"Kung Fu Panda"
“Kung Fu Panda” is a computer-generated feature film by DreamWorks. It follows the character Po, a large panda, as he tries to learn Kung Fu. After being declared the heir to the Dragon Scroll, he has to study martial arts to become the Dragon Warrior. Po endures many vigorous training sessions. Finally, Po has to face off against the Kung Fu master, the snow leopard Tai Lung to defend the Valley of Peace. “Kung Fu Panda” follows the various laws of physics perfectly, except when a character is performing or training for martial arts. The most noticeable differences between the following of physical laws and the purposeful ignoring of said laws, can be observed in scenes that feature the law of gravity, exaggeration of forces, and the rate of acceleration and mass.
The law of gravity states that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the line of centers for the two objects that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the separation between the two objects. In layman’s terms: any two objects in the universe exert gravitational attraction to each other. In “Kung Fu Panda”, the law of gravity is most evident in the characters’ daily activities and especially with the character Po. For example, when Po tried to watch the Furious Five’s performance through a small window. Because Po is so heavy, it takes him extra effort to pull himself high enough to see through the window. When the window suddenly closes, Po tumbles to the ground and lands hard. Another example is when the red panda, Shifu, is training Po. Unable to train Po with traditional martial arts methods, he decides to use food as an incentive. In this scene, the camera focuses on the drop of a single dumpling. The dumpling falls naturally. Even though, the scene becomes a bit hectic when the two characters start performing Kung Fu, the dumpling continues to fall in a normal fashion. Toward the end of the scene, a chopstick skewers the dumpling into the top branch of a tree. It slides down the chopstick, pulled down by gravity.
While the law of gravity is followed during the everyday aspects of the movie, the law does not apply to the characters performing Kung Fu. One example is when the highly trained tiger, Tigress, jumps into the air to break two training stone discs. She leaps straight into the air and performs a split to shatter the discs with her feet. While she falls quickly, she stays in the air longer than one naturally could. Also, the pieces of the shattered discs fall much sooner than she does. Tigress should have been pulled down by gravity sooner and have fallen with the shattered pieces. Another example of ignoring the law of gravity is when Tai Lung escapes from the prison. After breaking his shackles, Tai Lung not only jumps a few dozen feet to a rising platform, he also jumps up a cascade of falling stalactites. He throws himself up and runs along the falling rocks faster than they call fall and reaches the ceiling of the cave. The law of gravity would not allow for Tai Lung to jump as high or as quickly as he did. He would have been pulled downward. But, because he is using martial arts he can breaks some physical laws.
A number of physical forces exist in our world. For example, there is friction, drag, and elastic. The way forces work is described in Newton’s First Law of Motion. This law explains that every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. Like the law of gravity, “Kung Fu Panda” follows the rules of forces when the characters are not doing Kung Fu. For example, when Po enters the sleeping quarters of the Furious Five, he is trying to be quiet. He tiptoes across the wooden floor. Unfortunately, the floorboards are fairly thin, so Po, being a very large panda, falls through. Another example is when Po first enters the Sacred Hall of Warriors. While studying the Whispering Urn of Warriors, he accidentally knocks it over. The urn is made of a fragile material, so it shatters when it makes contact with the floor.
Because of the magical-like quality of the Kung Fu in this film, the forces are often exaggerated. One example is when Po is fighting Tai Lung in the final showdown. Tai Lung knocks Po down the stairs that lead to the Sacred Hall of Warriors. The stairs are stone and incredibly steep. If one were knocked down the steps in the real world, at the very least, they would have broken bones. But, because both Tai Lung and Po are in the middle of using martial arts, they more or less bounce down the steps unscathed. Another example is when Po bounces Tai Lung off his belly into the air. Tai Lung flies at least one hundred feet into the air. He then, falls back down to the earth and smashes into the ground creating a large snow leopard shaped indent. He is left unable to fight back, but was not killed. If the forces were not exaggerated in this scene, he would have died and have, most likely splattered apart. Of course, having the scene play out without exaggerating the forces would have made it inappropriate for a family film. But because the Tai Lung character demonstrated super strength and an ability to bend the law of gravity when using Kung Fu, his survival is in not inconsistent within the film.
Rate of acceleration and momentum is another instance in “Kung Fu Panda” where the laws are followed except during martial art sequences. Newton’s second law of motion explains that the acceleration produced by particular force acting on a body is directly proportional to the magnitude of the force and inversely proportional to the mass of the body. The normal rate of acceleration and momentum can be observed in a number of scenes. One scene in when Po is trying to reach the presentation of the Furious Five. He is required by his father to pull the family noodle cart up the hundreds of steps to the ceremony at the Jade Palace. The steps are very steep and Po is very fat. He also has to drag the unwieldy noodle cart. The slow moving rate of him dragging the noodle cart up the stairs in appropriate for the weight of the cart and the weight Po himself has. Another example of the rate of acceleration being normal is when Po and the Furious Five move through the sleeping quarters. As described before, Po moves slowly through the quarters trying not to fall through the floor or make too much noise. And because he is heavy, is would be inconsistent for him to move quickly. The other Furious Five all move through the quarters in their own way, specific to their body type. When they travel through, they move in a natural walk. They are doing simple, normal activities and not martial arts. They do not move fast than their body can allow when following physical laws.
However, the rate of acceleration is often changed in “Kung Fu Panda”. Because the characters have the ability to perform Kung Fu, they can move much faster or slower than one normally could. When the Furious Five discover that Tai Lung has escaped from prison, Tigress decides she is going to meet with him before he reaches the Valley of Peace. She leaps across rooftops in single bounds or runs across them within a few seconds. When the remaining four of the Furious Five discover that Tigress has left, they quickly follow and catch up to her in a matter of minutes. Another example is when Po is eating dumplings with Shifu. To train Po to be fast and agile in martial arts, Shifu steals and eats the dumpling before Po can. Shifu grabs the dumplings the instant before they enter Po’s mouth. Shifu moves at an unrealistic speed.
“Kung Fu Panda” is a world of walking and talking animals. They behave like humans in everyway. While they do things animals in our world cannot, they follow the laws of physics established in their world. Even the characters that are trained in martial arts follow these established physical laws. The only time these laws are ignored or bent is when a character is performing Kung Fu. The Kung Fu gives characters like the Furious Five and Po the ability to bend and break these laws. They can defy gravity, survival normally fatal situations with nothing more than a scratch, and they can move at much faster rate. And even though the laws are changed during the Kung Fu sequences, the bending of the laws has a consistency. “Kung Fu Panda” follows and breaks the laws of physics in a way that makes the unbelievable feats of the Kung Fu as believable as the everyday activities of the characters.
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