Kung Fu Panda 4 Interview: Mike Mitchell & Sean Sexton on Revitalizing Series
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Kung Fu Panda 4 director Mike Mitchell and head of character animation Sean Sexton about the latest chapter in the DreamWorks series. The hit animated movie is now available to own on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD.
“Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee Jack Black returns as Po, the world’s most unlikely kung fu master, in this butt-kicking new chapter from DreamWorks Animation’s beloved action-comedy franchise: Kung Fu Panda After learning he must find a new hero to take over as Dragon Warrior so that he may fulfill his destiny as the next spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace, Po decides to take one last adventurous mission,” says the synopsis. “He teams up with a quick-witted thief named Zhen, voiced by Awkwafina, a corsac fox, to discover the truth about recent sightings of villains he’s defeated in the past. In a journey that puts both to the test, it will take a wicked, powerful sorceress, The Chameleon, voiced by Oscar winner Viola Davis, to bring them together and remind Po that heroes can be found in the most unexpected places.”
Tyler Treese: Mike, you’ve been involved in this franchise for a long time. You were the creative consultant on the first, you executive produced the third. What was most interesting about really taking the reins this time around being the director and getting to tell the story that you wanted to tell within this universe with Kung Fu Panda 4?
Mike Mitchell: Well, the most intense thing was, I’m such a fan of this franchise. We didn’t wanna move forward until we knew that we had a great story to tell. And strangely, my favorite thing about the Kung Fu Panda franchise are these villains. I just think they make the greatest villains in any animated film. I just think these are the best villains of all time. The only thing that got me nervous was, “Is this villain going to be as intense as the previous three villains?” I feel that we pulled it off, and once we had the cast, Viola [Davis], and once we had the design, and then Sean did some test animation footage of her supernatural powers, we’re like, all right, now we’re ready. So it was confidence from that moment out for me.
Sean, one of the great things about Kung Fu Panda 4 is that Po is giving up the Dragon Warrior title, and that introduces Zhen, who’s a voice by Awkwafina. How was it bringing in this new character and determining how to animate that character?
Sean Sexton: Yeah, that was definitely one of the biggest challenges with the film. We knew that she had to kind of hold her own against Po, you know, comedically and even maybe physicality-wise; we wanted to make sure that she was pretty substantial. So, early on, we knew that she was gonna be a corsac fox, so we did a lot of different designs of her, but we settled on one. I think one of the challenges was how does she even walk because she’s a quadriped, so does she walk like a plantigrade and plant her feet, like Bugs Bunny? That’s how it’s been done, typically in a lot of animated films. Or does she walk on her toes, like a digitigrade So we did some tests early on. We showed it to Mike, and Mike’s like, yeah, I really like when she walked on her toes.
So that was like one of the first challenges, like, how does she even move around? Then we found a lot of really cool footage of real foxes, and then we watched everything that Awkwafina had done. One of my favorite things was Nora from Queens. She was so funny in that show, and we used a lot of clips from it, and we looked at her facial expression. So yeah, we tried to infuse as much Awkwafina into the film as possible to make Zhen a really memorable character. I love the way she turned out.
Mitchell: Yeah, it was like Sean took us all to Fox College for a while. Like, I learned so much about even the bones and the tails of a fox. It was really interesting. But you know, what I love too, is Sean and his crew were very specific. It’s such great contrast with the big Kung Fu Panda and this little agile fox. In the fighting sequences, they really dug into the fighting styles that each one had. So there’s a lot of great contrast that happened.
Sexton: Yeah, we were like, “What is Fox style?” Maybe she uses her tail in a certain way, and there are so many discussions on the animated film that are so funny. Like, we must have looked at her size comparison to Po probably a hundred times. Yeah, like showing Mike, what about this size? Or how big is her tail? We showed like swatches of maybe it’s this big, this big, this big, this big, and then you kind of settle on one. So yeah, there’s so many conversations.
Mitchell: A giant tail, by the way, these guys did such a terrific job. That tail is bigger than she is. What a pain. A literal pain in the ass.
Sexton: Yeah. Especially that tail. They had a hard time with it.
Mitchell: They did a great job.
