had more to say. This installment mostly held the door.
The tagline is “Grab destiny by the dumplings.” It is a good joke and a fair summary. Kung Fu Panda 3 is comfortable, well-made, and content to be the middle chapter. It reunites Po with his birth father, discovers a secret village, and hands him a supernatural enemy, and the best scene in all of it is still two fathers sulking in a doorway.
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