From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch. He has been revisiting the feature every six months or so to look back at the new releases in the previous half-year. We’ve recently covered Black Widow and The Suicide Squad, and after a holiday break, we’ll look at Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Eternals in the first two weeks of January.
The early 1970s was the height of the martial-arts craze, galvanized by the great Bruce Lee emigrating to the U.S. and becoming the biggest thing, a popularity that only increased with his tragic death at the age of 32 in 1973.
Marvel Comics made a few attempts to cash in on this craze, most notably with the characters of Iron Fist and Shang-Chi.
Shang-Chi, referred to as “The Master of Kung Fu,” first appeared in late 1973 in Special Marvel Edition #15 by Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin. Englehart and Starlin had originally wanted to adapt the TV show Kung Fu, but when they approached Marvel, they were asked instead to tie their notion into Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu character, the rights to which Marvel had recently acquired. Englehart and Starlin established Shang-Chi as the son of Fu Manchu and an American woman, bred to be an assassin in Fu Manchu’s service, but who instead rebelled and joined a bunch of British agents (all Rohmer characters) in fighting the crimelord.
After two issues, Special Marvel Edition’s title was changed to The Hands of Shang-Chi: The Master of Kung Fu. The title continued for well over a hundred issues before being cancelled in 1983. The book achieved its greatest popularity when written by Doug Moench (who took over from Englehart in 1974 and wrote most of the issues in its run until 1983) and drawn by Paul Gulacy, the latter succeeded by Gene Day and Mike Zeck, all of whom did some great work on the title. When Marvel lost the rights to Rohmer’s work, those elements were dropped, with Shang-Chi’s father’s name changed to Zheng Zu.
Buy the Book
The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories
The character has been revived periodically throughout the twenty-first century, parallel to when the film started development in 2001 with director Stephen Norrington attached. (Though Stan Lee reportedly approached Bruce Lee’s son Brandon about doing a Shang-Chi film in the 1980s.) After the rights reverted to Marvel, Shang-Chi was on the list of characters that Marvel Studios had in their stable to produce in 2005, though it took another fifteen years for it to be made.
While the Ten Rings organization was established in the first MCU film, 2008’s Iron Man, the villain the Mandarin was not used directly, meant to be established in a Shang-Chi film instead, where the character could be done justice to, and also folded together with the original Fu Manchu concept. This was slightly sidetracked by the use of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 in 2013 as a boogeyman terrorist persona adopted by an actor hired by Aldrich Killian, but the short film All Hail the King (released on the Thor: The Dark World Blu-Ray and now available as a standalone feature on Disney+) established that there was a real “Mandarin” out there.
Marvel Studios was very conscious of appropriation issues, and wanted to make sure that they used writers and directors of Asian descent. You only have to read Shang-Chi’s first appearance in 1973 to understand why, as two white guys provided a story that was chock full of stereotypes, not to mention getting things wrong (Fu Manchu, who is Chinese, using the term “senseis,” a Japanese word, to refer to Shang-Chi’s martial arts instructors, e.g.). Oh, and establishing that Fu Manchu had a child with an American woman in order to get the best genetic material for a great son, because of course, white-people genetics have to be part of anyone who’s great… (Can you hear my eyes roll? Can you?)
And so we have a movie directed and co-written by the Japanese-American Destin Daniel Cretton, co-written by half-Chinese David Callaham, and starring almost entirely Asian actors. Simu Liu plays the title role as an adult, with Jayden Zhang playing him as a teenager and Arnold Sun playing him as a child. Tony Leung plays his father, here named Xu Wenwu, but also having the immortality of the comics character, having received it from the Ten Rings, objects of power that he found a thousand years ago and used to make himself a warlord and later a crime lord. His mother Ying Li is played by Fala Chen. His sister Xialing (based on two different half-sisters of Shang-Chi’s from the comics, Zheng Bao Yu and Sister Dagger) is played by Meng’er Zhang as an adult, Elodie Fong as a child, and Harmonie He as a teenager. Awkwafina plays his best friend Katy, Michelle Yeoh (last seen in the MCU playing Aleta in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) plays Li’s sister Ying Nan. Ronny Chieng plays Jon Jon, Yuen Wah plays Guang Bo, Zach Cherry is the livestreamer on the bus, Stephanie Hsu and Kunal Dudheker play Shang-Chi and Katy’s friends Soo and John, Dee Bradley Baker provides the voice of Morris the hundun, and Katy’s family is played by Jodi Long, Dallas Liu, and Tsai Chin. Versions of two of Shang-Chi’s comics villains are seen here: Razor Fist, played by Florian Munteanu, and Death Dealer, played by Andy Le.
Back from Iron Man 3 and All Hail the King is Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery. Back from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk is Tim Roth as the voice of the Abomination. Back from Avengers: Endgame are Benedict Wong as Wong, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, and Brie Larson as Carol Danvers. Back from Black Widow is Jade Xu as the Black Widow named Helen.
The film was started in February 2020, but production was suspended the next month due to the recent apocalypse, not resuming until the end of July. Like most films originally intended for 2020 or 2021, the premiere date kept getting pushed back, finally released in the fall of 2021. It had as good a box office as a post-COVID release could ask for, and is also doing well on Disney+ since it was released there. A sequel, also written and directed by Cretton, is in development.
“I know you don’t like to talk about your life, but a guy with a freaking machete for an arm just chopped our bus in half!”
