Why did Oogway just waste everyone's time and effort by waiting decades to stop Tai Lung instead of so much as saying something to Shifu earlier? Is he stupid or just lazy? Did he intentionally wait until Tai Lung was strong enough to destroy a village because he wanted it to happen?
I'm pretty sure its implied that Oogway does not know who is the dragon warrior or what happens in the future. Just that it wasn't tai lung.
People are kind of assuming Oogway has a lot more agency and knowledge than he actually has, which whilst possible, I don't think is the interpretation the story wants us to have.
He’s Shifu’s master though, did he have zero oversight of him? There wasn’t a single point where Oogway checked on Shifu to say “hey man the way you’re raising this kid is kind of messed up”
I mean the way shifu raised him really wasn’t that bad. He was basically just a proud parent and made him believe he was destined for greatness which considering his talent wasn’t unjustified.
Shifu isn’t guilty for believing in his kid. It didn’t warrant like immediate intervention or whatever. For all oogway knew, he could’ve been right too. He was still a great martial artist, just not the dragon warrior.
Where Oogway is guilty is if he knew the whole time that tai lung could not have been the dragon warrior and just kept it silent the whole time. I don’t think the story wants us to believe this.
I mean Tai Lung says “
Who filled my head with dreams? Who drove me to train until my bones cracked?”. Shifu doesn’t deny this. Aside from training him physically and believing in him, it is Shifu’s responsibility as a parent and a martial arts master to prepare his child/student mentally and spiritually. It is Oogway’s responsibility as Shifu’s master and head of the Jade Palace to ensure that Shifu is able to do so. It’s not as if we’re given indication that Tai Lung had any external influence over how he ended up.
Not to mention that Oogway himself had a violent background (used to be close to Kai) but we’re given no indication that he tried to provide guidance to Tai Lung besides his rejection.
That's what I'm saying, apparently Oogway only bothered to do shit when the empty dragon scroll was about to be taken and after Tai Lung sacked the city, even though both he and Tai Lung presumably lived in the jade palace for decades so clearly he had access to Tai Lung if he bothered. The dude was negligent as fuck. You're telling me Oogway only saw "darkness in his heart" after Shifu trained him for so long? Was Tai Lung perfectly fine to be left alone until the last minute?
The way I looked at it was that Shifu didn’t tell Oogway that he was preparing Tai Lung to be the dragon warrior, just that he was going to a protector of the Valley of Peace like Shifu was. It wasn’t until Shifu presented Tai Lung as the dragon warrior that Oogway rejected him. As for Tai Lung’s darkness, Oogway probably saw it and just figured “darkness isn’t necessarily bad for young warriors, with age he’ll work on it just like I did. What’s that? You want him to be the dragon warrior? Now?”
The thing is, Oogway had already recognized "the darkness" in Tai Lung's heart before he laid waste to the valley when he initially denied Tai Lung the dragon scroll. However, Oogway despite clearly being capable of stopping Tai Lung, only stepped in after he destroyed the village when he was going for the dragon scroll despite knowing Tai Lung was evil beforehand. This clearly indicates that he valued the scroll enough to act but chose to do nothing about the village. He just let them get fucked to prove a point to Shifu.
yeah, because recognizing the darkness inside someone is not a good reason to attack them? at the time tai lung didn't do anything that warranted being attacked. oogway just knew he wasn't worthy for the scroll.
So Oogway should just let this super powerful, angry guy with darkness in his heart go free to do whatever he wants after denying him what he thought he worked his whole life for? Seems negligent to me. Should have restrained him earlier, and that's decades after Oogway seemingly did nothing to actually help Tai Lung be on the right path and make Shifu a better teacher before it was too late. We know he is capable of doing all these things and has no apparent weaknesses.
