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General Kai (also known as The Collector) is the main antagonist of Kung Fu Panda 3. He was a warrior and the general of an army, which he led alongside his brother-in-arms, Oogway. An evil spirit with the ability to siphon away the energies of those he defeats.
Why He's the Spirit Warrior
- Kai is an extremely powerful warrior and easily one of the strongest warriors known to have walked China. Even in his youth, Kai's skills as a warrior had earned him the title of warlord and he was able to fight against Oogway.
- Kai was a supernatural being with magical powers. Due to his ethereal "spirit" physiology, Kai is a Spirit Warrior, rendering him immune to fatigue, age and disease as well as most forms of physical harm in the mortal realm.
- Due to the fact that he's a spirit warrior, it makes him immune to being directly affected by the Wuxi Finger Hold.
- His scheme is to defeat every Kung Fu master, steal the chi of the pandas, destroy Oogway's legacy and become all powerful.
- He's known for making his dramatic entrance for every scene he's in. Even Po made a comment on how great his entrance was.
- He is able to summon jade zombie versions of the Kung Fu masters whose chi he has stolen. He could also summon jade soldiers to do his bidding and could see, hear, and feel everything that they could; in other words, he had a telepathic link to them.
- His green eyes sometimes literally glow, showing off his supernatural abilities.
- His unique fighting style was ferocious and direct, utilizing wide sweeping kicks and devastating horn-charges combined with powerful punches augmented in both strength, speed and accuracy by his stolen chi power. Kai possessed incredible supernatural strength, enough to tear down and swing a statue and cleave small mountains in half.
- In unarmed combat, Kai's veteran Kung Fu skills, honed from centuries of practice, allowed him to effortlessly outmatch every member of the Furious Five, Shifu and even Po before his mastering of chi.
- In comparison to the previous villains, Kai is a lot more outright evil, and laughably evil at that. Kai is pure evil and betrayed Oogway, the one person he ever seemed to actually care about. Not to mention, he's also the first villain that Po outright couldn't beat by himself.
- The way Po defeats him was awesome, such as when he overloaded him with powerful chi energies, it became so strong that Kai couldn't control it and gets obliterated into a bright light, being destroyed by the same power he sought to obtain.
- His primary weapons are a pair of jade swords attached to long chains, which extend and abbreviate mystically from around his wrists. He wielded them in combat, but also used them to scale cliffs and other terrain that he couldn't traverse normally.
- In his youth, he wield a double-sided staff blade, which was destroyed during his first fight with Oogway.
- His theme song is an extremely simple yet catchy tune that can be both loud and boisterous, or dark and sinister, much like Kai himself.
- J.K. Simmons does an excellent job voicing him.
Bad Qualities
- While Kai is an entertaining and badass villain in his own right, he feels much inferior compared to the previous villains, Tai Lung and Lord Shen.
- He tends to boost and gloat about himself, expects everyone in the present day to still know and fear him, not accounting for just how long he's been gone.
- He's a self-centered and power hungry warlord who wants all the chi he can get his hands on for himself. He can't comprehend the reason Oogway had a problem with him turning on the pandas who saved Oogway's life and trying to steal their chi.
- The movie never goes very deeply into his backstory and character. This is particularly upsetting considering both previous movies explored their villains' backstories and emotional drives in full detail. We're told who Kai was and what he did, but never why and we never find his take on the events that led to him being who he is in the movie.
Trivia
- Kai's theme music incorporates a remix of the Imagine Dragons song "I'm So Sorry" with more oriental instruments to fit the Chinese-inspired setting.
- His design is similar to Drago Bludvist from the 2014 DreamWorks film How to Train Your Dragon 2.
- Kai's chained blades resemble the Blades of Chaos welded by Kratos from the God of War series.
- Kai notably keeps Oogway's amulet around his neck, while the rest of his victims are on his hip. He also never uses Oogway's Jombie in battle.
- Kai's voice actor, J.K. Simmons, is well known for portraying J. Jonah Jameson from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.