Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) on Netflix
PG20161h 35mActionAdventureAnimation
Shifu names Po his successor, but Po's first lessons to the Furious Five go badly. His birth father, Li Shan, appears, and General Kai begins stealing the chi of kung fu masters.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.1/10223,524 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
General Kai, a spirit warrior, has taken the chi of the dead kung fu masters and crosses back into the Mortal Realm. In the Valley of Peace, Master Shifu gives up teaching and hands the role to Po, whose first lessons to the Furious Five do not go well. Shifu tells him to be himself and to master chi. At home Po meets Li Shan, a panda who was told his son was alive; the two work out that Li is Po's birth father, and Mr. Ping, who raised Po, is unhappy about it. Jade zombies sent by Kai attack the Valley, and Li offers to lead Po to a panda village in the mountains so he can learn chi there.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To ensure the film's success in China the Chinese version was fully animated as well as the English one, making them the only versions in which the characters' lips are synchronized with their voices.
- Kung Fu Panda 3 was the first major American animated feature co-produced with a Chinese studio, a status that let it dodge China's strict foreign-film import quota and keep a larger share of its Chinese box office.
- Mads Mikkelsen was originally cast as the villain but was replaced by J. K. Simmons after the character was rewritten, and Rebel Wilson was later swapped for Kate Hudson, forcing the studio to reanimate previously completed scenes to reflect Hudson's interpretation of the character.
- In China the film had a $6.4 million single-day sneak preview before its release, then opened with a $16.3 million single day, the biggest single day of 2016 up to that point, on its way to one of the country's highest-grossing openings ever.
- General Kai is the first supernatural villain of the series; executive producer Guillermo del Toro called him “the most formidable villain yet”, and director Jennifer Yuh Nelson reasoned that they could not go brawler because Tai Lung was brawler, or smarter because Shen was smarter, so they had to go supernatural.
- Hans Zimmer, who co-scored the first two Kung Fu Panda movies with John Powell, returned to score this one, bringing in Chinese pianist Lang Lang, cellist Jian Wang, pipa player Wu Man and Taiwanese pop singer Jay Chou, who performs the main theme “Try” in the end credits.
- Kung Fu Panda 3 grossed $143.5 million in the United States and Canada and $377.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $521.2 million, making it the lowest-grossing film in the series.
