Headscratchers / Kung Fu Panda 3

• Why does he suddenly "Are you kidding me???" at the roof fight. What did he see?
  • I think he recognized the 'jombie' to look just like a kung fu master he admires.
  • I think it was more his reaction to seeing what exactly they were fighting.

• So the Wuxi Finger Hold is now known to send people to the Spirit Realm. Theoretically, wouldn't Tai Lung be languishing in there doing who knows what, possibly trying to find a way out?
  • Doesn't the rest of Kai's chi-slaves being released and re-embodied at the end of the movie suggest that Tai Lung was, too?
  • That... has surprising merit. Presumably dead warriors stay dead, but does the Wuxi finger hold actually kill those it's used on?
  • I'm pretty sure the "disappears into petals" thing is an euphemism and visual metaphor for death. Note that Kai explicitly says that the Wuxi Finger Hold only works on mortals, so he's already dead, and quite likely due to Oogway having killed him with it. Unless I'm recalling things incorrectly, the only masters shown on-screen returning to normal are masters we know for sure were alive at the time of their jombiefication. The masters who were already dead when their chi was stolen by Kai have likely all returned to their proper place in the Spirit Realm. Oogway did, so most likely, so did Tai Lung.
  • Tai Lung wasn't killed: that's what we (now) know about the Wuxi hold. It's hard to imagine Kai having Tai Lung's spirit and not putting it to use as a jade zombie, so maybe his sweep of the spirit world wasn't as complete as he had hoped. I half-hoped that the final battle would feature him as a wild card, but... no.
    • It's a Freeze-Frame Bonus that Kai already defeated Tai Lung and took his chi◊.

• How did Tigress know where the panda village was? She'd only have a vague idea of where it is at best.
  • I know, this bothered me, that and Kai found it too. If I had to guess I'd say Tigress and Kai could follow a smell as they're both hunters but it hasn't been established what kind of traits these animals have.
    • Kai has been in the village before, so it makes sense that he'd know where it was. Tigress... I got nothing.
    • I thought the implication was that the scroll she took with the history of Kai also had the directions to the panda village on it.
    • Where on the scroll is it implied? It seems more like a documentation/cautionary tale than a map.
    • Doesn't mean there wasn't at least some hint of where to find it. Moreso, Kai was clearly seen tracking footprints in one scene. Tigress could've done the same and tracked Po and Li. Less plausible is that Li simply told the other heroes where to go offscreen in case something happened. He certainly knew the danger was real enough at least, based on his actions.
  • One thing I have to say is...Wasn't the panda village Kai visited with Oogway the one that was destroyed by Shen and his army? Past experience wouldn't tell him how to get to the village the pandas fled to afterwards.

• Why didn't Po know what chi is? Sure, some secrets of kung-fu are only known by masters of the art, but chi is a pretty basic part of kung fu's ethos. Was he asking to find out Shifu's perspective on chi specifically, or...
  • Because he's Po. The guy's a natural at kung fu, but not exactly book smart.
  • I think it's another example of the script being dumbed down for the audience, say if parents take their kids to see it but haven't seen the other two it's just a way of keeping them "in the loop". Given Po's extensive knowledge on Kung Fu I think we can assume Po is book smart on the subject and the first film already dealt or at least hinted about Chi. I doubt Po would know about the Legendary Urn Of Whispering Warriors and not know about Chi. So yes, I feel that whole interaction about what Chi is was just for the audience and is completely out of place in-universe.
  • It's still not explicitly stated that he ever knew what chi was before, or at least not by name. I would question this coming from literally any other master, but Po frequently shows that he is far more knowledgeable on the lore and legends of kung fu than he is on actual technique. Most of his accomplishments come from making kung fu work for him in his own way, rather than the traditional way. So I totally buy him not knowing what chi is, or just having a vague idea of what it is without knowing the full explanation. The only thing this outright contradicts is LOA, which is of questionable canonicity regardless.
  • 'Chi is a pretty basic part of kung fu's ethos' - now. Think of it as Po being trained in an antiquated fighting art that only becomes 'chi-centered' kung fu when he is in charge of how it's taught and thought about.

