Kung Fu Panda 2 - A Master At Blending Different Forms Of Animation

Kung Fu Panda 2 - A Master at Blending Different Forms of Animation

Kung Fu Panda 2 is my favorite animated film. I think it managed to take all of the already fantastic technical aspects of the first film and improve upon them without losing the heart of the original. One of the things that sticks out the most in the second film is the fact that it uses 3 distinctly different art styles for their animation chinese shadow puppetry, classic 2D animation, and 3D animation. Each of these forms of animation play a role in setting apart their portion of the story and representing something about the characters and the world that they portray.

The 3D animation is the main form of animation used to portray the world that the main story takes place in with the shadow puppetry and 2D animation showing personal details and backstory about the villain, Shen, and the hero, Po, respectively. The shadow puppetry is used to establish the setting right away and also expand on some of the culture of China that wasn’t seen in the first film. The story begins on a wide shot of the city with bright lighting and ends on the doors of the palace closing behind Shen with much darker lighting of the frame. The first shot inspires a sense of openness and possibility whereas the closing shot makes one think of the sealing of one's fate and confinement or journey to a darker future. It could also be the closing of the possibility of a better future for Shen because the doors block out light and make the frame darker. The way lighting works in shadow puppetry played a large role in establishing tone. Shen is mostly framed with red lighting near him. When he is first introduced the red tinting is not very prominent, but overtakes the screen when he makes the decision to get rid of the pandas. Red is also the color of the fireworks he uses whereas the fireworks used by his parents and the people don’t contain red. The red lighting is seen again when Shen is walking towards the setting sun before the doors to his parent’s palace close behind him. The red is much more muted with black and white within the frame, outside of his appearance, foreshadowing that his tragic fate and demise are ultimately cause through his own choices and actions. He wouldn’t give up his quest until the very end. His parents are also not shown in frame with him until they banish him showing the divide and disconnect between them (This doesn’t have much to do with the use of animation style but I really liked the directorial choice). The movement of the character’s is not as fluid as that of the 2D and 3D animation which can make it feel like going through the motions and all a part of destiny/the plan which plays a large role in Shen’s story. He thought he was going against fate and changing it when he killed the Panda’s, but in reality he was only sealing his fate.

This use of shadow puppetry is meant to juxtapose the 2D animation used in Po’s flashbacks. The 2D animation during Po’s backstory has much more fluid moments and that is used to great effect when the whole story is shown. Everything happens so fast and the attack seems to come out of nowhere because the shift from peaceful to destruction was jarring. To the panda’s this was something that they never could have seen coming. So using the fluid and quick transition that the 2D animation provides shows the way the Pandas must have felt about the whole predicament. There is also the shift of animation from 2D to 3D at the end of Po’s story, when his mom puts him into the box of radishes and leads the wolves away, that provides the real meaning behind the 2D animation of Po’s backstory. The 2D animation was meant to symbolize Po’s feelings towards these specific memories, he feels like they’re dreams. That’s why up until this point Po’s dreams were still animated in 2D, like in the first film, while other flashbacks like the ones told to him by Mr. Ping were still in 3D animation. Until that point Po could brush these tragic memories off as dreams, but in that moment they became real to him.

I am no master of animation, so I may have missed some points and symbolism about the art shifts within the film and how they pertain to the specific characters. I am just someone who finds the filmmaking medium to be fascinating and loves writing about certain aspects of films that I enjoy. I hope that people appreciate this and that more people will have active conversations about film as a whole.

Trish and Jessica-AKA Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object

The main theme of Jessica Jones season 3 is at what point is someone beyond redemption and do we have the right to decide. This is at the core of Jessica and Trish’s conflict in season 3. Trish believes that she is “the world’s moral compass” and sees the world in black and white. There is a clear good and bad but she places herself above her perceived morality. Since she believes that she is above her perceived morality it gives her the right to choose who is beyond redemption and who isn’t. Meanwhile Jessica is harder on herself about her morality. She believes the worst in herself and thus tries to keep herself in check. She knows she isn’t above making morally questionable decisions given the right motivation and thus believes that she can’t be the one to decide if someone is too far gone because she is subject to error and letting her emotions drive her. This is what eventually leads to their respective endgames within the Jessica Jones narrative.

