Kung Fu Panda Creators Get a Kick Out of Contrasts

Kung Fu Panda tells a sweet story about an out-of-shape bear named Po who aspires to be a kung fu master. It sounds simple enough.

The animated film, which opens Friday, took four years and the work of more than 350 people to make.

"There were times it was great fun," says co-director John Stevenson. His fellow director Mark Osborne quickly adds, "There were plenty of times it wasn’t."

For the simplicity of its narrative — very Star Wars-y in its journeys, teacher/student relationships and issues of destiny and fate — the look of the film is special.

The film — almost all computer-generated animation — begins with a strikingly hand-drawn opening-credit sequence, a dream in which Po (voiced by Jack Black) imagines himself flying, tumbling, kicking and sliding through an army of attackers.

"It took our animators a little time to get it right," Stevenson says. "They hadn’t flexed their 2-D animation muscles in a long time."

The dream sequence ends with a thud as Po falls from bed to the floor. It sets up a series of contrasts that Osborne says are integral to the film.

"It provides a clear difference between the inner life of the character and real life," Osborne says. "You get his internal struggle seconds after the credits are over. I don’t think we could’ve achieved that with strength and clarity if we didn’t have the 2-D dream followed by the realistic weight of him slamming onto the floor in CG."

The computer-generated animation allows Panda to accelerate to fast-paced, 21st-century kung fu film standards. The action, rather than the look of the characters, is the source of Kung Fu Panda’s wows. The film’s animated marvel isn’t the realistic presentation of individual panda hairs but rather its cinematic quality.

Stevenson says he and Osborne and their army of animators "went for a very live-action way of shooting" in which not everything on the screen is in focus. "It’s easy to hold the focus in computer animation to the horizon and beyond, but that’s just not the way we as human beings see the world."

Osborne also points out that Panda’s characters were more integral to selling the story than the animation.

"The subtlety of the expressions and the emotions are what engage a viewer into the story," he says. "We were looking for contrasts. All that work and attention to detail makes the action more dynamic."

The voice cast is subtly incorporated into the story. Only Black’s voice is immediately recognizable as Po. Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen and Ian McShane — all with distinctive voices — disappear into their animated characters.

As the film’s villain, McShane achieves the seething menace of his Deadwood character minus the salty language.

"He captured who Tai Lung was," Stevenson says. "Somewhere between Shao Kahn and Al Swearengen."

Both directors rave about Hoffman’s work.

"I believe he took the role as seriously as any he’s done," Stevenson says. "He extracted some of the New York qualities from his voice and got into being a gritty, hard-core kung fu master."

Osborne adds, "Instead of cashing in on our celebrities, we wanted them to dig inside and give an honest portrayal. To use their skills more than their marquee value. Dustin was a marvel."

And then there’s the panda protagonist, who changes a lot — though not necessarily physically — on his journey. More than the voices and the animation, big, sweet Po has to sell the story.

"It had to be a panda," Osborne says. "It was always going to be a panda. That was the whole high concept: a kung fu movie with the most unlikely hero at its core."

Adds Stevenson, "If you’re doing kung fu, you should be doing it in China, and there you have this unique animal that happens to be the cutest thing on the planet. It’s also the softest and fuzziest."

Osborne: "I told you we liked contrasts."

Stevenson: "And what’s less kung fuey than a panda?"