• Ping said he had raised Po for 20 years a couple times in the movie, but didn't Shen in the previous one mention 30 years pretty consistently for the time passed since the panda genocide? So how old is Po? Or did the vegetable cart he was in as a baby take a decade to arrive?
  • Shen said he had "waited for this moment" for 30 years; he could've been making his plans long before the panda genocide. Of course, the art book for Kung Fu Panda 3 mentions "30 years" on one of the sketch pages, so the filmmakers might've changed it during production.
  • The "Secrets of the Scrolls" cartoon muddies things even further. It shows the Furious Five getting together "ten years ago", at which point Po should be ten years old according to this movie — but Po appears in the cartoon and looks and acts like a teenager rather than a child. He also doesn't look like he's meant to be significantly younger than the Five.
  • I'm gonna make a guess and say Po was about two years old when Shen's attack happened which makes him 22 in present time and thus 12 in the flashback. Tigress is hinted to be about 4-5 years older (considering what age she would have started "punching ironwood trees" for 20 years), with Viper and Crane roughly the same age as her. Monkey and Mantis always struck me as the oldest members, particularly Mantis as he already has an adult voice in the short. Anyways, Po was not a newborn when Shen attacked, again, I would place his age at two.

• Why didn't Kai at any point use Oogway as a jombie? Would it not have been the ultimate insult to Oogway and his legacy if he used Oogway's own chi to defeat his students and destroy the Jade Palace?
  • I think it was because in a way he still had a brotherly love for Oogway, notice how Kai keeps him around his neck rather than at his waist. He still uses Oogway's Chi but whether by conscious choice or couldn't bring himself to do it, I think the writers intended for us to notice he didn't want to use him like a slave.
  • A more vindictive explanation is that Kai simply refuses to fight by Oogway's side anymore, not even with the latter as his slave.
  • There are more reasons than one. a) Oogway's chi was needed for him to return to the mortal world and he didn't want to risk being sent back there. His Villainous Breakdown happens because Po sent him back by using the Wuxi Finger Hold on himself. b) Oogway has a very strong amount of chi and is the master of all Kung Fu so Kai probably feared that Oogway would break free from his Jombie state. c) Even Evil Has Standards.
  • Or maybe Kai simply can't make his victims into Jombies unless he defeated them on the mortal plane, while they were still in their physical bodies. It took centuries of effort and the power of Oogway's chi just for Kai to manifest a body for himself; creating additional bodies from scratch, even green ones, would probably squander too much power. But if he defeats a mortal, he can mystically store their body within the corresponding amulet and then let it out as a slave when needed.
    • That's false. Po and the Furious Five specifically discussed fighting jombie masters who had already died.

• Is it just me, or is it completely wrong that Po "mastered chi"? The villagers mastered it and sent theirs to him. Po didn't do or learn anything, and was on the brink of losing to Kai when the villagers saved and empowered him. Now, granted, he *uses* their chi very effectively to fight Kai once he has it, and may now be attuned to chi from the experience, especially if you follow the theory that he died and is now immortal due to his return. But saying he mastered it is false, in my opinion.
  • I would personally say Po must have mastered chi since he was able to return from the Spirit Realm to the Mortal Realm. It took Kai 500 years to gain the chi mastery forcefully to return himself. Since Po unlocked the potential naturally, he was able to perform the deed.
  • The villagers learned to channel chi, but it's Po who found ways to use it once it was channeled into him. At the film's end, he's the only one alive who knows this and can teach others. Hence, Po is now the Master of Chi by default.