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Written by Dave Callaham & Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
Produced by Kevin Feige, Jonathan Schwartz
Original release date: September 3, 2021
An opening voiceover in Mandarin tells the story of the Ten Rings: found a thousand years ago in China by a warlord named Xu Wenwu, the rings grant him tremendous power and immortality, enabling him to conquer many lands. Eventually, the Ten Rings becomes a criminal cabal, working throughout history.
In 1996, Xu became fascinated by the legend of Ta Lo, a lost city that was rumored to contain many great treasures. His attempt to reach it by vehicle is stymied by the forest surrounding it, which appears to be alive, the trees constantly moving. Xu’s truck is destroyed, and everyone else in it killed—he only survives by the grace of the Ten Rings’ power. He goes on foot to find a woman standing at the entrance to Ta Lo. Ying Li is a very powerful martial artist, and the two spar in a manner that starts out contentious but very quickly modulates into flirting.
Ying returns to China with Xu, and they marry and have two children, Shang-Chi and Xialing. Ying tells Shang-Chi about how his parents met, and gifts him with a jade pendant, which she says will always enable him to find his way home.
Cut to the present day. Shang-Chi is going by “Shaun” and living in San Francisco as a valet, alongside his best friend Katy. He recently got a postcard with a picture of an origami dragon on it, similar to one he remembers from his youth, with an address in Macau that apparently belongs to Xialing.
After work, Shang-Chi and Katy go out to eat with their friend Soo and her husband John, with Soo lecturing them on how they’re wasting their lives as valets, as they’re both capable of way more than that. After dinner, Katy and Shang-Chi resent the notion that they’re too immature and irresponsible, and then they go out to sing karaoke all night.
The next day, Shang-Chi meets Katy at her apartment, where he has breakfast with her family (her grandmother wants to know when they’ll get married, but Shang-Chi says they’re friends—this is the last time any notion of Katy and Shang-Chi being romantic is brought up, and I have to say this is awesome, as fiction has way too few friendships between men and women that remain friendships without a romantic entanglement crowbarred in). On the bus to work, they’re attacked by a bunch of martial-arts trained mercenaries and also Razor Fist, an amputee whose right arm has a machete attached to it.
To Katy’s abject shock, Shang-Chi then kicks some serious ass on the bus using martial arts skills she had no idea that he had. In the end, Razor Fist gets away with the pendant, though at least everyone else on the bus remains safe. One of the passengers livestreams the fight.
Katy is completely freaked out by Shang-Chi being a badass. He says he has to go to Macau, because there’s a second pendant, and his sister Xialing has it. Katy didn’t know he had a sister, either, and she also insists on accompanying him to Macau. On the flight, he tells some of his backstory, including the fact that both Xu and Ying gave up everything to be together: she gave up Ta Lo, he gave up the Ten Rings. But after Ying died, Xu went back to being a full-time crimelord. He trained Shang-Chi to be an assassin, and his first assignment was in San Francisco. But he couldn’t go through with it, and he stayed in the U.S., changed his name to Shaun, and lived a life there. (Katy points out that using “Shaun” as a pseudonym when your real name is “Shang-Chi” is not the most subtle choice…)
They go to the address on the postcard, and it’s a gladiatorial arena. The joint’s manager, Jon Jon, is thrilled to see Shang-Chi, as the bus fight video has gone viral. When they arrived, Shang-Chi signed a tablet, thinking it was a disclaimer to enter the club, but really a contract to become a fighter. They see various fights, including one involving a Black Widow named Helen, and another between Wong and the Abomination, which Wong wins. (We later find out that they’re working together and fixing their fights.) Shang-Chi winds up in the arena with his sister Xialing, who kicks his ass (at least in part because he refuses to go all-out on the offensive against his sister, whom he’s trying to help). After the fight’s over, Shang-Chi tries to explain what’s going on—though it turns out that Xialing didn’t send the postcard. Then the club is ambushed by Razor Fist, Death Dealer, and more agents of the Ten Rings. There’s a lengthy fight, most of it on the scaffolding on the walls of the club, but it ends when Xu shows up, the power of the Ten Rings ending the fight.
They’re brought to the Ten Rings’ mountain redoubt. Xialing reveals to Katy that Shang-Chi promised to return to her after his assignment, but he never did. Their father shunted Xialing aside, partly because she reminded him to much of Ying, mainly because he’s a sexist schmuck, but she watched her brother and the other agents of the Ten Rings get trained and taught herself. At age sixteen, realizing that her brother was never coming back, she opened up the fight club. Katy is beyond impressed.
Xu reveals that he’s known where Shang-Chi and Xialing were all along, but he let them indulge themselves for a time. However, he believes that Ying is still alive and trapped in Ta Lo. We find out that Ying petitioned to let Xu come to Ta Lo, but the people there refused. Now he thinks they’re punishing her by keeping her trapped in Ta Lo, but she has been able to communicate with him. He uses the pendants to create a map out of water in one of the rooms in the redoubt with a fountain. Xu also tells the story of an American terrorist who was patterned after him called “the Mandarin,” something he put an end to.
The plan is to invade Ta Lo and rescue Ying. Shang-Chi, Xialing, and Katy are imprisoned alongside Trevor Slattery, the aforementioned “Mandarin,” who was taken prisoner, but not executed because he’s entertaining. He’s been performing Shakespeare for Xu and his people. There’s also a hundun—a small winged furry creature from Ta Lo—named Morris who can communicate with Slattery (who thought Morris was a figment of his imagination until Shang-Chi and Katy saw him also).
Xialing is able to escape the prison—she learned the secret ways in and out of the redoubt years ago—and the four of them steal Razor Fist’s car from the garage and use it to head to Ta Lo, directed through the moving forest by Morris, through Slattery.
