Kung Fu Panda

Po (Jack Black) is a chubby panda who works in a noodle restaurant owned by his goose father Mr. Ping (James Hong). He is a kung fu fanatic with secret dreams of becoming a great master in the discipline, however this ambition seems to be impossible due to his weight and clumsiness. Mr. Ping hopes that Po will one day take over the restaurant.

The tortoise Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) has a premonition that the evil snow leopard warrior Tai Lung (Ian McShane), the former student of his own protégé Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), will escape from prison and return to threaten the Valley of Peace. While Shifu sends Zeng (Dan Fogler), a messenger goose, to Chorh-Gom Prison to have the security increased, Oogway orders a formal ceremony to choose the mighty Dragon Warrior who can defeat Tai Lung. Everyone assumes that one of the Furious Five — Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Crane (David Cross) — a quintet of supremely skilled martial artists trained by Shifu, will be chosen for this honor.

While the Five demonstrate their skills at the ceremony, Po finds himself locked outside the walled palace square. As a last-ditch attempt to get over the wall, he makes a chair out of fireworks, which lights up unexpectedly (when Po farts) and sends him flying through the air and into the center of the arena. Inspired by this sudden appearance, the old master designates Po the Dragon Warrior to everyone's shock. Despite Po's protests and Shifu's pleas to reconsider, Oogway stands by his decision.

Revolted at having this slovenly and obese noodle vendor with no martial arts training whatsoever under his tutelage, Shifu attempts to make Po quit by berating and humiliating him. The Five, profoundly disappointed at being upstaged by the panda, similarly dismiss Po as a worthless interloper. Although he becomes aware of Shifu's true intentions and is deeply hurt by his heroes' disdain for him, Po endures their abuse willingly for the growing dream to become something better than the failure he thinks he is, gradually earning some sympathy from them. In addition, Master Oogway, still certain that the clumsy panda is the right choice, strengthens Po with sage advice to encourage the panda to believe in himself. Eventually, the affable Po endears himself to the Five (except for the extremely disdainful Tigress) with his tireless tenacity, good cooking, and sense of humor.

Meanwhile, Zeng's errand backfires disastrously when a tour of the prison given to him by the overly confident head of security, Commander Vachir (Michael Clarke Duncan) inadvertently enables Tai Lung to escape. Tai Lung orders Zeng to send word of his arrival. In the Valley of Peace, Oogway passes on, his final wish that Shifu train Po. However, upon learning of Tai Lung's return, and realizing that he has to face such a villain without any skill in fighting, Po attempts to flee. Shifu stops the panda and promises to train him if he is truly destined to be the Dragon Warrior. When Po confesses his deep self-loathing due to his obesity and the fact that he will never be a match for Tai Lung, Shifu is at a loss for a solution. Overhearing the argument between Po and Shifu, the Five take it upon themselves to intercept Tai Lung, especially Tigress, who is confident in her training. After a long night of pondering, Shifu discovers the following morning that Po is capable of impressive physical feats when motivated by food. Realizing that he has found the right focus for the panda, Shifu leads Po to the countryside for an intensive training regime in which Po is offered food as a reward for learning his lessons properly. Thus motivated, Po learns swiftly and finally becomes a talented martial artist in his own right.

The Five battle Tai Lung but are eventually subdued and paralyzed with a specialized nerve-striking technique. When they return defeated, Shifu finally decides Po is ready to face the villian and gives him the sacred Dragon Scroll, which promises great power to the possessor. When Po opens it, he finds nothing but a blank reflective surface. Stricken with despair at the scroll's apparent worthlessness, Shifu orders his students to lead the villagers to safety while he stays to delay Tai Lung from pursuing them for as long as he can.

As Po participates in the evacuation, he comes across his father, who tries to cheer him up by telling him the secret ingredient of the family's popular noodle soup: nothing. Things become special, he explains, because people believe them to be special. Realizing that this truth is the very point of the Dragon Scroll, that the power promised is already inside him, Po rushes off to help Shifu. At this time, Tai Lung confronts Shifu and savagely fights and berates him for not granting him the title of Dragon Warrior just because Master Oogway did not choose him. To remedy that, the leopard wants the Dragon Scroll for himself to complete his training. While fighting, he expresses that he gave in to his aggression and anger so he could make Shifu proud of him. For his part, Shifu is crippled by his profound feelings of guilt and responsibility for his former protégé, whom he loved like a son, turning to darkness.

Tai Lung angrily discovers the Scroll is gone, and before he can kill his former mentor, Po arrives to challenge him as he had already believed in himself. Although the snow leopard scoffs at the fat panda being the Dragon Warrior, the ensuing fight proves Po to be an extremely formidable opponent. Despite Po's skill, Tai Lung temporarily stuns him and gains the Dragon Scroll, but is horrified when he examines it, unable to understand its symbolism. As he recovers, Po delivers some words of wisdom to strengthen Tai Lung's spirit. Deeply frustrated with an apparently useless prize and having worked so hard for the "Powerful" Dragon Scroll, Tai Lung tries to subdue Po with his nerve strikes. However, the attack proves useless on the panda, as his nerves are difficult to find due to his body fat. Emboldened, Po effectively counter-attacks with a unique improvised combat style that takes advantage of his girth to absorb and deflect the force from Tai Lung's attacks back at him. In the end, Po uses the Wuxi Finger Hold on Tai Lung (which he claims to have "figured out" on his own), and destroys him with a devastating explosion that ripples through the valley.

The Five return to the valley to investigate the cause of the explosion and find a slightly dazed but triumphant Po. Deeply impressed at Po's victory, Tigress leads the Five to acknowledge the panda as a Kung Fu master. The villagers, including Po's father, follow suit and hail Po as a hero. Po remembers that his teacher is wounded, and rushes back to Shifu, who is now finally at peace. At first, he appears to be dead, but it turns out that he is only resting after such a trying battle.