Surprise, Surprise - "Kung-Fu Panda" is Getting a Sequel

By: Adam Quigley Posted: June 26, 2008 Filed under: Unofficial Info

Hollywood being the way it is, it should come as no shock to anybody that Kung-Fu Panda, a movie that made over $200 million worldwide in less than three weeks, has already started development on a sequel.

Hidden within the confines of a casual posting on the TAG Blog is confirmation:

A story crew has started early work in Kung Fu Panda, the Sequel, even while animators are hand-drawing new material for the DVD of Kung Fu Panda, the original.

Of course, whether or not this qualifies as good news is debatable. The first movie was surprisingly great, certainly (and any doubters can check the evidence for themselves), but does it need a sequel? I say no.

Part of what I loved about Kung-Fu Panda was how it was a very clear homage/partial spoof of classic Asian cinema. It collected all of the most commonly recurring story elements and cliches from those films, and used them to its advantage.

While a sequel may be fitting considering the genre the first film was modeled after, it also presents several very apparent issues. Primarily, there's not really anything left to parody. The main "classic" storyline has already been told, and in order to continue in the same vein as the first film, the filmmakers would essentially have to cobble together whatever scraps were left over from the original story.

And then comes the even bigger problem: most children's film sequels suck. They're almost always made strictly for money, with little to no effort put into the film's creative development. We were lucky enough that the first Kung-Fu Panda was any good; do we really want to kill that with another one?

[Source TAG Blog via Coming Soon]