When they arrive in Ta Lo, they’re told to leave at first, until Shang-Chi and Xialing’s aunt, Ying Nan, arrives. Nan is thrilled to meet her niece and nephew, and upon being told of the impending invasion by Xu, prepares the troops. Nan tells of the Dweller-in-Darkness, a vicious creature who is imprisoned in a mountain. The people of Ta Lo guard the Dweller’s prison, and have the only weapons that can harm it—weapons made from the scale of the Great Protector, the red dragon that imprisoned the Dweller. Nan believes that the Dweller is sending the false messages from Ying to Xu in order to get Xu to free it.
Katy is trained in how to shoot a bow, Xialing is given a rope dart, and Nan continues the work that her sister started in showing Shang-Chi her own t’ai-chi-based martial art.
Xu prepares to invade, and we get one last flashback: to Ying’s death, which comes at the hands of enemies of the Ten Rings when Xu is away—but Shang-Chi is there, and watches his mother get killed. Shang-Chi also reveals to Katy that he did kill the person his father sent him to assassinate—but the action so disgusted him that he stayed in San Francisco, breaking his promise to his sister.
Xu, Razor Fist, Death Dealer, and the rest of the Ten Rings bad guys arrive in Ta Lo, and the battle is joined. Xu and Shang-Chi fight directly (Shang-Chi trying and failing to convince his father that his mother is really dead), but Xu is triumphant, sending Shang-Chi into the river and then breaking the Dweller free (thinking he’s freeing Ying). Several of the Dwellers’ minions get free first and they indiscriminately kill Ta Lo warriors and Ten Rings agents alike to devour souls for the Dweller. Upon realizing that the Ten Rings’ weapons are useless against the minions, Razor Fist agrees to join forces with the Ta Lo warriors and they are armed with dragon-scale weapons (including Razor Fist’s machete).
Shang-Chi is saved from drowning by the Great Protector. Xu frees the Dweller and the battle is joined by monster and dragon both. Shang-Chi and Xu battle again, with half the Ten Rings moving to Shang-Chi once he starts doing the martial arts moves his mother and aunt taught him. Xu eventually realizes his error, and just before the Dweller kills him, he bequeaths the remaining five rings to his son. Now that he has the power of all Ten Rings, Shang-Chi is able, aided by the Great Protector, Xialing, and a well-placed arrow to the throat from Katy, to kill the Dweller.
Life on Ta Lo returns to something like normal, though many people died in the battle. Shang-Chi and Katy return to San Francisco, believing that Xialing is going to dismantle the Ten Rings. However, as the post-credits scene reveals, she’s actually taking over the Ten Rings.
Katy and Shang-Chi tell the story of what happened to Soo and John, who don’t believe a word of it until Wong shows up in the restaurant and takes them to Kamar-Taj. In the mid-credits scene, Wong, Bruce Banner, and Carol Danvers discuss the potential origins of the Ten Rings with Katy and Shang-Chi. Banner says, “Welcome to the circus” before he signs off, and then Katy and Shang-Chi go out to do karaoke with Wong.
“You can’t outrun who you really are”
That the start of the MCU really leaned into the WASP-y whiteness of Marvel’s early heroes is understandable, as the company’s flagship heroes were all created in the early 1960s. Unfortunately, the MCU also doubled down on the lack of inclusion by doing very little with the women characters. The Black Widow kept not getting her own film, and the Wasp—a much more significant and important character over Marvel’s comics history than her original partner—getting completely shoved to the side in favor of a second-rate hero in Ant-Man. We didn’t get any kind of hero of color who wasn’t a sidekick until eight years in, with T’Challa (and the Dora Milaje) in Captain America: Civil War. The dam finally broke in 2018 with Black Panther, then we got Captain Marvel in 2019 and Black Widow in 2021.
Asian representation has been pitiful, however, most notably in 2016’s Doctor Strange where they did one thing right—turning Wong into a sorcerer equal in stature to the title character rather than a stereotypical manservant—but most of the movie took place in India and yet the other speaking parts in those portions were an American white guy, a British black guy, and a Celtic woman (a gender and race-flipped version of an Asian comics character).
So it’s good that they’re finally giving the most populous ethnic group in the world their due…
What I particularly love about Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is that—just as Black Panther embraced the entirety of the African continent—we get to see several different elements of Chinese and Chinese-American life, from neon neo-cyberpunk fight club in Macau to the life of immigrants and their children in California to the family drama of the Xu family in China. (I especially loved that Katy doesn’t actually speak Mandarin, and Jon Jon casually switching to English by saying, “It’s okay, I speak ABC,” with the movie not even bothering to say it stands for “American Born Chinese.” Check out Eliza Chan’s excellent piece here on Tor.com for more about how this is a love letter to Chinese cinema and culture.)
One of the good things about the MCU is the way they’ve taken various filmic subgenres and done superheroic takes on them, whether it’s a war movie (Captain America: The First Avenger), Afro-futurism (Black Panther), a political thriller (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), an 80s sci-fi action movie (Thor: Ragnarok), a comedy heist flick (Ant-Man), or a spy thriller (Black Widow). With Shang-Chi it’s very much an Asian martial arts movie, with the gloriously choreographed (and magnificently filmed) fight scenes, the family drama, the over-the-top martial arts moves, and the presence of creatures from Chinese mythology both obvious (big red dragon!) and comparatively obscure (Morris the hundun).
