Better Fiction: The Blog

It's been three weeks. Almost forgot how to log in.

So, here's the thing, if I'm going to sit down and write this, it's going to be about what's on my mind. Trivial stuff. I'm sick with a head cold or something, and that's given me some time to do this, but it's also taken away any desire to keep up some writer-ly pretense.

You know what I want to write about? Kung Fu Panda.

2008 saw the release of three feature animated films of substance. Wall-E came from Pixar and was perhaps the best-rated movie of the year and took the Oscar. Personally, my take on it was that it was the most ambitious of the Pixar films, and the most disappointing. The silent opening dragged on too long, and the rest of the movie was a mess. The human dialog, which was the only real dialog, was amazingly boring outside of the one gag: "I didn't know we had a pool." The film-makers threw together a gang of robot friends to help Wall-E but gave them no time to become anything but blips on the screen.

In the end, Wall-E was an over-rated attempt. The opening was self-indulgent enough to lose its wow factor, the rest of the movie bland and underwritten. It's claim to fame was its anti-consumerism, eco-friendly message. At least it managed to be a better film than the atrocity that was Happy Feet. Both films won undeserved Oscars.

Neither, by the way, won the Annie, the animation world equivalent of the Oscar. Cars won it opposite Happy Feet, and Kung Fu Panda won it in 2008.

Of course, there was also Bolt. Bolt proved that Disney animation is on the upswing. Meet The Robinsons had been a nice step up, and Bolt beat that. It was decent. I fell short of being great, but did what Disney desperately needed it to do. It lacked the ambition of Wall-E, but, thankfully, most films ever made lack that kind of ambition.

Don't get me wrong. I love Pixar, and I'm happy that the rest of the world loves Wall-E. I want the Pixar golden age to continue. Frankly, after the only-decent Cars and the celebrated disaster that is Wall-E, I was getting worried.

And Pixar is saving Disney to boot. To remember how far animation can fall, I need only think of the Disney movie, The Wild. Shudder. I would rather sit through Happy Feet again, or be waterborded. Either one.

The Wild. Happy Feet. Robots. Chicken Little. Meet The Robinsons. Wall-E. Ratatouille. Cars.

I tried to list them in order of watchability. This assumes that I could actually watch Wall-E again, which I have managed to do with Chicken Little.

Robots makes the list as the worst of the sexual-puns-in-a-family-film offenders. Otherwise, it would have been a good, funny film.

I tried to put Bolt in that list, but I'd have to see it again first.

Kung Fu Panda, on the other hand, I have seen many times already. I love the film. It is the opposite of Wall-E, which I could not love despite an ambitious meaning. I loved Kung Fu Panda despite its meaning, and that's what I intend to eventually get to here.

Ice Age 2. Kung Fu Panda. Finding Nemo. The Incredibles.

...the end of the list I began earlier, with The Wild being perhaps the worst major animated movie of all time, and The Incredibles being the best.

It's not a complete list, nor one that's complete even in the parts I've listed. Is Iron Giant better than Ice Age 2? Probably. Shrek, too, as well as Beauty and the Beast and many of the Pixar films and most anything from the two golden-eras of Disney animation.

I'm only sure of the top three and the bottom two. I'll leave it at that.

But what about the meaning of Kung Fu Panda?

"There is no secret ingredient."

I saw this on two shallow levels. One: Hollywood-friendly dogma. "Believe in yourself." Two: A non-Christian statement. What about the Holly Spirit?

I recently said as much, but it soon occurred to me that there are problems with these approaches. First, many characters in the film believe in themselves--none of them can defeat the villain. Second, the story has a religious (though not Christian) environment out of which the statement in question comes.

This second question raises the point: How do we reconcile this with the point woven through the film that "there are no accidents". This is a movie that believes in design, purpose, destiny, and even faith. (The faith here is expressed in the need for Po to believe in his master "as I have come to believe in mine".)

In the end, the biggest display of self-esteem did not win the day. Rather, it was an Esther-like moment. Po had been placed there for just this very moment.

As for "there is no secret ingredient"? There was desire and training, plus something else: Po himself and the moment for which he alone was destined. Why he alone? Because there was a secret ingredient: fat. Po's point of weakness is what defends him from the enemies most dangerous attack. The message then is that Po has been given all he needs to fulfill his destiny. It takes hard work and faith to use what he has been given, but he doesn't need to be something else or someone else. He is who he is for a reason.

The movie dominated the Annie awards that year, but it is still an easy film to under estimate. The biggest complaint among the critics was that it had a message you could fit on a fortune cookie. Perhaps we were all wrong about that.

The depth of some works is easy to spot. Kung Fu Panda is not that kind of movie. It appears beautiful but shallow. I now believe it is something else.

And there are very few films that prove to be deeper than first believed. Jump back in and see for yourself.

Wade