Dreamworks Kung Fu Panda has been discussed on our channel before.
But when a trilogy is this good, we’re not going to pass up a chance to talk about it
again!
We’ve covered morality… but what about brains?
Who among this action-packed cast is truly the most intelligent… and who is missing
the most brain cells?
I’m Brad with WickedBinge and this is Kung Fu Panda: Dumb to Brilliant.
First up here, it's the Practically Brainless.
This spot is reserved for those who have a less than average intelligence, to put it
nicely.
The gold medal of stupidity goes to the Farmers.
When they meet Kai, they are understandably terrified of the warrior.
Who wouldn’t be when a giant beast appears out of nowhere and asks you if you would die
if they stepped on you?
But they also wound up provoking Kai when they began gushing about Oogway being a legendary
warrior.
Now, it isn’t the Farmers fault exactly that they didn’t know who Kai was.
No one really did until Shifu found the scrolls explaining why Kai and Oogway went their separate
ways.
But it’s hard to believe that they didn’t notice how desperate Kai was to be recognized
and how much he would have been annoyed to have them gush over another fighter.
The silver medal of stupid goes to Commander Vachir.
Yeah, he’s the guy in charge of a maximum security prison that was designed for one
dangerous prisoner, but we have to rank him low due to the cockiness he had.
Vachir’s pride wound up being the very thing that resulted in Tai Lung escaping.
The messenger did not need to be given a tour of the facility, and Vachir knew that.
But he wanted to show off and hopefully have Shifu off his back.
Rather than taking the message he got as a personal insult to his competence, he should
have been a professional and just taken the concern to heart.
The bronze medal of dumb goes to the Pandas.
As cuddly and sweet as they are, they are also very sheltered and naive.
When Po is laying out plans for them, he makes the comment that he would have to go over
all the details several more times.
Which was tough to accomplish when the pandas kept eating the stuff meant to represent them
on the map.
But we rank them higher than others on this list because of their ability to adapt.
They didn’t have any fighting experience, much preferring to hide after the conflict
with Shen.
But even with their lives being sheltered, they were able to channel their chi and help
Po while he was in the spirit realm.
And that is pretty impressive.
Next up is the Grade School Students.
These characters are capable of improving their craft or vile schemes, but have a way
to go from the top.
Next on our list is Mei Mei.
We place her above the rest of many of the other pandas because she shows more ambition
than the others.
Mei Mei was able to develop her skills as a dancer and then use those same abilities
to become a pretty impressive fighter.
In a matter of hours, Mei Mei went from being unable to even hold nunchucks to being able
to brandish a weapon and her ribbon at the same time, going in circles around the jade
fighters.
We still dock her down for her lack of awareness when it came to the people around her, though.
She didn’t quite grasp that Po was uncomfortable about her interest, but at least she eventually
eased off.
Moving onto the Wolves.
Henchmen to Shen, they were just there to carry out orders and instill fear in the masses
while collecting all the metal they could.
They didn’t have any clear plans when it came to how they would thrive once Shen achieved
his goal.
They just appeared to be happy to have people afraid of them.
Which meant when Shen met his downfall, they had no backup plan as to how they would get
by if they escaped the kung fu masters hunting them down for helping a criminal.
Next up our list is the Average Folk.
These guys are, as the name implies, pretty average in terms of intelligence.
Not too smart, but not too dumb.
Normies.
Next, we have Po's mother.
Sure, we don’t see her for very long, but we can’t argue how smart it was of her to
hide Po away among some vegetables.
Not only was he out of sight from Shen and the wolves, but it meant that Po would be
carted off to a home where he would hopefully be safe and away from the carnage.
Not only that but she was able to lead Shen and his henchmen away to ensure her child’s
safety.
Not only was that smart, but it was a heartbreaking sacrifice.
The messenger Zang is next.
When Vachir was occupied with showing off the prison, Zang had been the voice of reason,
insisting that they leave.
He kept speaking up that he didn’t have to see Tia Lung or where he was kept, and
kept pressing that upping security was just a request Shifu made.
It wasn’t Zang’s fault that Tai Lung was able to utilize something so small in order
to escape, so we can’t rank Zang lower just for that.
Taking our next spot we have Po’s father Li Shan.
While he has his moments of absolute cluelessness, such as when he thought Mr Ping joined them
to make sure he ate well, he also was shown to be pretty on the ball.
He was able to track Po down with little to no leads given.
After he saw Po fighting the jade warriors, Li was able to use the excuse of teaching
chi to get Po away from Kai.
And though Li wasn’t a part of the training that Po put the rest of the pandas through,
he was able to fashion some armor with Mr Ping to fight alongside the rest of the village.