Another feature this film shares with Black Panther is that our hero is surrounded by a variety of interesting women. We start with Katy, who is a delight. Awkwafina does a superlative job of giving us The Inevitable Snarky Character that all Marvel films must have whether they belong or not (yes, I’m looking at you, Stephen Strange), and having the hero’s best friend get that role is a masterstroke. The Ying sisters are both wonderful. Nan is a regal magnificent presence—imbued with the gravitas that Michelle Yeoh brings to every role she touches. And Fala Chen does beautifully with Li’s fight/flirt with Xu. Xu’s spar with Ying Li is the first time in his life he’s ever lost a battle, and I particularly love that Shang-Chi’s later confrontation with his father is initially choreographed the exact same way as the fight with Ying was, but when the two exchange looks, the blossoming love for Ying on Xu’s face in the first fight is replaced with disappointed anger at his son on his face in the second. But his mother and aunt’s training is what enables Shang-Chi to defeat his father and save everyone.
The most interesting woman here is Meng’er Zhang’s Xialing. She is brilliant, learning early on that the best way to thrive was to play to her father’s low expectations of women and be silent in the background so no one will notice her. She taught herself martial arts, she created a successful underground business as a teenager, and at the end of the movie she’s running her Dad’s thousand-year-old empire and has already made it more inclusive. (Everyone who works for the Ten Rings is a man when Xu’s in charge, but the final post-credits scene is equal parts men and women.) The question is, what will she do with the Ten Rings? One assumes that’s a question the already-in-development sequel will likely address…
Tony Leung gives a magnificently nuanced performance here as Xu, as he embodies the cruelty and the power of the immortal crimelord with the love for both his wife and his children that proves his undoing. I particularly like the way he carries himself, like someone who’s been around forever and has no need to worry about much of anything. He’s so casual in his use of the Ten Rings, so effortless in his actions that he almost seems bored—which is a spot-on way to play an immortal.
This manages to fit seamlessly into the MCU without being too obnoxious about it. You can watch this movie without ever having seen any of the other score of films and not have any difficulties, but there are some lovely touches here and there. There’s a sign outside Shang-Chi’s San Francisco apartment for a post-blip support group, as well as a mention of how you shouldn’t waste your life because half the population could disappear at a moment’s notice. And then there’s the appearances by Wong, the Abomination, and one of the Black Widows in the fight club—and, of course, the mid-credits scene.
Oh, and Trevor Slattery. Ben Kingsley is an absolute delight here, what few brain cells the character had left having wasted completely away in prison over the decade he’s been a prisoner, and providing a nice link to the MCU’s past. And if you don’t know Iron Man 3 (or have forgotten it eight years later), Xu and Slattery both provide more than enough information to tell you who they are. And Slattery’s role as Morris’ interpreter is the most important contribution he makes to the plot in any case.
I haven’t even mentioned the title character, and it’s kind of too bad that Simu Liu stands out so little from his own movie, but that’s mostly because they surrounded him with so many great actors in Awkwafina, Leung, Zhang, Yeoh, and Kingsley. But Liu provides Shang-Chi with a very straightforward heroism that fits with the character he’s based on perfectly. The original comics character was trying to redeem the sins of his father, as well as those he committed himself in his service, and I like the way Liu plays a person who’s trying very hard to run away from a life he doesn’t want. He’s in a boring job that nonetheless pays the bills, he has a good, fun life. But when he’s attacked on the bus, his first thoughts are to keep the other people on the bus safe, and when it’s over, his next thought is of his sister’s safety. When it matters, he antes up and kicks in, which is what heroes are supposed to do.
And now he’s got the Ten Rings. Can’t wait to see what he does with them.
We’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off for the holidays, then be back on the 5th of January with Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Hope everyone has a joyous and safe holiday season, and we’ll see you in 2022…
Keith R.A. DeCandido recently achieved his fourth-degree black belt. The promotion test did not, sadly, include beating up a bunch of guys on a moving bus.
We just saw this one and I really enjoyed it.
I have to admit I’m kind of a sucker for the trope Wenwu’s story leans into – the whole hardened criminal trying to walk away/start a new life/finding love, but unable to escape his past and dealing with the temptation, ultimately finding some small measure of redemption through family. If anything, I really wish that had forgone some of the typical Marvel over the top battle for more of that family drama and its resolution instead of just having him be kind of sorry and dying – you could really feel how much Shang-Chi had just wanted his father to be a father, not driven to pursue his insane quest for vengeance (to say nothing of his daughter). I really enjoyed Shang-Chi’s struggle with embracing the conflicting parts of who he is and finding the balance there.
Trevor was hysterical, I loved him. The Planet of the Apes monologue was so dumb but so funny.
Also, I know it’s also a bit of a cliche but the little fight-dance-courtship sold me on Wenwu/Ying’s relationship and chemistry in like 30 seconds…it was just really well done.
I really enjoyed this one. Glad to learn about little details I missed. I missed that one of the fighters was a black widow, and I thought Wong was fighting some extra-dimensional alien rather than the Abomination. There were also fighters who were juiced up on the super-serum from one of the Iron Mans — III, I think — that makes body parts glow and makes you explode if you’re not careful with it. One movie’s high-stakes threat is another movie’s everyday activity. This kind of thing is extra fun in the background that doesn’t get in the way of the main plot.
I get tired of the finales always needing a giant CGI fight, but in this movie the dragons had some thematic meaning to them, and the action was part of character development. If you have to do giant CGI stuff, that’s the way to make it tell the story, the way songs in musicals are supposed to advance the story.
