Kung Fu Panda 4 is now available to purchase on Digital HD and is set to arrive on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on May 28 - and to commemorate the occasion, we were able to catch up with director Mike Mitchell (Sky High; Shrek Forever After; Trolls) and head of character animation Sean Sexton (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish; How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World; The Croods) to talk about Po's latest awesome adventure.
We get into the making of the film and some of the intense conversations that were had behind-the-scenes when they decided it was time for Po to pass on the Dragon Warrior mantle, why they opted to not bring back the Furious Five, and the introduction of the deadly Chameleon, amongst other things.
Plus, we learn more about how they wanted to evolve Po's fighting style in this film with new animation techniques and how they wanted The Chameleon to look and feel like their most dangerous villain yet.
Watch our full interview with director Mike Mitchell and head of character animation Sean Sexton below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcript! Plus, please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: Mike, when you're first entering talks to direct this film, what was your main goal? Where did you want to take Po in this film that audiences hadn't seen before?
MIKE: I didn't even want to start working on this film until we had a great villain because my favorite thing about this franchise, I think it's got the greatest villains of any animated film. Kung Fu Panda has created the coolest villains that stand the test of time, and so, it wasn't until we really landed on the Chameleon, and we Viola agreed to voice it, and then with all the design. We started to design her and started to see Sean starting to play around with her transformations, and once we got to see that, I was locked in. I was like, okay, that was the biggest hurdle for me, because this has to have a great villain.
ROHAN: Sean, I read that you have a background in taekwondo and hapkido, which is very cool. From your own experiences, what were you trying to bring into this film and help Po's fighting styles evolve further?
SEAN: That's a great question. Yeah, I think early on, we wanted to make sure that Po had progressed, so he didn't seem like he hadn't learned anything from the previous films. But we also wanted to make sure that he wasn't like a perfect martial artist, and he was flawless. Big part of the charm is that he's kind of still bumbling, and so he’ll do some moves in this film that are actually kind of based on taekwondo moves, like there's a couple of moments where he does a tornado roundhouse kick, which is a kick that I used to do back in Taekwondo. So, yeah, we weren't 100% just kung fu moves, we would try to infuse different styles, and different types of kung fu, but there's like thousands of kung fu styles. So, yeah, we tried to bring the whole thing a little bit more forward. So he was definitely a better martial artist, but still not perfect. I think it made them pretty funny still.
MIKE: Yeah, that was a good thing that they did with the animation. It's like really cool moves, but at the same time, not leaving behind the comedy, because Po is so funny, and he's such a fanboy. Even when he's fighting, he's like geeking out on the villain that he's going up against, so it was great that his movements still had that quality.
ROHAN: How involved is Jack Black with Po's creative direction? Is it a back and forth between you and him throughout the whole production or is he more hands off till the script is delivered and he then offers his notes?
MIKE: No, it is definitely back and forth. He is dedicated to this character. He loves this character. He is this character, like he is Po. He's action packed, he could do high kicks. He's a fanboy in real life, and so yeah, he was constantly discussing. It's interesting too. I thought the same thing with Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy is so funny, and Jack Black is so funny that you don't recognize that these guys are really tremendous actors and making choices, and so it wasn't just recording, it was even in between times before he came in to record, he was very into this character, and discussing specifically the theme and where he was heading towards the end of the film. So, he was instrumental in a lot of the storytelling in this movie.
SEAN: We love Jack. Jack actually wanted to come in and meet the animation team. It was his idea, so the last week of production, we brought Jack in, and he got to say hi to everybody, and we showed him the trailer for the first time and he was geeking out. The first time he saw Po come to life again, he was cracking up, it was so cool working with him on this film.
MIKE: And he brought Awkwafina with him and introduced her to all the animation team as well. It was really cool.
ROHAN: In the new film, Po actually gives up the Dragon Warrior mantle, which is a really big deal. What were those conversations like when you made the call to have him pass on the mantle he's held since the first film.
