‘Kung Fu Panda’ a ‘real martial arts film’

If you’ve read the title with a raised eyebrow you’re not alone. DreamWorks is rolling out KUNG FU PANDA, their latest computer-animated feature this weekend and it’s apparently not your typical SHREK or TOY STORY knockoff. In a recent interview with The Mercury News, co-director John Stevenson explained their goal of making “a kung fu movie in animation” as opposed to parodying a kung fu movie.

“The thing we hope is unique right from the get-go is that it was important to try and make a real martial arts film,” said Stevenson. “We said we’re not going to make a parody because we like martial arts films. We really respect and enjoy them so we didn’t want to do anything that was like a spoof or a parody. That gets tiresome, and they wear out their welcome after about 10 minutes.”

The main challenge Stevenson faced was keeping the kung fu action real, or as real as it gets with talking tigers, monkeys, snakes, cranes, and a praying mantis performing the stunts.

“Our way meant having animal characters (as) living embodiments of the original animal fighting styles of kung fu. So our five super stars of kung fu, the Furious Five, are mantis, monkey, tigress, crane and viper.

“We hope what we did to our movie, that was unique to our movie, was inventing a new style of kung fu. We didn’t want the kung fu in our film just to look like human beings wearing animal suits doing fighting.

“We had to go back and really figure it out based on the physiognomy of the animal, because we have an insect, a reptile, a bird and two mammals. And they all have very different anatomies.

“We also wanted to make sure that the kung fu moves we used were real kung fu moves. We didn’t want any sort of generic hand waving or flapping about. And we were blessed because we had a story artist who also became one of our lead animators: Rodolphe Guenodon, who is a French animator, a brilliant draftsman and also a martial artist for 20 years.

“He was really instrumental in figuring out how the different animal anatomies could do specific king fu moves. He was very hard-core about making sure the actual fighting moves were really authentic kung fu.

“We hope that in the end, you just watch the film and get caught up in the story. But if we have something to offer, we’d like to think that we have real, unique kung fu and something you have never seen before.”

KUNG FU PANDA features the voice acting talents of Jack Black (as Po), Dustin Hoffman (as Shifu), Angelina Jolie (as Tigress), Jackie Chan (as Monkey), Lucy Liu (as Viper), and James Hong (as Mr. Ping). It opens in theaters across the U.S. on Friday, June 5th.

Source: The Mercury News

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