This movie also lacks a common problem for superhero stories — often the hero kills some minions in a fight, then later agonizes over the moral consequences of killing. Just a few episodes ago on Hawkeye, Kate blew up a van with the driver in it, and it’s not acknowledged she just killed someone. Shang-Chi does better with consequences of actions.
rm: There is a little of that, unfortunately, as several of the Ten Rings agents fall off the scaffolding when Shang-Chi is fighting them, and they’re not acknowledged, either. It’s the one part of the movie I actively detested.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Reposting my comments from that other article you linked to:
Excellent movie, with terrific wuxia sequences and lovely fantasy critters. It needed at least three times more Michelle Yeoh action, though.
I was kind of disappointed by the Ten Rings. In the comics, I think, each ring has a different magic (or alien technology indistinguishable from same?) power, but here, they were just a single blunt-force weapon in ten pieces. It made for some nice fight choreography, but seemed underwhelming that this supposedly incredible mystical power is nothing more than an additional way to hit things from a distance.
Wenwu was a very effective character, well played, but while I certainly get the need to counter the racial stereotypes, I wonder if maybe they went too far in making him sympathetic, since I didn’t get a real sense that he was actually as dangerous or villainous as the opening narration told us he was.
All the lead actresses were excellent, but Awkwafina stood out to me. She gave a really good performance, not just when she was wisecracking, but in her expressiveness when listening and reacting and trying to absorb the craziness. A lot of inner life conveyed there. That’s something I’ve noted about Martin Freeman too — his characters are remarkably interesting to watch when they’re listening to other people talk, which is a skill not all actors bother to develop. Also, this is my first time seeing Awkwafina performing; the only other movie of hers I’ve seen is Raya and the Last Dragon. And I recognize now that Sisu’s face and expressions in that movie were modeled on her.
I never understood the point of the letter. The 10 Rings knew where Xialing was. They told Shang-Chi where she was in order to set up a family reunion? It definitely wasn’t to get their hands on the pendants – that would have been easier without letting him know they were after his sister.
I think you do a disservice by dismissing Katy as just the snarky sidekick. Because when I walked out of this movie, I immediately realized that every single woman was a person in her own right, had her own story, her own motivations. All of them.
That’s rare.
By the way, what the heck were Wong and the Abomination doing in some seedy fight club anyway? That part seemed gratuitous.
I think the anticipation AND trepidation for this film was a match for Crazy Rich Asians in the Asian American community. That thirst for a good representation burns strong, and it’s fortunate that this film was built well enough to handle it for the community (not to mention soooo many folks I know worked on it).
Unlike a lot of folks, I detest the Mandarin character in the comics. A knock off Fu Manchu that had only its racism to sustain it (there have been untold revisions in the character since they decided to downplay the stereotypical elements). I actually cheered the use of Kingsley in IM3. And the only way I could tolerate a “Mandarin” in the MCU was in this film, because the stereotype was built into the origin story.
While I understand the caveat that Wenwu might be a tad too sympathetic as a villain, I think it plays better into the Chinese elements that are common in stories there (and you wouldn’t have gotten Tony Leung, and that’s a tradeoff I will make every time).
Glad we’re discussing this in this thread, as I felt a little shortchanged since there wasn’t a good healthy thread when the movie came out.
One of the good things about the MCU is the way they’ve taken various filmic subgenres and done superheroic takes on them…
That seemed like a good thing at first, but now I’m not so sure. What with the enormous weight this franchise has on popular culture, I get the impression that Disney and Marvel may have unintentionally created the cinematic equivalent of Walmart or Amazon — a safe one-stop-shop for every genre under the sun.
Safe… that brings to mind another point.
Once upon a time, you know, a certain comic-book captain punched a certain mad bastard with a bad mustache, while he was still in power, mind you. I can’t help but wonder would Marvel now have the guts to do likewise with the leader of China? Or perhaps a scene of Shang-Chi freeing Uyghurs? (Hey, prison breaks are a subgenre too). Or even feature a character who is revealed to be part Uyghur? Could they even be so bold to say the word?
(Of course, the answer is no; Disney is desperate to tap the Chinese market. These are rhetorical questions, and I just wish these allegedly bold movies would be bolder. But hey ho, baby steps, baby steps…).
Quoth Christopher: “By the way, what the heck were Wong and the Abomination doing in some seedy fight club anyway?”
Making a little extra money. Remember, Wong couldn’t even afford a cheese sandwich in Infinity War………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@8/gwangung: “While I understand the caveat that Wenwu might be a tad too sympathetic as a villain, I think it plays better into the Chinese elements that are common in stories there”
I have nothing against sympathetic villains. My issue is that the film didn’t do enough to establish the “villain” part in the first place. All the evil things he’d done before meeting Ying Li were just glimpsed or hinted at in the opening montage, and most of the bad stuff we saw him doing after that was in reaction to Ying Li’s murder. So Wenwu being this all-powerful criminal mastermind came off as an informed trait, something claimed to be the case but not fully demonstrated. He should’ve been both scary and sympathetic, and the sympathetic side worked great, but they could’ve fleshed out the scary side a bit better to balance it.
ChristopherLBennett- I agree, Wenwu’s criminal organization was very vague and undefined. It’s not clear what their goals are, and if they’ve been around for so long, why aren’t they in charge of everything by now? Some cool long-term objectives would have helped.
No mention of the amazing bus fight? This was one of the most exciting and innovative fight scenes I’ve seen in a long time. And best of all, it wasn’t edited with a cut every .23 seconds. You can actually SEE what happens.
I was surprised that Katy even has a Chinese name for Wenwu to insist on using.
Its interesting that Simu is the least experienced actor out of the main cast while playing the main character.
