ANIMATION EVOLUTION

“What if Akira Kurosawa made a ‘Looney Tunes’?”

That, says “Kung Fu Panda” producer Melissa Cobb, was co-director John Stevenson’s approach to the Oscar-submitted animated movie.

“We wanted to shoot it in Cinemascope; we wanted the grandeur. We wanted to let the physical comedy get pretty broad, but it was a fine line to walk there . . . to also honor the complexity of kung fu and the beauty of China.”

But was the primary engine for the film the casting of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie, or was it the gorgeous visuals depicting a mythical Far East?

“It’s one of those movies where the title came before everything else,” says Cobb. “Kung fu, you think of being rough and regimented, and pandas, you think of being soft and fluffy.

“The challenge was to not make it a spoof; we needed real stakes and character journeys.”

Even though the performers didn’t record their parts together, Cobb cites their combined chemistry -- especially in the key relationship between Black’s protagonist panda Po and Hoffman’s exasperated kung fu master Shifu (a raccoon-like red panda) -- as the heart of the film.

“The core is obviously between Jack and Dustin’s characters,” Cobb says.

“They both came in so ready to perform in a way they never have before; you’re alone in that room and you’re giving the directors many, many, many choices. I don’t think there would be a movie without those two.”

The production also benefited from the input of its own resident master.

Storyboard artist and animator Rodolphe Guenoden “had been studying kung fu for years and he became the choreographer,” Cobb says. “He taught kung fu classes to the animators.”

Apart from the many gags and action, Cobb treasures what she calls the film’s “moments of mysticism and poetry” as when one kung fu master dies in a flurry of peach petals.

“It still brings a tear to my eye, which is crazy, considering how many times I’ve seen it. But every piece of it came together in a way I find very rewarding.”

-- Michael Ordona