Li had also been the one to lead the pandas to use their chi to help Po, helping to bring
back a skill that had been lost for ages.
Following, we have Po’s other father Mr Ping.
After he found Po, he took care of the panda as if he were his own.
He was a traditional man who put aside his dreams and had been fairly clueless to Po’s
real dreams, but was able to be supportive of his son.
He was the one to help Po realize the real meaning of the scroll by telling Po the secret
to his noodle soup.
He was the one to help Li realize how they could both be supportive of Po in his fight
against Kai.
And had been able to adjust to the village in his own way, caring for the children in
the village while Po trained.
He had his moments where he wasn’t always on the same page as his son, but he got better
as the films went on.
Now we’re really getting into the College Bound.
These are the characters who are just a stone throw away from the top, proving they have
the ability to be the best, but just fall short.
Next on our list we have Monkey.
Once a comedian, he was able to use his sense of humor to distract opponents and take them
out quickly.
He was able to use his past skills as a thief and prankster to quickly grasp a fighting
style when training in kung fu.
Because Po was able to also fight with a light hearted attitude, Monkey was pretty quick
to grant Po some respect as a fellow student, knowing very well that being funny didn’t
discredit Po from being a great student.
It’s clear that Monkey saw a lot of himself in Po, which is why he warmed up to the panda
so quickly.
Next up is the avian fighter, Crane.
One a janitor, he had been thrust into a situation where he had to protect himself.
Sure, it was just a training field, but it was still impressive how he was able use his
fast reflexes to avoid being pummeled.
When he had been sent with Mantis to seek out more information on Kai’s whereabouts,
Crane had been the one to try and get Mantis to leave in order to tell the others.
That would have been a good idea, too, had Mantis not been so determined to take on the
enemy himself.
To Crane’s credit, he’s far more subtle than the other fighters.
That can make him come off as unapproachable, but it also makes him perfect for gathering
information.
Speaking of, next up is the acupuncture expert himself, Mantis.
Sure, his need to take on Kai did him and Crane caught, but Mantis was far more than
a tiny sass factory.
He was also stated to be an experienced fighter that used speed to take his opponents off
guard.
When he was in a situation where he couldn’t use this method, Mantis was able to find a
way to surprise his foes: by being so still they thought him dead.
Considering how much Mantis relied on his speed and flashy moves, this was a pretty
impressive tactic for him to come up with on his own.
Moving onto Viper.
Like Crane, she had also been pushed into a situation where she had to protect herself,
but Viper’s technique was a little different.
Since she was born without venom, she had been sheltered growing up.
But when her father and the rest of the village were in danger, Viper was able to use her
skills as a ribbon dancer to use the villain’s own strength against him, making the beast
punch himself in the face until he was defeated.
She didn’t have limbs like the other members of the Furious Five.
Nor did she have the ability to bite her opponents into submission like other snakes around that
area.
But she made do with what she had and was able to rise up and be one of the most legendary
fighters in all of China.
We also have to give her some credit for her patience when helping Mantis with his acupuncture
on Po, since that wasn’t something she was really trained in.
Next we have the villain of the first movie, Tai Lung.
Though Tai Lung was very capable in how he escaped from the prison, he was driven by
revenge and hatred.
That shallow motivation wound up being a large reason for Tai Lung’s downfall, with the
fighter being taken down as he tried taking his rage out on Po.
He blamed Shifu for his broken dreams and was deluded that he was still able to be the
Dragon Warrior so long as he had the scroll.
It would be interesting to see what Tai Lung could accomplish had he pursued a path other
than that of the Dragon Warrior.
And we can’t forget the other kung fu Masters.
We had to drop them a bit low in the ranking due to a few things.
First off, we have the masters that refused to fight Shen that hid themselves away, claiming
that facing Shen meant death.
Second, we have the masters that were able to be lured in by Kai, their chi being taken
and used against the very people they were trying to protect.
Third, they clearly underestimated Shen and his weapons, facing the avian villain with
little force and basically no backup.
I mean, why would you take on a villain you know little about with only a few masters?
Shouldn’t you try to be prepared to face strong opponents at any time?
Next is the villain obsessed with chi: Kai.
Once he learned how to use chi and steal it from others around him, there was little that
could be done to stop him.
We have to hand it to Kai: he spent a long time traveling the spirit realm and seeking
out enough power that he could return to the living.
That took a level of determination that is hard to top.
Kai was also able to lure the masters out one by one and gain their power, knowing just
how much strength he needed before facing Shifu and going after the panda village.
But his greed became his downfall as he was given too much power, which wound up destroying
him.