I loved the dynamic between Shang-Chi and Katy. Its rare to see a platonic male/female relationship in movies, especially in big-budget ones. I’m glad there was no forced romance thrown in there.
I do wish the last fight had less dragon/CGI and even more Ten Rings and martial arts.
My favourite moment of the whole film was the Slattery reveal.
If Wenwu loved his wife so much (and their relationship appeared to be of mutual respect rather than one person dominating the other), why did he treat his daughter the way he did after his wife died? Was it meant to be just because of grief?
@13 Not me. I’m 2nd generation Chinese American to be born here (third since immigration). I have a Chinese name.
I’ve also forgotten it (along with almost all of my Cantonese)…
Gareth: I’m not surprised that Katy had a Chinese name, but only because we met her mother and grandmother. *laughs*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@13/Gareth: As we saw in the movie, Katy’s parents are immigrants from China and Mandarin is spoken in their household, so of course she has a Chinese name. It’s natural that she would.
Incidentally, Tsai Chin, who played Katy’s grandmother Waipo, also played Agent Melinda May’s mother on Agents of SHIELD. So we can add her to the list of actors who’ve played different roles in MCU TV and movies (along with Enver Gjokaj, Alfre Woodard, Gemma Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Mahershala Ali now that he’s been cast as Blade, and a number of others). While we’re at it, Jessica Henwick (Iron Fist‘s Colleen Wing) was offered a chance to audition for this movie — I think it was for Fala Chen’s role — but turned it down to do Matrix Resurrections.
Tsai Chin also played the main character in Lucky Grandma, which you should definitely check out if you can
Great movie, enjoyable from start to finish, with good writing and every actor on the top of their game.
I attend tai chi classes, and was delighted to see Ying incorporate some of the moves in her fighting style.
@krad
Bruce Lee was born in the U.S.A.
The list of movies you are reviewing stops with the Eternals. So we wait until June for Spider-Man: No Way Home and The King’s Man?
EP: Yes, the plan is to cover The King’s Man and No Way Home in the summer of 2022, along with The Batman, Morbius, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, along with a couple of other older movies I missed the first time through………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
MixMat: Yes, but he was raised in Hong Kong, and emigrated (back) to the U.S. in 1959 when he was in his late teens.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad
He then moved to Hong Kong after a career in Hollywood that didn’t set the world on fire at the time. I wouldn’t think the word emigrant, even if i thought it an accurate term here, was a major contributory factor to his spreading kung-fu popularly worldwide.(which is what it seems like it’s doing here, to me-even if unintentionally).
And as a diaspora Chinese myself(though not in the US), nobody i know who has been informed of Bruce Lee’s birth in San Francisco thinks of him as an emigrant, though man would claim him as a Hong Kongite(whether owing his birthplace or not, which i only learnt of much later when i started reading about him on Wikipedia.And i am not in Hong Kong either).
Mischaracterizing him as an emigrant is misleading the reader that his moving to the US in 1959 was what led to his stardom in kung-fu movies(though undoubtedly it contributed a great deal). It is misinformation. But i will leave it at that.
I only knew Simu from Kim’s Convenience. Where he plays a son estranged from his father who has a dead-end(ish) job working with cars and spends most of his time hanging out and doing goofy things with his BFF.
Hey! Wait a minute!!
There was a great thread about the bus fight discussed in this Tor article.
https://www.tor.com/2021/11/16/shang-chi-bus-fight-bus-driver-twitter/
MixMat: My apologies for the lack of clarity in my language. I was simplifying for the purposes of brevity, which was obviously a bad idea….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“His attempt to reach it by vehicle is stymied by the forest surrounding it, which appears to be alive”.
Aren’t forests generally alive anyway?
So I enjoyed this movie; visually it’s one of Marvel’s best, and the older characters are all fantastic. I thought the film kind of failed its protagonists though. Xialing is cool, but mostly fades into the background of scenes–that makes sense given her upbringing, but it never develops into anything–so much so that if she was removed from the film I don’t feel like it would affect the story much one way or the other. The charitable interpretation is that they are setting her up for something later, but that’s always the problem with late-era MCU: everything is just anticipation of something else.
The movie doesn’t do Simu Liu any favors either. The strength of the MCU was always in the internal conflicts of its heroes–most prominently in Rogers and Starks’ different interpretations of their heroism, but also in T’Challa’s conflict in balancing his role as both hero and king. I don’t feel like this movie succeeded at making Shang-Chi an interesting character of the came caliber.
It’s frustrating, because all of the elements are there! ‘Shaun’ and Katy’s aimlessness at the start of the movie, Shang-Chi’s abandonment of his sister and anger at his father, his disconnect from his heritage–all of this is fertile material for a story of self-realization. But it never congeals. When he suddenly comes into his power at the end, it feels rote and unearned instead of triumphal or cathartic.
The fighting was cool though.
@28/Colin: I think if Shang-Chi’s character growth doesn’t seem as great as some of the other characters, maybe it’s because the central arc here isn’t just about him; it’s about a family reconciling, about a son redeeming his father. So it can’t be judged based on just one member of the family in isolation.
I think you could say that the biggest growth moment in Shang-Chi’s character journey happened before the movie, when he rejected the assassin’s path laid out for him. Since then, he’s just been trying to avoid facing the ramifications of that decision. So once he stops running from it, it all falls into place.
