Kung Fu Panda Character and Opening Analysis

Kung Fu Panda (2008) is a animated children's film by Dreamworks, centreing around a young panda named Po, who is aspiring to be a Kung Fu Master. The film contains very similar themes to our film, story and character wise.

The main character, Po is very immature but thinks highly of himself- as shown in this opening sequence(which is also a dream sequence) where he imagines himself to be a great kung fu warrior. This is very similar to our own main character, The Ninja Child, who is equally as imaginative and immature. Both films, although concerning very different settings are essentially coming of age stories. Kung Fu Panda watches Po actually begin to live his dreams, and explores why he wants his goal- which is to better his self esteem and feel like he has a purpose. We see him grow from a foolish young Panda looked down on by his peers to a well respected hero during the course of this film. This is similar to Ninja Child, where we are shown how the title character grows from a shy lonely outcast to a leader among the students against the bullies of his school. A similar evolution happens to the Ninja Child's personality too- throughout the story he becomes more sociable and confident, which culminates in his group effort to stop the bullies in his school.

The openings are comparable too, as they both represent the characters and storys in a similar way. The opening of Kung Fu Panda is filmed in the style of an old chinese epic or Anime action film, but the narration makes it comedic as it's not serious and lets people know it's a comedy film. This is similar to what we're going for in the opening of Ninja Child. The opening is very choppy and cuts frequently to build tension, similar to many action films but the mise en scene and soundtrack are supposed to emphasise how it's a comedy. Both openings also represent the character as immature and confident. In Kung Fu Panda, this is seen with how the narration and dialogue frequently uses terms such as "Awesome" and "Bodacious", showing how silly the character can be. In Ninja Child, the props used are fake swords which shows how the ninja child isn;'t really serious and not old enough to have real swords.