'Kung Fu Panda 3': New trailer reveals a new star in the Panda-verse
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Molly Driscoll Staff writer
A new trailer has been released for the upcoming film “Kung Fu Panda 3.”
The first two films centered on panda Po (Jack Black), who wants to become an expert at kung fu and tries to do so despite the lack of confidence in him from the "Furious Five," kung fu experts voiced by actors including Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, and Seth Rogen, who are all back in the latest installment.
The new voice is “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston as Po’s father, Li. Most of the trailer involves Po and Li meeting and both not grasping the connection between the fact that Po lost his father and Li lost his son.
“Well, good luck to you,” Po’s father tells him before the two go their separate ways, ignoring the stunned disbelief on the faces of all the animals around them.
The first and second movies both became box office hits, with the 2008 movie “Kung Fu Panda” becoming the sixth-highest grossing movie of the year and “Kung Fu Panda 2” becoming the fifteenth-highest grossing movie of 2011, according to Box Office Mojo.
The “Panda” film series has been part of a turnaround for animation studio DreamWorks. The studio scored big early on with the “Shrek” films, which were fairy tale parodies that often poked fun at rival Disney. But the studio struggled after that to find other successful properties that scored with both audiences and critics – the “Madagascar” series did well at the box office but wasn’t as well-received by reviewers. By contrast, when “Panda” arrived in 2008, it did well with the average moviegoer and critics, and the studio soon followed this success with “How to Train Your Dragon,” which also received both critical acclaim and huge box office success.
The studio is still producing some misses – the recent movies “Turbo” and “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” weren’t well-reviewed – but the studio currently has some beloved properties with its “Panda” and “Dragons” series, and the DreamWorks animation team recently won a Technical Achievement Academy Award for their foliage animation.
