IF anyone is going to read deeper meaning into the new animated
IF anyone is going to read deeper meaning into the new animated sequel Kung Fu Panda 2, it’s Angelina Jolie.
The ever-expanding brood of Brad Pitt and Jolie has come together from different backgrounds and different corners of the globe.
And that, says mother Jolie, reminds her a lot of her Kung Fu Panda character Tigress and her “adopted” family of kung fu fighters: Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), panda Po (Jack Black) and the rest of the Furious Five – Monkey (Jackie Chan), Crane (David Cross), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Mantis (Seth Rogen).
“My children have seen it and they loved it and they laughed out loud. But I was very curious about how they’d react to the family themes of it,” Jolie says of the sequel.
“My character … we saw in the first film that she was raised in an orphanage and then she was adopted by Shifu. And in this one, Po – who’s her friend, kind of, she’s got a bit of an attitude with him – discovers that he’s adopted.”
So what did the kids — Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne — take away from Kung Fu Panda 2?
Jolie reckons it was the knowledge that, no matter their beginnings or their paparazzi-documented-present, only they can decide who they will become.
“It’s about a search for self and that’s something, no matter how you were born, no matter who we are or where we’re from, that is such a big theme,” she says.
“Who we are and who we decide to be in life, not being defined by our parents, our past, the way we look, where we’re from, anything about that. We make the choice. I love the themes of it.”