@29 ChristopherLBennett
My problem is the family story doesn’t work. It’s not clear that Xialing and Shang-Chi did reconcile; they still don’t seem to know anything about each other. It’s not clear why Shang-Chi abandoned her, or what that even means to him (it’s a little more obvious that it meant a lot to her, and she didn’t forget it). Xu isn’t really redeemed in the end, merely shown to be deeply and tragically misguided. Things ‘fall into place’ for the heroes because the plot requires it, not because it flows naturally from the motivations or actions of the characters. It seems strange that of the three protagonists, Katy has the most believable and comprehensible character development.
@30/Colin: Wenwu’s moment of redemption is when he voluntarily gives up the remaining five rings to his son and trusts him to fix Wenwu’s mistake. He stops fighting his son and chooses to pass on his legacy to him, to surrender the power rather than clinging to it. It’s an important moment, if a brief one.
@krad
Thank you.
P i have enjoyed your (and others’) writing in Amazing Heroes since i found the magazine for sale in my country decades ago, so im gratified by your response.
That’s not really something I can interpret as redemption. Xu Wenwu is the best-defined character in the movie, with a clear line explaining both his motivations, his actions, and the consequences of those actions. He is also completely successful in his short-term goal of opening the gate–and utterly a failure at reuniting his family. Passing on the rings to Shang-Chi is an apology, but it’s not a redemption.
The obvious pop cultural comparison is Darth Vader sacrificing himself for his son, but it fails in comparison. The key to Darth Vader’s turn in ROTJ is that it’s a response to Luke’s rejection of both the dark side and violence. Saving Darth Vader is something Luke does, and it’s the culmination of Luke’s journey, not Darth Vader’s. That’s exactly what doesn’t happen here, because the movie doesn’t carve out room for Shang-Chi.
@33/Colin R: It’s not a full redemption, no. But it is a reconciliation. As I said, this isn’t so much a story about any one character’s journey in isolation as it is about a family, particularly a father and son.
Overall a very solid and fun film. I agree the father was a villain more so because we were told so rather than shown. The fighting/ dancing/flirting scene was getting dangerously close to Bollywood cheese. I guess they had to show why they fell in love.
The sister learning to be the best fighter ever by watching and practicing on her own seemed unlikely. Everyone needs a teacher and martial arts always have sparring partners. I did sympathize with the sister, even her aunt ignored her and told Shang-Chi that he looked like his mother. Poor girl gets shunned by her father for looking like her mother and then Shang-Chi gets the love from the aunt.
Katy being just an American girl was the best, as was Katy in general.
Simu Liu was great, perfect Marvel hero material.
Last complaint–the bus fight was by far the best fight and all the others after it were not nearly as exciting.
@35/templar: “The fighting/ dancing/flirting scene was getting dangerously close to Bollywood cheese. I guess they had to show why they fell in love.”
Oh, that scene was awesome! They told a whole love story in one fight. A marvelous exercise in choreography. And I imagine the referent would be wuxia cinema rather than Bollywood. It was very Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
“the bus fight was by far the best fight and all the others after it were not nearly as exciting.”
It can’t be the best fight in the movie, because Michelle Yeoh wasn’t in it.
I adored this movie, it really jumped to high on my list of favorite Marvel movies. The comedy was excellent, the relationships all hit home, and the action…heck there needed to be more fights as far as I’m concerned.
I really loved the family attachments on display. Shang-Chi kind of builds Wenwu up as almost the Devil, but when they reunite in Macau, they hug. You never feel like Wenwu is interested in harming his children. But without Li, he doesn’t know how to be a good person anymore. The film could’ve easily been called the tragedy of Wenwu. Shang-Chi is oblivious to how him not coming back destroyed his sister, who clearly adored him as children and that just turned to hatred. I was actually urging him in the theater to not let her go and was pleased that they addressed that, brief as it was. My hope going forward is that even if Xialing runs the Ten Rings as a villainous organization going forward that she and her brother remain good. Perhaps a gray area Ten Rings would be better. By contrast when the siblings arrive in Ta Lo, Auntie Nan immediately starts behaving as a functional member of the family bringing them both in and acknowledging Xialing who was so often ignored, and dealing with Shang-Chi’s own trauma and guilt.
Awkwafina was exquisite as Katy, she was like a blade of Thanos, perfectly balanced. She was snarky and funny but without being clownish. I also like how she immediately became friendly with Xialing, and Xialing didn’t pass her grudge with Shang-Chi onto his friend but instead was kind to her for the sake of being cool. Katy was also given some skills and she really wasn’t the load. Even before her archery upgrade her driving skills were integral.
Katy and Shang-Chi was also a different experience, she was much more equal than other sidekick characters and was someone to bounce off of Shang-Chi who really took on a more brooding hero mood, especially when he was reflecting on his past.
As for our hero, I loved Simu Liu. He has an excellent earnest hero feel. You can just smell the good guy coming off of him. Not the perfection of Evans’ Cap or Boseman’s T’Challa, but a lot of heart, a lot like Renner’s Hawkeye or Rudd’s Ant-Man.
I liked what they did with the Ten Rings themselves, while the comic book’s ultra powerful rings are cool, they kind of make the Mandarin low key Omnipotent and they’re relatively overpowered in the comics and definitely would be in the MCU. That said, Shang-Chi seems poised to get more use out of them than his father ever did, so he may unlock new abilities with them. I love that they turned them into iron ring weapons, that really feeds into the martial arts genre of the film as opposed to the sorcery angle in the comics.
I do wish we had gotten to know more about the Ten Rings organization, as I wonder just what effect they had on the MCU especially with competing clandestine organizations like Hydra and the Red Room.
I think that’s a long enough post…I should probably cut it off here and leave it at that. Yeah I could do that. Orrrr…..
