Kungfu Panda
This is one of the funniest animation I have watched in a long time. There are parts which are exaggerating but compared to some of the Chinese kungfu comics I am reading, it’s medium rare compared to over-cooked.

There’s also many parts of it that I would considered ‘very Zen’ . For example, Master Wugui (乌龟) saying ‘One often meets his destiny on his way to avoid it’ , and it is generally true, as many people end up facing what they tried to avoid because whatever they did inevitably resulted in it. The Dragon Scroll is the other thing that is ‘very Zen’ too. But I won’t reveal anything about that because that will be the spoiler if I did. (It makes me wonder if that’s the general view of Westerners of Oriental culture because there are parts of Forbidden Kingdom which I felt are quite Zen too.)

Anyway, the story line is about picking one among the inhabitants of the valley as the Dragon Warrior to face the greatest threat they have ever faced, and the Panda Po was chosen. (I won’t get to the part on how a Kungfu ‘moron’ got chosen as it would be yet another spoiler.) The task to train him into the legendary fighting machine fell on the master of the five kungfu experts – Tigress, Mantis, Viper, Monkey and Crane. It is a daunting task that left the master disillusioned and disheartened as Po definitely isn’t cut for the job.

Master Wugui finally convinced the master to have faith in Po and nothing happens by coincidence. After Wugui passed on, the Master finally had enough faith to put his mind into training Po. It is then he discovered Po’s hidden potential and ultimately found an ingenious way to train him – as most of you would probably have seen parts of that in the trailers. And of course in the end there would be the showdown between the villain and the hero where our hero will be triumphant. (And oh, don’t forget to sit through the credits… it will round up the story nicely, and there’s a little bit more at the end.)

The Incredible Hulk
In spite of what American audiences prefer, this is definitely a better make than the previous one made by Lee Ang. In other words you can just wipe your memories and forget that there was ever a Hulk movie made previously. (Just like the Batman Begins completely restored our faith in the series after the disaster of the previous few featuring Val Kilmer and George Clooney.)

No more picking up tanks and throwing them this time round and the story line is way better. The pace of the movie is also controlled very well as it at least keeps me captivated. I do not know how much it has deviated from the original comic series itself but when I looked up Wikipedia articles, at least some of the characters, for e.g. General Ross and Betty Ross etc are from the comic itself.

The story line revolves around how Dr Bruce Banner turned into the Incredible Hulk after a gamma radiation experiment went awry. Unknown to Banner, the experiment is a secret army program to create super soldiers. In General Ross’ own words: Instead of making the hardware better, we made you better.

After destroying the lab where the experiment is conducted, and causing harm to his beloved Betty, Banner escaped to Brazil, where he and ‘Mr. Blue’ tried to find a cure to his condition. While at the end Banner and ‘Mr. Blue’ did almost find the cure (or at least a method to suppress the creature within), Banner was forced to make the choice between living peacefully forever, or to wake the creature within him to fight the Abomination, a creature created by the remnants of the very experiment that created the Hulk, and blood samples taken from Banner himself. The story climaxed with a battle between these two creatures of immense strength and power in the streets of New York.

Spoiler: At the end of the movie, Tony Stark (Iron Man) appeared to invite General Ross into joining him in a special force. I wondered, is Marvel setting up the scene for an Avengers movie featuring all the Marvel Superheroes featured so far? (And no, this is not another ‘after credits’.)