It’s hard to believe that Kai never came across the fact that there is such a thing
as too much of a good thing, but seeing as not too many people were seeking out that
much chi, it’s likely that no one really considered that ending a possibility.
Save for Po at that very moment.
Much like Tai Lung, Kai’s arrogance wound up being a large part of his downfall.
After all, Kai’s very own comments about the spirit realm are what gave Po the idea
on how to defeat him.
Up next is the terrifying Shen.
Though one could argue that Shen wasn’t completely there, having been pushed to the
edge in his pursuit of glory, Shen was resourceful.
He was able to take a simple fun display and turn it into a revolutionary weapon.
He was effective in hunting down the majority of the panda population, knowing that they
would have been a formidable opponent for him.
He was able to face the masters themselves and defeat them, instilling fear not only
in the masters of kung fu, but in the general public.
And though Shen would get annoyed with Soothsayer and her way of foretelling the future, he
knew better than to try and make an enemy of her.
He knew in a way that she had been right about his family and his possible downfall, but
he was willing to take that risk to achieve his dream.
Even when Po was flat out obliterating his armada, Shen refused to admit defeat and demanded
that someone-anyone-kill the panda.
Our next spot goes to the remaining member of the Furious Five, Tigress.
Having a tough childhood where she was sheltered from the other children, Tigress learned from
a very young age how to control her rage and her strength.
She had been the one to recruit the other members of the Furious Five through a mishap
with the lists and made the team work.
Nothing really got past Tigress, and so she had been the one to recognize that Po was
struggling with something and had been able to get him to open up about his problems.
She had found the panda village with little help in order to warn Po about Kai and helped
Po to reach a solution on how to fight the chi-crazed warrior.
Though Tigress wasn’t the warmest or cuddliest fighter, she was one of the more wise and
insightful.
Finally, we have The Geniuses.
These characters are capable of running large-scale operations.
They’re dangerous and powerful because they know how to outsmart anyone.
Truly Machivellian when it comes to Power.
Next up on our list is the Dragon Warrior himself, Po.
Though Po is often brushed off as a spaz that had a lot to learn, he was also shown to be
wise.
He had been able to work out the meaning of the scroll with his dad’s help and figure
out Shifu’s special attack to use against Tai Lung.
He had been able to train the other pandas in a limited amount of time and defeated Kai
with the use of not only his chi but the other pandas’.
Though Po struggled with the trauma of his past, he was eventually able to find peace
and face Shen head on, telling the villain that it was better to let go of the anger
of the past rather than allowing it to define him.
Though Po was aware of the Furious Five not accepting him at first, he tried his hardest
to make a good impression.
Those tactics didn’t always work, with Po often getting stuck or beaten up, but in the
end he was able to find his own style of fighting that was successful.
Our bronze medal of brains goes to Master Shifu.
Once reluctant to take Po into his care, Shifu spent much of the first film living in the
past and regretting his mistakes with Tai Lung.
He was stubborn and refused to see Po’s worth for much of the movie.
But when Shifu did come around, his methods to teach the panda were unique and effective.
By the time the second and third movies came around, Shifu was able to master some new
techniques and even ask Po for advice when it came to mastering chi.
Shifu had been the one to convince the masters hiding away in their jail cell to fight alongside
them and had been the one to send Tigress to find Po and the panda village in order
to warn them about Kai.
Even when it placed his own safety at risk, Shifu was able to look at situations logically
to ensure the safety of those around him.
Taking the silver medal of brains is Soothsayer.
An aid to Shen, she was one of the few that escaped his wrath.
Her ability to look into the future and grant advice to the villain may have had some less
than desirable methods for Shen, but she did her job well.
She had tried to reach through to the avian for a long time, trying to get him to forgive
his family for casting him out.
When Shen failed to see reason, Soothsayer was able to find Po and reveal the truth to
the panda, seeing him as the only option to save not only kung fu and the people of China,
but Shen himself.
Taking our gold medal of brains, we have Master Oogway.
Who else could we have at the top of this list other than the most beloved and revered
master in the films?
Oogway was wise and his input was sought after by everyone.
He was the one to detect the evil lurking in Tai Lung’s heart.
He had been the one to encourage Po to keep pushing through the training.
Oogway had also been the one to banish Kai, knowing that the warrior wouldn’t change
his ways.
Oogway himself explains that when he saw Po, he immediately made the connection between
the past and the potential future, believing Po could be the one to mend the tragedies
that took place.
Even in death, Oogway was an optimistic and fun-loving character that strived to be an
example to those around him.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking.
And tell us what we should cover next.
Remember to hit that notification bell and binge our Dumb to Brilliant playlist.
Where we figure out which characters have the most wits.
But most importantly, stay wicked.