Once there, Po learns a lot about being a panda-they don’t eat dumplings with chopsticks, for one, and they certainly don’t rise at the crack of dawn to practise kung fu, which makes Po very happy-but discovers that his biological father had lied to him to protect him from Kai.
The only one who can defeat him is a Chi Master, someone who truly knows who he is.Īs Po journeys to the secret village of pandas with his newly-discovered biological father (we met Li Shan briefly in Kung Fu Panda 2), hoping to learn how to become a Chi master from the pandas, his friends and other masters from the surrounding villages fall victim to Kai. Things come to a head when Kai-a warrior who once fought beside Oogway, but was banished to the realm of the spirits after he tried to steal the Chi of the pandas, the secret restorers of lost Chi-has come to earth to steal everyone’s Chi, especially the Dragon Warrior’s.
Needless to say, Po is flummoxed-after agonizing over whether he is really the Dragon Warrior, it turns out that he must now become a master himself, and he certainly doesn’t feel up to the task. Po must take on the mantle of a kung fu teacher. Master Shifu has decided to retire to a cave to learn to become a Chi master, so he can harness life’s energy and channel it into doing lovely things such as making buds bloom before their time. Simmons): “When will you realize? The more you take, the less you have." Po, Mr Ping (Po’s adoptive father), Master Shifu (played by Dustin Hoffman) and Po’s biological father, Li Shan (played by the emotive Bryan Cranston) lob off gems pertaining to the main metaphysical question that besets Po this time around: Who am I?Īnd as Po, and the rest of us watching him, eventually understand, the journey of self-discovery is never over. In the first few minutes itself, Grand Master Oogway, now in the realm of the spirits, tells his arch nemesis and one-time brother-in-arms, Kai (a yak, played by J.K. Nevertheless, the third iteration of the film is a must-watch for those seeking life lessons from a giant panda of the wuxia genre, whose American accent doesn’t get in the way of his veneration for ancient Chinese kung fu masters (and, if I may be so bold, our love for him).