• ... Isn't the moral of the first Movie (You don't need to be special to do something, you just have to believe that you can and work hard to do it) kind of ruined by the fact that pandas are naturally good at Chi-Mastery, a vital skill for Kung Fu? Maybe it's just me, but the fact that Oogway and Kai mastered Chi and improved their Kung Fu prowess from pandas, kind of hurts the fact that Po was treated as a worthless buffoon and had to overcome that image and master Kung Fu and save the Valley of Peace for Tai Lung. Especially when Oogway could have mentioned that he learned important stuff from pandas at any point in Kung Fu Panda to either Po or Shifu...
  • That doesn't change the fact that Po wasn't a natural master of chi or kung fu himself - he still had to train extensively (in his own way) in order to be deemed worthy of defeating Tai Lung.
  • The inhabitants of this Verse's China seem to be species-blind: the pandas aren't good at Chi because they are pandas, they're good at it because their ancestors maintained a cultural tradition of practicing Chi, same as the peacocks from the second movie maintained a cultural tradition of making fireworks. It wasn't so much that Po was a panda that made the others skeptical of his capabilities in the first movie, it's that he was a fat lazy fanboy panda who seemed to care more about squeeing over Kung Fu than actually doing it.
  • Oogway didn't mention having learned from pandas because he was upholding a promise to protect their village's secrets. Also, he wanted Shifu to realize that his prejudices were baseless for himself, rather than just scold his former student for having them.
  • Chi might be linked to Kung Fu, but that doesn't mean everyone who is a master of Chi is a master of Kung Fu as well. The Pandas are natural healers, not fighters.

• So why did Kai think that stealing the chi of the Pandas who saved Oogway's life was a great idea. Why was he so quick to go all Power Hungry and want chi as his own. Why would he think Oogway would be ok with this? I know other villains didn't think very well in regards to how their actions would instantly get them what they want (Tai Lung thinking that laying waste to the valley would get Oogway to change his mind and give him the scroll and Lord Shen thinking that causing Panda genocide would please his parents or avert the Soothsayer's prophecy) But even they had some Freudian Excuse. All we got from Kai's past is his Warlord days, the ambush, him carrying the injured Oogway all the way to the Panda Village, then suddenly going all Power hungry, leading to his first defeat by Oogway. And how can Kai not figure out the reason behind Oogway's "betrayal" when this happens right after he just started his chi-stealing spree.
  • Oogway, in his youth, was equally power hungry as Kai. But when the pandas saved him, he changed. So where Oogway saw people who had saved him and people he was indebted to, Kai only saw war and power. Kai thought Oogway would be fine with it, because, before his almost death experience, Oogway would have been.
  • Kai was doing the exact same thing he and Oogway were almost certainly doing all their warlord days - he saw something that he wanted in possession of other people, and he decided to take it by force. Judging by his array of nicknames and the fact that Oogway tried his best to erase that chapter of his own history, they weren't nice guys at all. Even if Kai thought that Oogway may object, he believed that their bond is the most important thing in the world, and will override the lesser consideration of repaying benevolence of outsiders in kind.

• In the Oogway and Kai flashback, how the heck did that ambush kill the entire army but Kai and Oogway and how did it injure Oogway, while Kai got out of it unscathed?
  • Kai and Oogway are leagues beyond any other warrior. And Oogway has natural armor in the form of a shell. My guess is that he attempted to shield Kai from the arrows, got hit, and Kai massacred everyone and left to get help.