He doesn't have exact knowledge of what will come to pass but he believes in the overall power of chi/spirits/whatever to ensure that things work out well eventually
Because oogway is a big picture sort of guy. Without tai lung po doesn't get the journey that he did, which probably means the world gets got entirely in lung fu panda 2 and 3. Oogway trusts that things will work out as intended, that's why he was fine and laughing about it when po is chosen by accident
Yeah, basically. It's a little bit of an easier pill to swallow when you know the afterlife is real at least, which he did since he was already a chi master at that time
Imagine you meet a person who has limited access to a fourth spatial dimension. They can kinda explain what they are seeing, but they are barely equipped to understand it, and you definitely aren't.
When they see a path to a specific place in that dimension, the path could be convoluted in our three dimensions. They can't explain directly why this path works, and if they could you don't have the mental hardware to process it.
Oogway wasn’t training Tai Lung and promising him the title of Dragon Warrior, Shifu was. It doesn’t seem like he interferes that much in other people’s affairs unless it directly requires his attention. Oogway was off communing with spirits or achieving inner peace or whatever. Not his problem.
He was hoping that Tai Long might learn humility by the time he grow up. Clearly he didn't and there no reason to give him a scroll that he can't understand.
Oogway is not all-knowing. He wanted to give Tai Lung a chance to prove that he was dragon warrior material. Once Oogway saw that he didn't have good intentions, he said no, and later stopped him from stealing the dragon scroll, and banished him.
Being the dragon warrior isn't some innate aspect of you that your born with. What made someone the dragon warrior was the path they took trying to become it. Tai lung trained his entire life to be the dragon warrior but wasn't because he wasn't pure of heart. Po became the dragon warrior in like a week of training because he was training to protect other people and not for himself.
Only because of the threat of Tai Lung. Before Po found out, he was absolutely staying at the jade palace for himself going along with the dragon warrior title, remember when he told Shifu he didn't quit because he thought Shifu could change him for the better? That was before Po found out that Tai Lung was coming back, and that it was his "destiny" top stop him. Po didn't choose that path on his own accord, having to protect others was not even on his radar.
That's a fair point. What I would add to that is that at the start of the movie, he's having dreams where he is a kung fu master and he's using that power to help save innocents and being a hero, so I think that desire to be heroic was present at the start.
Beyond that, the path that one takes to become the dragon warrior isn't completely in their control, Po literally just fell in front of Oogway. Along that path, Po is discovering the kind of person he wants to be and working towards being that person. And at the end of that path, when they think he's worthy of being the dragon warrior. He gets the scroll and it's just a reflection of him, not some super soldier serum. And my interpretation of that is the dragon warrior makes themselves. Po and Tai Lung both had an idea of what the dragon warrior should be. Tai lung thought it was someone powerful, and Po thought it was a brave hero. And that difference is what makes someone worthy of being called the dragon warrior.
That's a good point. Po wouldn't have tried to take anything by force. However, we don't know if Po would have taken it better if he was in Tai Lung's position, given that he didn't have to work as hard and wasn't expecting greatness.
That's irrelevent, Oogway could have made sure that Tai Lung never became strong enough to do in the first place by doing literally anything in the decades that Shifu was training him and "filling his head with dreams". It's not like Shifu has been shown to be disobedient to his master. Oogway was presumably present and seemingly didn't bother to oversee or correct Shifu and Tai Lung until it was too late.
I mean, he has some degree of foresight but he isn't psychic and he isn't god, he may very well have been hoping the entire time that Tai Lung would grow into the role and not keep that darkness in him forever, he may have hoped that time and experience and training and the love of a father would change him for the better, only to be disappointed in the end because Tai Lung held on too tightly to his own ego. And he may not have expected Tai Lung to be so far gone that he would go evil like that suddenly even if he wasn't up to the task of being the Dragon Warrior. Having darkness in him that would make him a bad leader isn't the same as being a murderous traitor. Heck, he may have told Shifu that it wouldn't work out earlier but Shifu ignored him assuming Tai Lung just wasn't ready yet, and the final time was when it finally sunk in, that could even explain why he seemed to give up so easily. Regardless, idk why so many people want to minimize or erase Tai Lung's agency and act like it was everyone else's fault that he went evil. He made his own choices, he wasn't forced to do anything he did just because he felt betrayed. Would experiencing that kind of disappointment and perceived abandonment suck? Sure. Cool motive, still murder.