@krad
Let me guess the two older movie….the 1979 TV movie “Mandrake” (based on the Mandrake the Magician comic strip), if you don’t want to buy the DVD then there is a poor quality download on YouTube. The other is the 1996 box-office bomb “Tank Girl” (based on the australian comic), starring Lori Petty (shudders) and strangely enough Naomi Watts and Malcolm McDowell.
@37 I would LOOOOOVE a more gray Ten Rings. And your point about competing with Hydra is interesting; Wenwu’s time off easily could have allowed the group to fall far behind Hydra, And the possible rise of the Kingpin as an international player adds another interesting player to the mix. We obviously don’t have a scorecard of the players in the post-Blip world (and Marvel probably doesn’t either), but there should be no lack of groups to provide bad guys at any level for Phase 4.
Interesting about the Xialing/Shang Chi dynamic. A deleted cut showed them well on the way to bonding, so the potential is there. But the choice they made to show a more brooding Xialing might indicate a more adversarial relationship in the future. I can see them coming to blows, particularly over the rings. But the relationship between her and Katy should remain cordial (and I would love if THAT dynamic helps resolves any tension between the siblings).
EP: I didn’t know about the Mandrake movie, so that may have to be added.
However, I covered Tank Girl already:
https://www.tor.com/2017/12/01/im-not-bedtime-story-lady-so-pay-attention-barb-wire-and-tank-girl/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I just rewatched the movie. It is awfully handy to have the whole MCU available on Disney+ instead of having to go to the library. There was a lot of it where I kind of forgot I was watching a Marvel movie, because it felt more like a Chinese martial-arts epic. And that’s a good thing. I think this is one of my favorite MCU installments.
I think I get now why Wong and the Abomination were at the fight club. Just before they left, Wong advised Blonsky to control his punches “like I taught you.” There’s a whole implied backstory there, that Wong is training Blonsky in martial arts as part of some sort of redemption process, and that’s pretty interesting. (I’m also surprised they brought Tim Roth back to do his voice when all he did was roar.)
I love the mythical creatures in Ta Lo; the qilin (the ones Trevor mistook for horses) were particularly beautiful, along with the nine-tailed foxes. Although I find that the Great Protector is not one of my favorite Chinese-style dragons on the screen. Its body shape and white scales give it a slightly piscine quality, which makes sense for a water spirit (as Asian dragons often are), but fish creep me out. (My favorite Asian dragon in the movies is the one that appears in the climax of the Korean movie D-Wars. It’s an utterly awful movie, but the dragon at the end is incredibly gorgeous. Second-favorite is the one in Spirited Away.)
Incidentally, both times I saw this movie and heard Ying Li talk about getting her airbender powers (come on, that’s what they were) from “the heart of the dragon,” I wondered if it was the same dragon that Danny Rand got the Iron Fist from. Or at least another of the same species.
I’m surprised I didn’t realize the first time that Dee Bradley Baker was the voice of Morris. I’ve heard him do enough animal noises by now that I should’ve recognized his style.
@41 Heh. They took so much DNA from Iron Fist for this movie…I think it’s for the better and the character holds it better than Danny Rand (whose charms I think actually lies elsewhere than the K’un Lun mythology).
Though I wouldn’t mind it too much if there was a crossover between Tao Lo and K’un Lun down the line….(yeah, yeah, I know…this is just concealed jonesing for a Shang-Chi vs. Jessica Henwick Iron Fist battle…..).
@42/gwangung: I’ve said elsewhere that I want the next movie to be Shang-Chi and the Daughters of the Dragon.
By the way, has anyone else tried watching the audio commentary on Disney+? It’s in the “Extras” section along with the deleted scenes and featurettes, and when I tried playing it, it seemed to be just the movie without subtitles. The commentary track was apparently missing — unless it just takes several minutes before anyone says anything, though I tried jumping forward a few minutes and still heard no commentary.
As a fan of HK films going all the way back to Shaw Brothers & Golden Harvest, this came across as a love letter to the genre. I spotted (what I believe are) shout-outs to multiple films, from Crouching Tiger to Jet Li’s Tai Chi Master and The One (as well as a healthy chunk of Jackie Chan, most notably in the bus fight).
I also spotted two references that could hint at an Iron Fist connection… not only was Ta Lo once associated with an extradimensional city (and protected by a dragon), but one of Wenwu’s aliases was Master Khan…
You haven’t done Popeye yet! when you think about it, he does qualify a a Superhero.
The thing I love about this film is that it just embraces the inevitable ridiculousness of a martial arts film. Extended fight scene on a scaffold on the side of a skyscraper? Sure, why not! It really works that it doesn’t attempt to justify any of it, it just goes with it.
The end is interesting as well. For those who’ve only seen MCU/superhero films, a big CGI monster fight is pretty much par for the course, but for those who’ve taken even a basic interest in Asian cinema (Spirited Away being an obvious reference), it leans into their portrayal of dragons.
I’m definitely with KRAD in liking having a male and female lead who are just friends, with no attempt to shoehorn in a romantic subplot. No mention of female characters can be complete without once again paying tribute to the great Michelle Yeoh. Once again, she gets to show off her acting ability as well as her ass-kicking capabilities, both of which leave most, if not all, the rest of the cast behind.
So is one of the missing films Scott Pilgrim vs the World?
Having recently rewatched it after finally reading the original comics, it’s not quite a superhero movie, more a video game on, but the casting is out of this world – Superman, Captain America, Punisher, Captain Marvel … it starts to feel like a who’s who of the superhero movies to be.
I know I’m being a bt of a pest, but TIME COP is based on a Dark Horse comic.