A Rhetorical Analysis of Justin Chang’s Film Review of The Kung Fu Panda 3

Your Name
Dr. Valerie Fazel
English 107
10 February 2017
A Rhetorical Analysis of Justin Chang’s Film Review of The Kung Fu Panda 3
Receiving eight nominations after its release, the film Kung Fu Panda 3, just shows how effective and well-made it is among consumers of popular media. Because of this, it is inevitable for most writers and critiques to write write a review about it, especially for people who are hoping to find answers to questions left unanswered and details which night not been covered in the film. One of these critiques is Justin Chang, the chief critique of Variety.com, have reported that this film has a “winning lightness of touch” and that it is “emotionally, dramatically … and visually” worth seeing. While, it is worth noting that the main author of this paper agrees with the same judgment (after watching the movie), this paper is much more inclined to the analysis of Justin Chang’s utilization of Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals – ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos – in delivering his judgments to the consumers.
To start with the essay, it is apparent that Chang used strong, nostalgic, and visually satisfying descriptions in order to set up the tone of the whole article, while stirring up the emotions of the readers (Pathos). He was able to do this by referencing the legendary film series – Star Wars – in creating a comparison with this movie itself. By doing this, he was able to bring up nostalgic feelings among the readers, which are most probably avid Star Wars’ fans. Aside from this, Chang used the emphasized the film’s focus on long-lost family relationships. This is very important since it is easier to touch base with one another, especially when talking about something sentimental, such as our own family relationship. Aside from this, Chang also used “strong” adjectives in his first few paragraphs that seemed to emboss a big sign to its readers saying “this film is definitely worth watching!” Some examples of these adjectives and descriptions include, “added traumatic layers of backstory”, “climaxed with a startling revelation of parental identity”, “Emotionally, dramatically and perhaps most of all visually (it’s worth seeing in 3D)”, etc. CITATION Cha16 \l 1033 (Chang).
With regards to ethos, it is worth noting that Chang’s personal and/or professional profile was not stated in the entirety of the article. This might be a ‘miss’ in his usage of rhetoric especially for those people who doesn’t know who he is and what makes him credible to make such reviews, in spite of the fact that he has a profile on a separate page.
Despite of the article’s appeal to ethos, the author of this paper believes that Chang’s review was able to compensate in his usage of logos. Even during the start of his review, he already made the readers think that this movie is indeed worth wa...