The Amazing Panda Adventure - Plot

Plot

The film opens with Ryan Tyler reading about his father Michael Tyler's (Stephen Lang) career working with pandas in China, while Michael is absent at the time. After school that day, Ryan and his friend Johnny take the bus home to Ryan's house to spend the afternoon together. When Ryan checks the mail, he finds a plane ticket to China which was sent by his father.

When Ryan is taken to the airport, Ryan tells his mother at the last minute that he did not want to go to China, as he thought his father cared more about his work than him. With his mother's kind advice of being able to come home if he did not like it in China, Ryan boards the plane to China. Meanwhile, out in the forest in China, Michael is with two companions, Ling (Yi Ding), a young girl and translator, and Chu, Lings' grandfather who is very experienced with pandas. Together, they track down a mother panda with a blow gun and place a radio collar on her and head back to the Panda reserve.

Ryan arrives at the airport in China, with his father nowhere to be found. While wandering around in a fair, Ryan notices a bus with a panda bear logo on the side, and boards it, hoping it will take him to his father. Reluctantly, the bus treks to his father's location. Meanwhile back in the forest, the mother Panda steps into a bear trap as her newborn cub who is rare and priceless looks on helplessly. Back at the reserve, Michael and the staff recognize the weakness of the signal and lack of movement in the collar, which leads them to believing the panda is in danger. Just as Michael, Ling and Chu set out to visit the panda, Ryan arrives at the reserve but Michael is in a hurry, shows Ryan to his room, and forbids him to come with him into the forest. Ryan watches his dad leave, and with disgust, runs out after his father's tractor, scolding him for leaving him so fast. Michael claims he would be back as soon as he could and Ryan replies saying that is what he had said two years ago when he and his mother divorced and she left. This causes Michael to stop the tractor, and realizing his mistake, lets Ryan come for the mission.

While they are on their way to the panda and her cub, two poachers, who had set up the trap, beat the others to them. The poacher with the gun fires at the mother panda, but the other poacher pushes the gun away, stating in Chinese that he takes the cub first and then he can shoot the mother. Meanwhile Michael, Ryan, Ling, and Chu all hear this gunshot, and Michael sets out into the forest with the blow gun. He catches the poacher ready to shoot the mother panda, shouts "NO! DON'T SHOOT!" and sprints through the bushes toward the poacher. The poacher, terrified, blindly shoots at Michael's ankle, knocking him down, and runs away with the other poacher and the cub. Ryan, Ling, and Chu run over, and see Michael down and wounded in the ankle. While Chu and Michael set the mother panda loose from the trap, Ling runs back to the tractor and radios the helicopter from the reserve to bring the cub and the injured Michael back to the reserve. When the helicopter arrives, the pilot Chang states there is only room for Michael, the panda, and himself, and Ryan would have to wait at the site for Chang to come back to pick him up.

While Ling and Chu set off to find the stolen cub, Ryan is waiting at the rock, muttering to himself to keep entertained. When he sees a snake in the bush, he immediately takes off through the trees, frightened, and in search of Ling. Ryan encounters Ling and Chu, and together they set out to the poachers' home to recover the cub.

The poachers, having discovered the panda was missing, catch Ryan and Ling escaping on the bridge, and shoot the bridge in order to stop them. This causes Ling to fall, just barely hanging on, leaving Ryan to try and help her up. As the poachers approach, the cub pushes both of them in, thus all three of them landing in the river to float downstream. Later when they tried to return the panda to the reserve, they fell into a river and down a waterfall. When they surface and get out of the water, Ryan and Ling find themselves covered with leeches so they frantically strip off their clothes and jump into the river. Ryan soon realizes that he can use the batteries in his watch to power the collar and enable his father to locate them.

Attempting to make their way back to the reserve with the cub, whom Ryan decides to name Jah-ni, (King of the Forest), they come upon a local village that grants them hospitality for protecting Jah-ni. However, the poachers have also arrived and begin searching the village for Jah-ni. The villagers help the trio escape, but as they make their way across the mountains, the poachers follow and attempt to take Jah-ni. Luckily, Michael arrives and subdues the poachers. They then drive back to the reserve just as Chinese officials are about to close it. Upon seeing Ryan bring Jah-ni back to his mother, the officials decide let the reserve remain open.