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nikox400x · 1 month

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KFP 4: The true hell behind the cameras ft. The Co-director of KFP4

I know I already made my review to this thing, and believe me when I say that I didn't want to talk anymore about this dawn movie (For call it something). But the reason for this statement is something that I cannot ignore, so hold on to your seat because what you are going to read is not a mission impossible movie, this really happened in the same Dreamworks studios.

The devil has different names depending on the religion;

-In the Catholic religion he is called Satan.

-In Islam he's Iblís.

-In Buddhism it's Mara.

But in the world of kung fu panda, the devil has a human name, Mike Mitchell.

Context? Three days ago, as a result of all the protests about the poor narrative quality of the film, the KFP's reddit community was able to find someone from within the production of the film, a witness who could corroborate everything that we assumed was happening within that studio.

This person is no one else but the co-director of kfp4, Stephanie Ma Stine. One of the main people who, along with a large part of the team of animators who love this saga too, fought and fought throughout the production so that the film was not completely destroyed from the beginning.

This woman was contacted by a discord channel to answer some questions that the community was asking in the company of the administrators of the discord group of the kung fu panda fandom, at first this woman seemed frustrated by something that I am going to explain, The entire conversation was recorded and uploaded to YouTube to expose the nauseating experience that Stephanie had to endure during the production of this film.

To begin with, she had almost no power within the production because she was considered someone new to her job and the disgusting bosses at Dreamworks had no better idea than to give all creative control to Mike.

Dreamworks gave a time limit for the duration of the film, later you will know why. This guy didn't have the slightest idea how to direct such a short movie, much less if it was a kung fu panda movie, since the guy treated kung fu panda like a chinese version of the minions, obviously because he didn't give a shit about franchise and he just wanted something that would make people laugh (But his humor and the scriptwriters's was so bad that even it would insult ilumination itself) although not even the children could find this humor funny.

What kind of humor? Well, you know; fart humor, jokes with a childish tone, random chases that contribute nothing to the plot, jokes about annoying and invincible children, jokes without charisma, generation Z humor, random hits, etc...

And like any sane person would do, Stephanie tried to give it that serious but parodic and heartfelt tone that the first triology had, but obviously they barely listened to her because she was considered new. So she had to resort to encouraging people passionate about the saga within the studio to insist on adding things that would improve the plot. Most of the time when they insisted on improving the quality of the script it ended in a roll of eyes from the higher ups within the production as if trying to tell them; "Damn stupid people, so much bother for a children's saga that is only used to make easy money"

The problem transcended for a long time as more and more absurd ideas came out of the writing team, some of them that even destroyed the logic of the world they were building, all of this was translated into a long and nightmarish trench war between those who love the saga and the psychopaths who only cared about money.

So, what happened next? Well, the movie came out and fans (and non-fans) were disappointed because the movie seems like a draft made by people who didn't seem to speak the same language during the artistic decisiones in the movie. Exactly, because of all this conflict between those who agreed with Stephanie and those who listened to Mike.

And in the end, it was Stephanie who had to politely come forward in front of the disappointed people to give these professionally humiliating explanations, and what did Mike do on his part? Bury his head like an ostrich and do not listen to the criticism that he generated for their horrible decisions.

youtube

(Stephanie's user is called storyduke)

This is the conversation between her and the administrators of the discord group, pause the video calmly and read on your own if you need it, for prove I haven't invented anything of this to defame Mike or something like this. All this comes from the person who was by his side during all production.

In order not to overwhelm you because the video is very long, I leave you a summary of what she said below. I will mainly use the comment of this reddit user called Mystic3012 who explains all this quite well (My comments will be marked in red):

Early on, KFP4 was considered to be live action-animation hybrid, and featured humans (WTF?!). I posted concept art of the human Chameleon (then, The Collector, even though we already have Kai the Collector) vs Po. Seems like Zhen would've been human too. They'd have come from Hu-man City (Wow, how originally -_-), apparently... To add insult to injury, one of these versions had Po, the protagonist, stuck in a BOX for 20 MINUTES. (20 minutes... no words for this. And no, you're not reading wrong, HUMANS IN KUNG FU PANDA. If it hadn't been for Stephanie, this is what they would have given us. Thanks Stephanie, guys)

Mike Mitchell, the director, had total creative freedom. Hence, him + the studio leadership wanting laughs and a more joke-y vibe led to the overall tone, like the F5's comical side missions. Jack Black called him the "comedy guy"(I want to think jack Black is another victim here and he simply couldn't do nothing because his contract does not allow it), while Stephanie brought "things deeper" and "more heart".

Additionally, it was Mitchell who insisted against fleshing out the Chameleon's backstory "What a surprise...right guys?". Apparently, Chameleon and Zhen had ZERO backstory in early versions. By the time the crew pushed him enough to change his mind, they were too far along in animating to add anything but the Chameleon's few lines.

The runtime was a studio mandate since they believed children can't watch a longer film + maximize profits (You motherfu...).