Trish has shown seeds of this from the very beginning. She wasn’t able to carry through with it herself because she didn’t have superpowers, but once she got superpowers she started down the slippery slope that all the marvel netflix heroes have had to deal with throughout their respective shows. The thing that finally pushed her down was her mother’s death. With her mother’s death Trish had trouble reconciling the possible and slowly evolving redemption of their relationship with the reality of the abuse she suffered at her mother’s hand. This caused her to view the negative effects of the results of her mother’s abuse through the same lense as the positive characteristics she developed because of her mother’s influence. She took the positive tenacity and applied the lessons her mother taught her about undermining and forcing change with her abilities to the proportional extremes that Dorothy did at times. She wasn’t able to see the downward spiral into being the “bad guy” because her entire perspective on herself and her abilities had been warped in this way. The seeds had always been there through her pushing/encouraging Jessica into her final decision with Kilgrave to her intense desperation to get powers and finally become a vigilante hero to her killing Jessica’s mother. She had been slipping down this slope for a long time it only took a final push to make her fall all the way down. Trish has always had an ends justify the means mentality. In her final desperate attempt to continue the lie she tells herself, that she is still in the right, she does the unthinkable and tries to kill Jessica. This was due to her desperation to deny that she had become the very thing she hates the most and that her assessment of Jessica not having what it takes was wrong because sometimes it takes more strength to let someone like Salinger live than it does to kill him. She had been the victim for so long that when she finally got the power she craved she became the oppressor.

Jessica on the other hand has been gradually growing into a more conventional hero throughout the show’s run and has learned from her abusers and managed to break the cycle of abuse instead of perpetuate it. Her story has had the exact opposite trajectory of Trish’s. Jessica fears herself and her failures. She fears that all the death that she has experienced will be for nothing and that pushes her forward. There are multiple times throughout the show that she has tried to run only to end up facing her problems in the end. The fear that she isn’t good enough is ever present and is what ends up making her more heroic. As with Trish the death of her mother plays a big role in her growth towards her end position, but instead of pushing her to extremes it causes her to reign in her darker nature and try to live up to the moniker she so fears. Whereas Trish lies to herself about her superiority Jessica lies to herself about her inferiority. Believing that her powers don’t really make her more worthy to be a hero but instead less because of the way she obtained them. She keeps saying that she doesn’t want to be a hero and yet keeps participating in heroic acts which betrays her conflicting inner desires and outer portrayal/actions. She finally sheds the fear that she can never be a hero and stops denying her desire to be one which sees her finally become a hero in the more traditional sense.

Trish and Jessica were clearly set up to be on opposite paths of villain and hero respectively. Their opposing beliefs and actions throughout the three seasons of the show lead to an emotionally charged conflict between two people who clearly care about each other, but believe so strongly in their ideals that conflict was inevitable. The difference between the two was how far they were willing to go within the conflict. The realization to Trish that her beliefs had brought her to the point where she would attempt to kill Jessica, the person she cares the most about, is what broke her and made her rethink her beliefs. Jessica came out of the conflict “victorious” because she wouldn’t sacrifice her morality to accomplish her end goals proving Trish wrong. Unstoppable force meets immovable object, except with this clash of the two their is a winner. The unstoppable force, Trish, falls to the immovable object, Jessica. The dichotomy of these two characters makes them one of the most interesting friends turned enemies in the superhero television medium.

The Dragon Prince Season 3 Review (Spoilers)

My excitement for the 3rd season of the Dragon Prince is what made me push through all my homework and responsibilities this week and I can finally say it was everything I hoped it would be. It wasn’t perfect and there were a few things that I found a bit odd, but overall its emotional moments and struggles hit home and gave me a satisfying conclusion to the major conflict of the first arc. There were some threads left hanging that will leave you craving more and hint at this just being the beginning to an even bigger conflict ahead.

Now onto spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the season you have been warned.

I posted about what I thought about the characters and what their arcs could be earlier this week and I hit it home with some, but was pleasantly surprised by others.

Rayla was the character I was most excited about heading into this season and I’m glad they decided to go more in depth with her character and culture. We see just how deeply her parents “betrayal” has hurt her and how it has given her a heavy burden to bear. She is shown to be 100% willing to sacrifice herself and her possible happiness to redeem her parents and her own mistakes. She believes that she deserves everything bad that has happened to her because she wasn’t/isn’t good enough. This was painful to hear out loud because anyone who has watched the Dragon Prince knows what kind of person Rayla is and that she is, what Callum later dubs her, a hero. Which is only further exemplified when Rayla is the one who gets the finishing blow on Viren in a confrontation that mirrors that of Viren and her parents on that fateful day. She takes Viren down with a last ditch effort that almost takes her out with him and it is through this success that she is finally able to move forward with her life instead of being stuck in the mistakes of the past. While it takes her a little longer to fully believe, or at least try to believe, that she deserves a happy ending she comes to accept the good things that have come her way and the brighter future that her actions have helped to create which was rewarding payoff for the seasons of struggle Rayla has endured.  

