Oh My God. Just returned from Kung Fu Panda. I assume everyone’s heard the hype/seen the movie by now. Just like to say “awesome”. Couldn’t really fault it really.

So, of course the big question on everyone’s lips is “is Kung Fu Panda better than the Incredibles?”
I’m comparing these 2 films, because they are the only 2 cg animated action films that are remotely of the same high quality(if there’s another one, let me know cause, I ‘aint seen it).

I would like to tackle this amazingly important question in 2 parts.

1. The mo fo action. Kung Fu Panda action was all oh so beautiful. It really left me wanting more. Don’t misconstrue my level of film intellect here.. I love my drama and stuff , but the action in this film really had me so damn excited, I felt like a little boy again. The fight scene choreography was simply awe inspiring, funny and quite original. There were 4 main action sequences of note.
Now the action sequences in the Incredibles were, of course, great. But they left me thinking that I’d missed out on something. To help clarify my point, in the Incredibles, during the whole chasing through the forest sequence. When the family re-unite and start beating up the henchmen together with the whole family using their powers, this part of the action only lasts for about 10 seconds! I can see the director was only trying to build up the suspense for the last sequence where the family fight together again in the city, but I didn’t find that sequence so incredibly satisfying to justify the grossly cut short family ass kicking forest scene. And as a result, the family never quite got to use their powers together in the most awesomest way possible.

And, you know, that’s what I wanted. I wanted pure, unfiltered awesomeness. I ache for it. Sometime I wake up crying at night because I don’t get enough of it. I don’t like having to watch through all of Crouching Tiger just to find out Chow Yung Fat only has a stick fight with a 15 year old girl.

AWESOMENESS DAMN YOU! GIVE ME AWESOMENESS!!!!!!

Incredibles had small sections of ear bleeding awesomely cool bits, but Kung Fu Panda had lots and lots of this rectal clenching, hard core action(that’s a good thing by the way).

2. The drama. Now, from an emotional thermometer side of the coin, the Incredibles comes up trumps. It manages a crap load more character development and a little bit more of some sort of script. In turn, more characters manage to get fleshed out. Whereas Kung fu Panda really only had 2 or three character plots of note, but I didn’t care. If they put in more character development, it could have eaten into the action sequences. And we did NOT want that

OK

I read some book on Story once. The writer talked about a good script is set in a world that contains fascinating bits and pieces around every corner. Whether it’s set in another culture you know little about, or just another persons frame of mind, it all has to be new and exciting at every beat. So many animated cg films just don’t throw you into this world. But Kung Fu Panda does. The Incredibles does.

After watching both of these 2 wonderfully eye popping films tonight, I have come to the conclusion that…..

They’re both fucking as good as each other.

Sorry if that was anti-climactic.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 12:56 am and is filed under Film Making. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.