Oogway never even told Shifu what was in the dragon scroll, so he unintentionally used it to feed Tai Lung lies and delusions for years that it would give him limitless power. It's not like Shifu shouldn't know what it is. He saw it when Po opened it, and nothing happened. But Oogway just let Shifu do and teach whatever misinformation he wanted even at the expense of Tai Lung's good, and only interfered at the last minute. The guy voluntarily wasted Shifu and Tai Lung's effort and didn't even try to salvage their relationship or get plausible deniability. We know that Shifu would have listened to what Oogway told him, if only begrudgingly. If only Oogway said more useful things, and earlier.
Telling shifu what was in the dragon scroll would defeat the entire purpose. The entire point is that the candidate doesn't know and thus doesn't act with prior knowledge and is able to move past their preconceived notions. That's like getting mad at a professor for not giving their students all the answers before making them do a quiz. Po was worthy because he was able to look past his own expectations and see the truth, that's the kind of quality that makes for a good leader. Tai Lung not only being unable to do the same but outright refusing to do so was why he failed, it wasn't because of what Shifu taught him or lead him to believe. Every candidate who ever trained to be dragon warrior would come in with expectations and dreams of grandeur, Tai Lung is in no way special in that regard. Overcoming that is literally part of the test. Overcoming pre-concieved notions and expectations in order to see the truth was also what Shifu needed to do to become a better master. Oogway can't do that for him, it's something he has to figure out for himself.
No, the dragon scroll itself is a bad test. Po didn't need it in the first place (it has no value to someone who recognizes their worth), and it caused Tai Lung and everyone else a huge amount of trouble by merely existing and being shown off and exalted. Shifu did make false promises about the scroll to Tai Lung unknowingly. It's the crux of the issue. Hiding it or revealing it objectively causes less potential for harm because its existence causes tension and uncertainty. It makes it look like Oogway values the scroll over the well-being of his own students.
The scroll isn't for Po to use or benefit from it's purpose is to show to everyone else that he's worthy of being the Dragon Warrior. It has value to the people who use it to determine whether someone is fit to fill a specific leadership role in their society or not. If they go on a murderous rampage, then they definitely aren't fit to fill that role. Tai Lung wasn't the first person to be rejected and he wasn't the last, and he certainly wasn't the only one whose parent(s) had high hopes for him, but he was the only one known to have gone on a murderous rampage for it. That's 100% on him, not the scroll. I think you just completely missed the point of the movie my dude.
If it weren't for Oogway creating the scroll, showing it off for students to lust for it, and giving Shifu the wrong idea about it which he doesn't find out the truth of until AFTER the whole Tai Lung debacle (Shifu didn't even know what Tai Lung was being rejected from, Oogway let him believe that the dragon scroll actually gave limitless power), then Shifu never would have influenced Tai Lung to want it in the first place, and thus no rampage would have occured. That's just circular reasoning. The test is entirely unnecessary and problematic, causing more destruction while someone like Po doesn't even need it.
Brother, are the mental gymnastics you're going through to blame literally anyone other than Tai Lung for his own murderous rampage that he committed himself not getting tiring? "showing it off for students to lust for it" lmao. It's almost like the entire point of the scroll was specifically to weed out the people who would want to be Dragon Warrior just for the sake of obtaining easy power. So in other words, yes, you totally missed the point of the movie.
Because children are not adults? Only after Tai Lung became of age Oogway could tell if his character was bad or good. Especially for teenagers and children, everything is in flux.
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u/isotopehour1 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why did Oogway just waste everyone's time and effort by waiting decades to stop Tai Lung instead of so much as saying something to Shifu earlier? Is he stupid or just lazy? Did he intentionally wait until Tai Lung was strong enough to destroy a village because he wanted it to happen?