TV shows are non-canon, as they are under separate film and television divisions that are "rivals".

Lord Shen, General Kai, and the Furious Five were VERY last minute additions to the point that their animation rigs were "made of sticks and glue"(The 3D models were so poorly made due to lack of time that if they made original animations, they would directly break, they had to reuse animations from the first, second, third movie and from the Christmas short for the credits. The animations of Crane and Shen's feathers, according to her, were bugged a lot and the wings tended to separate from the body or bend in unrealistic ways during animation tests). Hence, no plot relevance (e.g. not redeemed properly) and inability to bring back their actors, as much as some of the crew advocated for their return. Furthermore, there's a thing where actors are brought in for voice roles with X amount of money, and exponential increases for sequels. Apparently, a single line from Jolie would've cost $20 million (Easy Angelina!! XD. They could have simply changed the actress who played her like for example the one who play her in Secrets of the Scroll or the one of Legend of Awessomless, this was simply used as an excuse not to add them to the film), so you can imagine why the Five were absent...

Not everyone who dies goes to the Spirit Realm. It's not a definite rule behind-the-scenes, but it's vaguely agreed upon that only kung fu practitioners can pass on. It was also Mitchell's idea that all 3 villains were indeed sent to the Realm and that the Chameleon only wanted master VILLAINS summoned. [Pretty sure that retcons Lord Shen but alas-]

Pelican is named Chip, and a female. The fish in her beak is Fish.

Calvin Tsang, Head of Story, directed "a short film for KFP 4". Though, DreamWorks gave him a low budget but apparently he pulled enough favours for it to work out, with Stephanie describing it as "amazing, seriously" and shows "how strong of a director's voice he has".

Future spin-offs uncertain. DreamWorks has dissolved most, if not all, of its TV division.

Though, Mitchell was very vocal about a F5 spinoff. Execs are aware of the fans' demand for it (Wow thank you...-_-, just don't ruin it again).

Shifu's staff lacks its golden piece since it has been repaired following his mastery of Chi, per production designer Paul Duncan. (Same man responsible for bringing back the Dagger of Deng Wa with his attention to detail) (Niceee)

Universal mandated for a tentpole film like KFP4 to have "stars" hired for voicework.

For the record, Stephanie wanted for KFP4 to "stay truer to KFP1 and KFP 2" but was dismissed as a nobody by the crew (Basically what I said before, Mike and a good part of his team are anything but respectful of other people's works).

Case in point, she wanted Tai Lung being brought back to be done right. She pitched for Po/Shifu to have a vision of the Chameleon kidnapping Shifu, prompting Po to go on a quest to stop her. Shifu gets kidnapped anyway due to the Chameleon's manipulations, and he's hence present to say goodbye to Tai Lung. The execs loved it but "someone axed it" (That person better not know their identity because the fans cling to Tai Lung, I don't think they'll laugh much at this 😅). For those who've seen the film, the vision was reduced to Po's dream enroute to Juniper City.

Another example of Stephanie's intervention, she fought for Zhen to be redeemed ONSCREEN after betraying Po, much to the writers' refusal (These people don't even respect their own characters). She was supposed to swoop in out of nowhere to fight the Chameleon for a bit and disappears quickly again. She also ensured that her redemption scene wasn't just dialogue and had action going on. (She admits to Po and Zhen's underbaked relationship not supplementing this scene enough though.)

The writers seemed to HATE comments "poking holes at the story" (And then what do they want us to call that; "purposely destroy the canon of history because of its inaccuracy?" On top of bad in their own job, they're crybabies).

Zhen is a Corsac Fox as its the Asian fox with distinctive facial features.

Nico Marlet, renowned concept artist, only worked on the film for a week, left, and refused to come back (I don't even know if I want to know why, just imagine it).

Many crewmembers pitched ideas for Zhen's family's backstory but all were discarded (They can't even develop their own character, I'll call that technique "Work? What is that? it is eatable? XD").

By the way, the thing about humans was no joke.

(Conceptual art made by Luca Pisanu)

Original reddit forum:

Guys, that's it, how not to write a movie. I think you can already imagine my opinion, it is a complete shame what they tried to do with this saga but at least she was able to save it from being completely ruined. I sincerely ask you all to spread this information, I will leave you a link to the original reddit thread for your inspection. And I'm just saying one thing: I hope they fire Mike Mitchell and all his damn inept scriptwriters, and I hope we never see them again in another production of this saga. And of course, to the executives at Dreamworks: Stick your finger up your ass and don't touch what you don't know how to touch.

Don't be silent about these things, because you know what will happen? That they will do the same thing again with the fifth film because they see that the method works, in addition to the fact that they will also exploit their workers for nothing for such a mediocre product (Because yes, they also exploited them to finish the finale on time). Let this not happen again guys, please I ask you.

#kung fu panda #dreamworks #kung fu panda 4 #notmykfp4 #mike mitchell #Youtube

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