When asked whether he’s ready to die for a cause, Po says, “You bet I am-though I prefer not to.” Themes of courage, self-sacrifice and teamwork also get ample screen time. As a sage truthfully tells him, “The cup you choose to fill has no bottom.” “Happiness must be taken,” he crows, “and I will take mine!” Of course, it’s clear here that the peacock’s desire to “take” happiness, to try to heal his hurt with hate, is a no-win scenario. He could use a little peace-but he thinks war is the only thing that’ll ease his aching heart. Feeling rejected by his parents (who, in truth, loved the boy, and apparently died from heartbreak after they were forced to send him away), Shen uses that hurt and bitterness to fuel his drive toward world domination. Shen’s familial crisis is a bit different. Ping shows himself to be a patient and dedicated father-allowing his son to search for answers and risk life and limb (again) for the sake of the greater good. He also learns about his birth family, by the way-how they loved him but gave him up for his own well-being. But he comes around in the end and gives his heart anew to the only father he’s ever known. And for a time he even pushes away his adoptive father-who’s done nothing but love him and care for him since he was tiny. Once he learns he’s adopted, Po loses focus and makes some bad decisions. In this case, the barrier to Po’s inner peace is his in-flux parentage. He needs to let go of what happened in the past and move on. While on one level, Po needs that peace to do battle with Shen and his fearsome firearms, he also just needs it to get on with life. It’s a human one, unfettered by creed or culture or, apparently, species. That inner peace takes on a mystical, quasi-religious significance here (which we’ll talk about later), but the desire and need for peace is more than just a panda/peacock one. In Kung Fu Panda 2, both Po and Shen are after something too: inner peace.
#Kung fu panda 2 cast full#
In adventure movies, folks are often searching for something-a lost ark, plans for the Death Star, a locked briefcase full of cash. But will Shen divulge? Or will he just let his cannons do all the talking? The panda suspects that Shen may know something about what happened to his birth parents.
(See, we told you it was a spoiler.) That’s, naturally, thrown poor, poor Po for a loop. Ping, the goose who raised Po from the time he was a baby, isn’t (Spoiler Warning!) his birth father. Only one force stands between Shen and the rest of China: Po, the rotund, newly minted Dragon Warrior, and his buds in the Furious Five.īut the panda has problems of his own. It appears that kung fu itself may fall to such firepower. Soon, some of the best martial artists in China are quaking in their boots, unable to compete with Shen’s metallic orbs of death. “Compare me to a doily, will you!?” Shen seems to say as he fires cannonballs at his enemies. (Which, frankly, wasn’t hard to do, since China, in Lord Shen’s era, had never seen a cannon.) So far he’s managed to recruit an army of wolves and forge a battery of doomsday weapons-cannons the likes of which China has never seen. Banished from the family palace for being a megalomaniacal pest, Shen decides to show his now-dead parents just how wrong they were about him by taking over China. Maybe, when your back is turned, the common peacock will develop the ability to talk, smelt metal and craft a strategy to take over the known world. They seem about as dangerous as a doily sitting on the end table.īut maybe that’s part of their nefarious master plan. They’re not particularly strong or fast, and they don’t even fly that well. Peacocks seem innocuous enough creatures.
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