Mike, Kung Fu Panda 4 has been such a great success at the box office. The brand stayed strong in the interim between films, but we’re at a very interesting point for this series where the people have really grown up with it. So there’s a nostalgia factor, but you’re also reaching a whole new audience of kids as well with this. So, what was kind of your point of view on making this both a return and using Zhen as kind of like an introduction point for the newer fans as well? So how is it blending those perspectives?
Mitchell: That was the goal, Tyler, but it was really fascinating because we didn’t wanna leave the super fans behind that grew up with this thing. Exactly like what you said, we wanted to introduce it to a new audience. So, behind the scenes, there were a lot of intense, passionate discussions about what direction to go in. It felt like mostly my job was just listening to everyone and hearing where their passion lies and trying my best to move in the direction where it just felt like mostly we wanted to satisfy the fans. First and foremost, we kind of went in that direction because we’re super fans as well. Like we grew up on this as well, everyone working on it. Even the animators, there’s some of Sean’s animators that were on all the movies, part one, two, and three.
So, it was not easy, but it was a lot of fun to hear where people’s passion lies. If anything. The only thing that I think we might have strayed from is some of the old-school fans really wanted to get dark. They wanted to murder a lot of characters, which seemed…
Sexton: They wanted to kill Shifu.
Mitchell: They all wanted to kill Shifu. That was the one thing that we had the biggest discussions about. Man, remember Sean, we’d listen to everyone. Sean would take votes. There was voting that happened with large groups of people. It was really fascinating and interesting. But I feel personally that we made all the right choices, especially for this thing to continue on if they want to keep making more.
I’m just imagining Survivor-style council votes of killing off these adorable animal creatures.
Mitchell: Well, it’s very really strange from the first Kung Fu Panda to now, I think the audience has grown up and changed. Yeah. And certainly, you could cite something like Harry Potter, which started off as like this PG-rated movie, and by the end, it was like a horror film. Those Harry Potters were terrified. So it makes sense that we got it intensified, but we decided to intensify our fight sequences. That felt like a lot more joyful.
Sexton: Yeah. One cool thing was, like Mike said, like, we’re all fans of the franchise. I didn’t work on the first couple, but I loved them and we had a lot of newer animators on the show that were also kids when the first one came out. So they were super fans, and it was like their dream come true to work on a Kung Fu Panda movie. Yeah.
Mitchell: Tears in their eyes, like, oh my God, I can’t believe I get to work on this. This is what got me into animation.
Sexton: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. We had this one girl, Kitty Fung, she was actually a student of mine like 10 years ago at Animation Mentor. She loved Tigress, and she would do fan art of it. She sent me fan art. That’s how much she loved it. So then cut to 10 years later, now she’s actually animating Tigress. So yeah, we definitely wanted to make sure the fans were happy because we were all fans as well.
Mitchell: I said this last time, too. Kitty knows martial arts, and so does Sean as a black belt. Like a lot of people, a lot of our artists were martial artists as well. So it just made the film even better, I think.
Sexton: We’re taking up like an Octagon in the back, and maybe we could all fight like during lunch.
Sean, there’s some Kung Fu Panda 4 concept art where there was a human village. Was that discussed early on, or how far did that make it?
Sexton: Yeah, I think early on we had talked about maybe having humans in the film, right? I don’t know if any of that’s gonna be in the “Art of” book, but yeah, I think there’s an art of book coming out in a few months, right, Mike?
Mitchell: Yep. It’s beautiful.
Sexton: Maybe you could talk through that.
Mitchell: Here’s the thing. I think early on, I think we discussed everything, Tyler. So some really weird things leaked out, but we just cover all of our bases before we hone in to like the story that we want to tell. So, it gets wacky in these early stages of development. Man, you should have heard the early days of Trolls; it was such a drug-induced trip. You have no idea. There’s so much design that we talked about that was never made it into the film.
But that was another thing, Tyler, that I appreciate you bringing up, is all these early discussions we have before we move forward. There was so much story to tell that just, you know, unfortunately, or fortunately, maybe we’ll see that in the future versions of Kung Fu Panda in the future of the franchise. But there was so much that we tried to fit into this film. We just did our best to put in all the best ideas that we had.
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