MIKE: Well, I will say there were a lot of discussions before we move forward, loads of discussions, crazy things that we considered even I guess even as we're making the film - We were just talking about this, Sean and I, there was so much debating within, because we're all super fans, and we wanted to make sure we're making the right choices and moving in the right direction. But, that one in particular, we knew that we didn't want this to go to streaming. We didn't just want to hand this to Netflix and like how Netflix has destroyed the theatrical experience. We wanted people to go into the theater, see all of our hard work on the big screen, hear that big Hans Zimmer score. We wanted to make a big epic film, and we thought to kick it off, we've got to do something dramatic and the most dramatic thing that we came up with, after coming up with a whole bunch of ideas was like, what if he’s not the Dragon Warrior anymore? And it just made everyone lean in and start asking questions like, why? Why would that ever happen? I don't believe it! And just that, everyone being passionate about it and popping like popcorn in the room, we're like, this is a good idea. This might be something we want to explore. So, that's where it came from. It came from like, what is the most dramatic, interesting move that we can make to tell a story.
SEAN: That’s the theme, you know, about change. Like, I think if, again, just to talk about how Po changed in this film, if we didn't make him grow, you know, he might be kind of boring, or like he's the same exact character. So, we wanted there to be some growth in this movie, and having him become the spiritual leader definitely gave him a new avenue to go down. So, it was fun for us.
MIKE: Sean, I don't know if you know this, though. But, behind the scenes, this was like a big discussion that everyone had, and some people were against it. And a lot of the people were like, they wanted Po to become a teacher, and this is how I won the argument. I was like, okay, let me just set it up, this summer, Po is going to lose the mantle of the Dragon Warrior. And I said, or, this summer, Po is going to become a teacher. I mean, to me, it was just like, there's one movie I don't want to see, and there's another one that I'm very interested in seeing. Good question, you dug into one of our issues that we discussed early on.
ROHAN: The Chameleon is such a cool villain, voiced to perfection by Viola Davis, and she has such an unique animation style that. Sean, what was the process behind animating her and looking at repitiles for reference?
SEAN: That's great to hear. Yeah, we go so deep, you wouldn't believe it. Like we have a paleontologist biologist, his name is Dr. Stuart Sumida. So, he came in and did a whole two hour lecture on chameleons and Komodos, and how they move and how their eyes can move independently. So, we looked at a lot of real life stuff, and then we tried to infuse as much as we could, without it looking kind of strange, because she has a dress, we still wanted her to be anthropomorphic, and still be like a really menacing villain, and if she was walking around just all the time, like a real chameleon, it wouldn't have been as cool. So, what we did was we saved the moment where she would actually go to all four legs, like at the very end of the film, and it looks really creepy, or, she'll move her eyes independently, like a real chameleon. So, yeah, we would try to infuse as much real life, you know, kind of chameleon biology as we could, but we also wanted to make her really menacing and threatening, and sometimes the three foot chameleon just wouldn't do that. We're like, how do we make her scary? How do we make her a formidable opponent for Po? Hopefully, we pulled it off by infusing what we could with real life chameleon behavior.
MIKE: Yeah, it was interesting. Viola’s voice was so intense that you don't consider how small the chameleon is. So, we kind of pulled back on a lot of gags that we had. We're just like, it's more interesting for her to be terrifying, and Sean had just finished animating the wolf from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and we decided we really liked how terrifying that wolf was, and we wanted to do it again with Viola.
ROHAN: What went into the decision to not bring back the Furious Five? And, also how awesome was it to bring back Tai Lung?
MIKE: Yeah, well, we figured this is part four, and they've been such a huge part of part one, two, and three, and we just wanted to make room for more characters in case, you know, people were interested to see more out of this franchise. So, there was so much that we tried to fit into this movie, and, in fact, we had much larger stories for the Furious Five, and we just thought it was more interesting to introduce new characters. So, for whatever reason, they kind of moved back but make no mistake, we were passionate about their story. I mean, there was a lot of talk about making just a completely only Furious Five movie, we had so much material with those characters. They're beloved. They're awesome. So, who knows what will happen in the future, but it's crazy all the amount of ideas and stuff that we came up with, with Sean's team and with the design team, with Paul Duncan, with the effects team alone that, you know, it was just, we didn't feel comfortable making a three hour long movie, and that's what we had.
