The year is 1999 and I’m walking out of the cinema, having just had my mind blown by The Matrix… and I immediately started leaping off the cinema lobby furniture and kung-fu fighting. I had been a fan of martial arts movies for all of my life, so seeing people throw punches and kicks at each other with furious skill was not something new. But The Matrix did more than just have good fights. It showed them to us in ways we never expected. It was the combination of two magics – martial arts and movie-making – that made the Wachowskis’ groundbreaking film leap out above the heads of its peers, and had me subsequently possessed with the notion of mimicking its action. And I felt the exact same way after seeing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
With the effortlessly charming and soon-to-be-on-many-bedroom-posters Simu Liu as the titular comic book hero, Shang-Chi is the first truly new hero in this post-Thanos age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And he makes one hell of an entrance… after getting some tweaks. Created in the 1970s as a response to the Bruce Lee-fueled martial arts craze, the “Master of Kung Fu” was a very problematic character. Essentially a walking collection of racist stereotypes bundled in a knockoff design, his backstory is not one you can do in modern times. That gave Marvel the impetus to cut this character from a whole new cloth, in the process addressing another sore-point: The Mandarin.
Another mishmash of bad Asian caricatures, the classic comic book villain’s reveal in Iron Man 3 served as the primary source of division among fans when it came to that movie, having been reduced to a toilet gag plot twist, as funny as it was. Here we get to meet the “real” Mandarin, except he is once again not what fans may expect. He’s better.
Played by Hong Kong legend Tony Leung and named Wenwu, this is essentially a brand new character that takes up both the role of The Mandarin, magically-powered head of the Ten Rings terrorist organization, as well as replacing the offensive Fu Manchu from the original comics as Shang-Chi’s father. And while Liu as Shang-Chi is superb, showing immense physical presence and range, it’s Leung’s Wenwu who is arguably the soul of the film and undeniably one of Marvel’s best villains. Having mercilessly conquered all before him thanks to his possession of ten supernatural rings of mysterious origin, Wenwu is undoubtedly a bad man. But he’s also a man who embraced love and the peaceful goodness of his family. He brutally trained his son to be a living weapon to continue his legacy, all while clearly cherishing him very much.
It’s that dichotomy that serves as the main narrative throughline of the film as Liu’s Shang-Chi, having spent a decade in America living under the radar as “Shaun” with best friend/kindred spirit slacker Katy (Awkwafina), is drawn back into the deadly world he thought he had escaped. When his father’s goons seek him out, Shang-Chi is forced to use fighting talents he had kept hidden, much to Katy’s shock (“Does he look like he can fight?”, she asks an attacking thug seconds before Shang-Chi eviscerates him with a punch). With the henchmen after pendants given to him and his sister by their late mother when they were children, Shang-Chi has to track down his estranged sibling Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) so that they can figure out what their father is up to.
And I think I’ll leave it there as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings actually has a whole lot more going on than what the trailers show. Besides for gut-busting funny moments and meme-worthy Marvel cameos, as Shang-Chi and Xialing dig into their family’s legacy and the complex motivations driving their father, the movie dives deep into Chinese mythology, complete with dragons and magical forests, and travels to some very unexpected places.
Speaking of unexpected places to travel to, the latest entry in the MCU flying kicks its way into cinemas today. Only cinemas. Unlike every other Marvel release since 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, Shang-Chi will not be getting a day one Disney+ release. In recent weeks, Disney bigwigs described this as an “experiment” as the Mouse House tries to navigate the perils of releasing tentpole blockbusters in a mid-pandemic world. And I can see why they’ve taken this approach.
There is a lot of very solid character writing and worldbuilding on display here, giving us a compelling origin story for a flavour of superhero we haven’t seen before. Combine that with the way Shang-Chi emphatically embraces and celebrates its Chinese heritage, informing the themes and narrative of the on-screen world as well as the representation in the production as a whole, and it becomes hard to avoid the Black Panther comparisons. And we all know how that 2018 record-breaker became a global cinema phenomenon, grabbing hold of the pop culture zeitgeist like nothing else Marvel had done to that point, and raking in $1.3 billion.
However, with COVID still ravishing countries, leaving cinemas either closed or sparsely populated, that won’t happen to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is a pity. Had the pandemic abated by now – as Disney and Marvel had gambled on happening when they set the release date – I’m almost certain this film would be pulling in headline-hogging box office numbers and seeing cinema lobbies filled with fans mock kung-fu fighting their friends all abuzz.
And I’m not just talking about the hardcore comic book geeks here. What director/writer Destin Daniel Cretton and co-writer Dave Callaham have given us is a film that will appeal every bit as much to the action aficionado who doesn’t know or care about space rocks and parallel universes and is just looking for some thrilling escapism. In fact, I would go so far as to say that of the first four major action set-pieces in the film, every single one of them could immediately be held up as the best action set-piece in the entire MCU. Hell, they’re some of the best action set-pieces of any recent blockbuster. Period.
Thanks to the work of legendary stunt choreographer Brad Alan – the Jackie Chan protégé who sadly passed away last month – Shang-Chi’s martial arts action is breathlessly kinetic and filled to bursting with those “Wait, did he just…?” moments. And Cretton and accomplished cinematographer Bill Pope makes sure you see all of it. Whether the action takes place in the claustrophobic confines of a San Francisco bus or among the stomach-churning vertiginous scaffolding on the side of a Macau skyscraper, the filmmakers track the action with stark clarity.
Liu is not a lifelong martial artist, but he is very athletically gifted and clearly put in the work so that he could do most of the sequences himself – including showing the type of frantic simian agility that saw Jackie Chan once scramble, tumble, and leap his way into fans’ hearts. This level of physical dedication – reflected by most of the cast but especially impressive newcomer Zhang as Shang-Chi’s sister, who has her own well-engineered character journey – meant that Cretton doesn’t have to hide stunt double faces behind annoying ADHD editing. The filmmaker takes it further though, sending the camera swooping through the action on nigh impossible trajectories, often in long single-takes. It’s jaw-dropping stuff.
Which is unfortunately why the film’s final sequence feels like a bit of a letdown. While there’s still very much a gripping personal confrontation at the core of it, the finale is stuffed full of CG beasties with vague world-ending machinations that threaten to devolve it all into so much weightless light and noise. Some character arcs also get rushed along rather laughably to make way for said digital nonsense, while there are a few minor plot points which, in retrospect, actually make very little sense.
But it’s a testament to just how good everything else is that even these negatives can’t detract much from just how much of a great time I had watching this film. This may be surprising to some. You would be hard-pressed to find any longtime comic book reader who would rate Shang-Chi as anything above a D-list comic book character. But Marvel has shown a very successful track record in turning these low-tier properties into must-see entertainment. Seeing what the studio managed with a talking raccoon and a living tree, Liu’s Shang-Chi, with his instantly-likable charisma and potent ass-kicking potential, is almost certainly about to experience a meteoric rise into the Big Leagues. Hopefully when that happens, we’ll all be kung-fu fighting in cinema lobbies together again.
PS: Make sure to stay seated for the film’s two credit scenes, as they tease some big developments.
| Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings review | |
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has a few stumbles due to messy CG overload in its closing moments, but before then it boasts jaw-dropping action as fleet-footed and hard-hitting as its dynamic new superhero lead. Combined that with a strong origin story and a loving reverence for its cultural roots, and the new age of Marvel is off to a high-flying start. |
8 |
| Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was reviewed on the big screen | |
Geoffrey Tim
Sold. Super excited about this.