The second character I was looking forward to was Soren and his role this season was great and a bit heartbreaking at times. He comes to see his father for the villain he is and ends up helping Ezran, Callum, and Rayla showing that while he was coerced by his father to make questionable decisions in earlier seasons he has a heart of gold beneath it all. He realizes that his father doesn’t truly care about his well being or feelings. He is constantly belittled  by his father and his father makes it pretty clear that he is expendable. Soren’s revelation is a heartbreaking one, but he chooses to break off and take the road he knows to be right instead of continuing to follow hoping his father will eventually be the man Soren wishes him to be and finally showing Soren the love he so desires. Soren, despite everyone calling him dumb, makes the decision to break the cycle of hatred that his father is perpetuating and in doing so ends up making the choice most likely to create a brighter future. Like Rayla said “To break that cycle, someone has to take a stand when no one else will”, it takes one person to start a chain reaction and break the cycle and that’s what the dragon prince is about. Soren got the redemption arc he deserved and I was so glad that it happened.

Claudia is the character I was wishing I would be wrong about, but hit the mark on. So much happened this season that she was sort of pushed to the side, but we did get her downward spiral. When the moment of truth came she decided to continue down the rabbit hole of dark magic and self destruction. Claudia’s biggest downfall is her big heart. She loves those close to her so deeply that she can’t give up on them. She had to have noticed how far her father had fallen like Soren did but she stubbornly kept on her blinders because she loved her father which was tragic. I’m afraid her final desperate actions to “keep her family together” by bringing her father back from the dead just signaled the beginning of her journey down the rabbit hole.

The show’s animation has improved greatly from its less than stellar season 1. There were some genuinely gorgeous shots. The backgrounds were incredibly detailed and the facial animation was great. There was a lot more expressiveness in each reaction shot. The scene where Rayla saves Nyx from the soul fang serpents had incredibly fluid action and was a lot of fun to watch.

My only real complaint this season was episode 2. While I absolutely loved the content the tonal shifts were a bit jarring at times. That really does feel like a stretch though because the content was pretty strong and gave a lot of development to Ezran.

This season delivered the spectacle and climax it promised and finished out a lot of the main characters arcs. The cliffhanger we were left on has me begging for more and it feels like there is so much more that can happen with the world and characters. I hope it gets a season 4 and the hanging plot threads are allowed to reach their conclusion and we are allowed to see the aftermath of reuniting the dragon prince with his mother. This season is one of my favorite seasons of television this year and I think it was worth the wait.

She-ra Season 4 Review (Spoilers)

Wow...Just wow. These past two seasons of She-ra have managed to blow me away. She-ra truly found its footing with season 3 and it hasn’t slowed down this season one bit. The character and relationship writing has been spot on and they managed to raise the stakes without losing the heart of the series, which is a difficult feat. The first season, while a pretty strong start, had some trouble with balancing the tone. It would go from incredibly light and goofy to dark and serious and touch on some really heavy stuff which was jarring at times. The show seemed to mostly correct that problem with season 2 which was largely a transition season for the series and was the calm before the storm. Seasons 3 and 4 have truly been great. They both greatly expanded the lore of the world and series while producing character and relationship focused episodes that have been some of my favorite episodes of tv.

She-ra, while bright and flashy, has always been a character focused show. This season puts heavy focus on Glimmer, Adora, Catra, and Scorpia. The deteriorating relationship between Glimmer and Adora is the driving force behind this season and all of the tension feels believable. Glimmer’s stress over her new position as queen and grief over the loss of her mother lead to her making questionable choices and that become more and more morally ambiguous all while still believing that she’s on her “hero” pedestal. She trusts shadow weaver and doesn’t listen to her friends when they know more about the situation than she does. This lead to some believable, but at times frustrating, character development because I knew that if Glimmer just calmed down and listened a lot of the bad things that happened at the end of the season wouldn’t have. That is a minor complaint on my part because it gave Glimmer some much needed growth and a future potentially fascinating dual redemption arc with Catra.