• So nobody has any idea who Kai is and the only thing recorded about him is a scroll that was never seen. While I'm not trying to justify Kai's actions, I wonder why Oogway or anyone had him be forgotten. This would've helped Po know how to beat him. Even if he ended up being a Power Hungry/ Chi stealing monster, Kai is still part of history (being a warlord in a grand army and all). It's also out of character for Oogway to do it out of spite. So why did they keep him a secret for so long?
  • alongside the fact that it clearly isn't a part of his past Oogway would like to remember, history is ultimately written by the winners. After defeating Kai, it was Oogway's story to tell, and he chose to tell the story of how he invented Kung Fu, while leaving Kai's name to be lost to history. He was close friends with Kai too; it's highly likely he knew of Kai's desire to be remembered and consciously chose to deny him that for what he'd done. Further, before the printing press, written record-keeping was exceedingly rare and history was often told by word of mouth. What few written historical records they'd have would be kept in the archives of a school or library, a government, or some other institution such as the Jade Palace. They certainly wouldn't be common knowledge among the general public, particularly in rural farming communities and mountain villages, who's access to those records would be highly limited. It's entirely possible that Kai simply faded into history, just as I'm sure countless ancient warlords have. Only a handful, such as Genghis Khan, are still remembered today, and only because of the tremendous impact he had on history. It's entirely possible that for all his titles, Kai's actual impact on history was relatively minimal, just another warlord who came and went.
  • For all we know, the Chi-stealing Kai we see was never recorded in the history of China, instead just talking about the General going into a final battle and leaving to parts unknown after his army's destruction, much like many famous figures from history who have either lost details of their character, or simply had their unrecorded personal details ignored, instead talking about his many famous battles...
  • Possibly the power-bloc that seized control of the region after Kai's army was defeated took steps of its own to erase him from history, the better to deny their own defeats by him and/or steal credit for his victories. Oogway didn't object because he thought it better if knowledge of his old friend's misdeeds perished with him.
• We know that Kai captured Tai Lung. So why didn't Kai use Tai Lung to fight Po? Not only would it have made sense from a writing standpoint (Po and Jombie Tai Lung rematch would've been a good idea), Tai Lung probably would have had the best chance against him. I'm surprised the writers missed such an obvious idea.
  • Possibly, Kai refrained from calling on Tai Lung either because Po had beaten Lung when he was barely an initiate, and so that would have been largely ineffective (at least, in Kai's mind)
  • Does Kai even know about the past history between Tai Lung and Po? He didn't even know who Po was until he returned to the mortal realm; when Kai had previously captured Tai Lung's chi, he wouldn't realize that here is someone who was defeated by a panda he'd meet several years later.
• This film shows that there is a Master Chicken, and in the past, there was a Master Dolphin. Makes you wonder why Shifu and the Five were so discriminate against Po being able to learn kung fu on the basis that he was just "a big, fat panda", when such animals as a chicken and a dolphin of all things were masters. A panda shouldn't seem twice as weird in comparison.
  • Perhaps because pandas are seen as giant, lumbering creatures lacking the elegance and speed needed to be a successful Master. Even in our world, chickens are/were used to fight for sport. Dolphins are efficient hunters as well - some species even whack prey with their flukes.
  • May double as Fridge Brilliance, but perhaps due to Shen's Genocide of the Pandas there had never been a master of "Giant Panda Style" kung-fu during Shifu's lifetime. Thus it would make sense that all but Oogway, who had actually met Giant Panda masters centuries ago, would believe that Po learning kung-fu is impossible, because to them it had never occurred in living memory.
  • Also, it may not be so much a case of species, so much as the first and second bits. Po is not just a panda, but a very rotund and clumsy panda.
  • Not to mention a Squeeing fanboy in serious need of Ritalin. Not exactly prime material for any sort of disciplined study, or so it seemed.

• A few questions to the Mandarin-speaking tropers, from a very confused Vietnamese troper, regarding names:
  • Assuming Li Shan's name is written in the Chinese convention, why was he addressed by his last name?
  • Which follows... "Ping"'s equivalent in Vietnamese (Bình) is exclusively a first name, AFAIK. How come he's referred to as "Mr. Ping/鵝阿爹"?
  • What's the Wuxi Finger Hold's Mandarin name?

• After all the back-justification that fans cobbled together about "They're Gigantopithecus from Pleistocene China!" for having large apes in Kung Fu Panda 2, why did the writers have to dump all over that notion by having a freaking hippo Master?
  • He went into China from a foreign land and decided to settle in?

• In the end of the second movie, Po’s father and the other pandas are shown to be working on rice fields, yet here they are shown to be lazy and hardly work at all. Where do the pandas get their food if they don’t work for it themselves?
  • The demands of farm work vary enormously between seasons and yields. The second movie probably ended at the height of harvest season, while the third takes place at a time of year when rice planting is over but the crops aren't mature enough to need more hands-on attention yet.

• Why is it that whenever Kai is taking chi in the mortal realm it's instantaneous, like Shifu, the furious five, and the masters? But whenever you see him taking chi in the spirit realm it's much slower like Po & Oogway? is it because the latter two have the biggest chi out of all the characters? Does Kai just want to savour the moment? or does Po simply just have plot armour?