SEAN: Yeah, right. And, we were so excited to bring Tai Lung back. I mean, we watched the first movie over and over and over.
MIKE: That was our first one. We're like, if we could just fit in Tai Lung, that would be amazing.
SEAN: I think, before I got on the film, I heard that he was going to make a return in the fourth film, and we're like, man we are in. That's gonna be so much fun to bring that character back.
BONUS FEATURES on 4K ULTRA HD, BLU-RAYTM AND DVD:
- Dueling Dumplings – In this original short introduced by Jack Black and Awkwafina, Po and Zhen battle over whose dumplings reign supreme.
- Mastering the Dumpling – Jack Black learns how to make dumplings with influencers Phil and Helen of WongFu Productions.
- Bad Bunny Review – The Bad Bunnies give their unedited opinion on some scenes from the film. Set up as a “Screening Room” style piece, the Bad Bunnies add their own commentary.
- Deleted Scenes
- Dads on the Trail
- Mahjong
- Kung Fu Talking – Voicing an animated movie takes time, time spent in a small booth being spoken to through headphones as you try to inhibit a character that might not actually exist beyond a few simple sketches and under that pressure, crazy things often happen! And we’ve captured them, put them to music and serves them up for your pleasure in this hilarious montage of off mic moments!
- Meet the Cast – From the Dragon Warrior himself to newcomer, Zhen, and a full cast of amazing characters in between, we get to know the voices behind some of our favorite roles in this series of short featurettes. Discover what attracted them to the role, what their motivation was and what parts of the character they took away with them after recording had finished.
- Po
- Zhen
- The Chameleon
- The Dads
- Kung Fu Panda 4 All!! – Join us as we go behind the scenes to see how the fourth installment in the franchise was brought to life, what makes it different from the previous films and where we find Po and the gang in this new escapade. Featuring interviews with the filmmakers and cast as well as a plethora of concept art, storyboards, animation tests and ADR footage.
- How to Draw – Enter our virtual dojo and join one of DreamWorks Animation’s talented artists as they show fans of the film “How to Draw” some of the characters in the film, and then watch in amazement as they come to life before your very eyes in a Shadow Puppet Theater.
- Po
- Zhen
- The Chameleon
- The Bad Bunnies
- Shadow Puppet Theater – Using the amazing illustrations from the “How to Draw,” we will teach fans of the film how to create their very own Shadow Puppet Theater so they can bring Po and the gang to life and continue their many adventures.
- Feature Commentary with Director Mike Mitchell, Co-Director Stephanie Ma Stine, Production Designer Paul Duncan, Head of Story Calvin Tsang, and Head of Character Animation Sean Sexton
This spring, for the first time in almost a decade, comedy icon Jack Black returns to his role as Po, the world’s most unlikely kung fu master, with a hilarious, butt-kicking new chapter in DreamWorks Animation’s beloved action-comedy franchise: Kung Fu Panda 4.
After three death-defying adventures defeating world-class villains with his unmatched courage and mad martial arts skills, Po, the Dragon Warrior (Golden Globe nominee Jack Black), is called upon by destiny to … give it a rest already. More specifically, he’s tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace.
That poses a couple of obvious problems. First, Po knows as much about spiritual leadership as he does about the paleo diet, and second, he needs to quickly find and train a new Dragon Warrior before he can assume his new lofty position.
Even worse, there’s been a recent sighting of a wicked, powerful sorceress, Chameleon (Oscar® winner Viola Davis), a tiny lizard who can shapeshift into any creature, large or small. And Chameleon has her greedy, beady little eyes on Po’s Staff of Wisdom, which would give her the power to re-summon all the master villains whom Po has vanquished to the spirit realm.
So, Po’s going to need some help. He finds it (kinda?) in the form of crafty, quick-witted thief Zhen (Golden Globe winner Awkwafina), a corsac fox who really gets under Po’s fur but whose skills will prove invaluable. In their quest to protect the Valley of Peace from Chameleon’s reptilian claws, this comedic odd-couple duo will have to work together. In the process, Po will discover that heroes can be found in the most unexpected places.
Kung Fu Panda 4 is now available on Digital HD, and is coming to 4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray on May 28!