Catra is the character I believe to be the best written in the entire show and that continues to be the case this season. Catra went through an arc similar to Zuko’s in the first part of book three. She finally achieved everything she believed she wanted at the cost of all her connections. This leads to her breaking down mentally because she can’t understand why she feels so empty despite achieving her “goals”. She breaks mentally and finally realizes that while she was a victim in the beginning every bad choice she’s made throughout the show is her own fault and she is the one who pushed everyone away despite their desperate attempts to reach her. The end of the season leaves with her having realized this and deciding to help Glimmer. “When you hit your lowest point you are open to the biggest change” basically embodies what I believe was happening with Catra’s arc. She had to spiral to her lowest when she thinks she should be at her highest to finally realize her own shortcomings and make steps towards change. I really hope that Catra is now on the road to redemption because so far she has been the most consistently fascinating character on the show and her redemption arc can be a powerful and well constructed one that will be remembered. 

Each season seems to have a stand out episode or two and for this season those episodes were “Hero” and the finale. “Hero” did a very good job of juxtaposing the present and the past to effectively show both Mara’s journey and the dissonance within Madam Razz’s head. It dropped game changing revelations about Mara’s end and the Heart of Etheria and ended on a tragic, bittersweet note that hits emotionally. Mara’s story may not have had a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean Adora’s won’t. Adora is simultaneously given a heavy load to bear and a weight is lifted off of her. Adora’s will to keep going despite the odds becomes even more commendable in light of these revelations, which comes to a head in the finale. The finale changed everything once again. The world and characters can’t go back to what they once were. Everything was flipped on its head. It ended many plot threads, but left a devastated Etheria and seemingly insurmountable odds for our heroes to face. It really seemed like the beginning of the end.

She-ra has managed to impress me yet again and I will not hesitate to say that it had a fantastic season. It seems to constantly one up itself with each season in one way or another. The show runners, voice cast, and animators have all done a phenomenal job. There is so much potential going forward with the world, characters, and conflict. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

The Biggest Difference

I’ve seen people saying that Lotor became Zuko this season just written worse and while I do believe that there are a lot of similarities between the two this season really accentuated the differences. The whole season built upon the idea that Lotor deserved better. That he tried to overcome his circumstances, but wasn’t given a fair shot by anyone and was punished for his attempts to be better. This showed me the biggest point of divergence between Lotor and Zuko: Zuko had Iroh. Zuko had someone who believed in the best in him and even when he stumbled or made the wrong choice Iroh never gave up on him. It was because of this that Zuko was able to overcome his upbringing and move forward in a better direction. Lotor never had his Uncle Iroh. He had to make do by himself and forge his own path without a guiding light and because of that he got lost along the way. When he finally found found a guiding light in Allura it was quickly snuffed out because of actions he took in his misguided attempts to be better. The loss of the light after finally obtaining it after so long in the dark caused Lotor to snap. I think the flashbacks and characters this season realized that if Lotor was given a fair chance earlier in life or if Allura and the paladins hadn’t given up when they did on him he could have ended up like Zuko. He did do things in his past that were horrible, but he could have created the better future that he had wanted to bring about in the first place. 

Korra’s Growth

Korra’s growth, at least for me, is the highlight of the Legend of Korra. She starts out incredibly brash, over confident, headstrong, and stubborn. She pays for these characteristics time and time again throughout the series and it is through these consequences that Korra is able to grow into the understanding and empathetic avatar of the series finale. “No good deed goes unpunished, no act of charity goes unresented.” This seems to be the template for Korra’s trials and tribulations because no matter how hard she tries to help she is always met with criticism and anger. Time and time again she is told that the world would be better off without her and that balance would be achieved with her gone. She begins to doubt whether being the avatar even matters and she has to discover herself and her place in the world to come to her own conclusion. She must accept the past and learn from it to move forward and become the avatar that the world and the people need and to create true balance within the world.

 Korra’s journey is the exact opposite of Aang’s in that his was about coming to identify himself as the avatar whereas Korra’s is about learning to identify herself separate from the avatar. Aang was allowed to be a child and person first before he discovered he was the avatar which lead to his ability to connect with other people, including his enemies even at the beginning of the series. Korra, on the other hand, was immediately thrust into the identity of the avatar so she based her entire being and self worth on being the avatar. She was put on this pedestal right away and didn’t have the chance to develop as a person outside of that identity which lead to her struggle to connect with other people, especially her enemies. 

Korra starts out overconfident in her still developing abilities, but actually grows to underestimate her abilities after being torn down by her enemies. This leads to humbling her and causes her to rebuild her self-esteem based on who she is and not what she is to the world. This mirrors her growth from trying to force change to mediating and refraining from fighting until necessary and being a conduit for change, which leads to balance. She goes through a pacifistic maturation. Korra’s confidence is broken down over the course of the first three seasons and is built back up through her self actualization making her confidence non-toxic to social, societal, and confrontational situations. Because Korra understands herself and her powers she is able to use them to be an effective force for change and balance.