Jackie Chan is 72 and still making multiple action movies a year. He’s even creating new franchises as Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe is the second in the series. Not only do I still recommend his latest, but I urge you to catch up on the first Panda Plan 2.
Spoiler alert, the panda is returned to its natural habitat and Jackie (Chan literally playing himself as established in the first film) goes to visit. In the wild, he meets a jungle tribe who believes the panda is the creature prophesied to save them.
The jungle gives Chan several different set pieces for his comedic action. The tribal village itself is constructed to accommodate several, as well as a musical number. He fights off three attackers on a river between his and their rafts.
Gone are the days when we had to settle for third-generation cropped dubs of Hong Kong movies, and they’re shooting with digital equipment on par with Hollywood now. On Blu-ray, the lush jungle and village is vibrant. The Awe Summit in the prologue and finale is majestic. Even a cave is expansive and the rock and riverbeds boast HD details.
You don’t need to see Panda Plan to follow The Magical Tribe, but you should see it just because it’s got set pieces on par with Chan’s epic ‘80s and ‘90s movies. Jackie adopts a panda for charity, but terrorists take over the zoo to kidnap the panda.
So the zoo has cages, animal enclosures and inventory warehouses to incorporate in the fights. Imagine wheels of hay and animal playpens with Jackie using everything as a prop.
Because he is playing himself, the terrorists recognize him and want to see if he can really fight. JCVD did that as a drama but Jackie is embracing his set pieces, despite his fictional self protesting.
The first Panda Plan is a more interior movie, but there are very green enclosures with cool blue steel.
They use CGI pandas in both movies, like Indian movies do but they’re not going for realism. So these movies let panda Hu Hu make cute faces.