Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Kung Fu Panda
2008 · Mark Osborne · Kung Fu Panda on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the fights stay wide enough to follow the moves. (cutting)
The action is cut for legibility instead of chopped into fragments. The training-hall sparring and the dumpling duel over a single steamed bun hold their framings and clean beats so the choreography reads.
Payoff: You can always tell who did what, which is what separates this from most computer-animated action of its era.
Watch for dawn and dusk light and hard silhouettes. (light)
Roger Deakins consulted on the lighting, and the film keeps motivated sources, warm interiors set against cool exteriors, and figures thrown into pure outline at dawn and dusk.
Payoff: The lighting behaves like a live-action cinematographer's, which is why the film carries weight a cartoon usually does not.
Count how often the film makes somebody climb. (staging)
Endless prison stairs, a mountaintop temple, the Sacred Peach Tree, a valley built in terraces. Space is organized up and down, so getting anywhere in this world means climbing to it.
Payoff: Rising and falling become physical directions on screen, which is how a family film carries its argument.
Watch how each of the Furious Five fights differently. (performance)
Tigress, Crane, Mantis, Viper, and Monkey are built around real animal styles of kung fu, so the character design and the fighting style are the same decision. Bodies tell you who everyone is.
Payoff: Design is doing the characterization, so you learn a character from how they move before they speak.
Listen for Chinese flutes and strings inside the orchestra. (sound)
Hans Zimmer and John Powell fold traditional Chinese instrumentation into a Western action score. The music swings between soaring adventure cues and quiet meditative passages under Oogway's scenes.
Payoff: The score treats the tradition it borrows from as a subject rather than as a costume.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the fights wide. They are cut so you can follow them, the way Hong Kong action is.