Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings a martial arts marvel.
We can all breathe out; it’s really good.
The Short Take:
Action-packed, with perfectly executed homages to diverse martial arts film styles, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings opens up an exciting new chapter in the MCU, expanding our conception of what a superhero movie can be. I highly recommend it to both MCU nerds and fans of action movies in general.
The Long Take:
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has a lot riding on it. As the first Marvel film to star an actor of Asian descent and feature a majority-Asian/Asian American cast, Shang-Chi needs to prove to executives that diversifying the MCU in this way is a worthwhile endeavor. The current controversy over “day and date release,” which flared up with ScarJo’s lawsuit, looms over this film. Possibly in response to the lawsuit, Disney decided to release Shang-Chi only in theaters, with Disney CEO Bob Chapek calling the film “an interesting experiment for us.” Simu Liu called out Chapek for underestimating the film, and ardently defended it. In light of all this, I desperately did not want Shang-Chi to be bad or even mediocre because, as an Asian American and a lifelong martial arts fan, I want to see more superheroes with whom I can identify.
Like Black Panther, which carried a similar cultural burden in 2018, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a resounding triumph. And for me, personally, a huge relief. With a few minor exceptions, Destin Daniel Cretton puts all his pieces together perfectly, and the film hums on all cylinders: the thrilling fight choreography, the nuanced family drama, the fantasy elements inspired by Chinese mythology, the Studio Ghibli-level creatures, the humor, the heart, and the connections to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe — they’re all working together.
The overall success of the film hinges on the fight choreography, though. Since Shang-Chi’s skill set — distinguishing him from other major Marvel superheroes — is his extensive martial arts training, Cretton needs to sell that about him in order to, let’s say, prompt us to imagine what he would be like in a new Avengers team. (I did, and I think he would be AWESOME.) The inventive scenarios that showcase the balletic athleticism, the pairing of sheer power and grace that I associate with martial arts, certainly helped. The bus scene featured heavily in the trailer and another sequence that takes place on the side of a building stand out. Meaty, intricate fights are only as good as the camerawork that showcase them, and this is actually what blew me away the most. Cretton gives us fresh new angles — and a variety of them — that turn these fights into works of art. There’s a scene where the camera holds a not quite bird’s eye but maybe ceiling fan view that held my attention more than it would have otherwise, and I noticed a lot of low angle up shots that made me feel like I was a part of the action.
And yet, Cretton roots all this innovation in tradition. He seems to be speaking directly to martial arts fans — or more specifically, Hong Kong action cinema fans — because it is so easy to recognize certain styles. Some scenes captured the majesty of wuxia (woo-shah) films like House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), with the unmistakably vibrant color palette and wirework that gives the illusion of flying. Part of the opening scene frequently slows the camera to linger on gazes between two characters, and while I suspect this might feel awkward for viewers who have never seen this more romantic style, I found the reference enjoyable. A considerable amount of subtitles may also disengage some viewers, but, as Parasite Director Bong Joon Ho said in his Oscar acceptance speech, they shouldn’t let the “1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” keep them from “so many more amazing films.”
Other scenes brought me right back to memories of watching Jackie Chan films from the 90s, like Rumble in the Bronx (1995), Mr. Nice Guy (1997), or the more popular Rush Hour (1998). There was one moment in particular where, during the bus fight, a machete nearly misses Simu Liu’s crotch; the way he looks down and looks back up again struck me as peak Jackie Chan. And Shang-Chi uses his jacket, just as Jackie Chan does in Rumble in the Bronx. A lot of the fights that take place in urban settings have a sense of humor and wit to them that really worked for me.
The one place where the action starts to falter is in the big battle at the end. Especially as the CG elements come to the fore, a lot of the editing seems muddled, and many more of the shots were literally murky because there was so much rain and shadow. I wondered a couple times if that was a deliberate choice so the CGI would look less out of place. It’s just an ambitious sequence, with a lot of different set pieces, characters, and narrative threads to follow. Plus, there are moments that start to push on my suspension of disbelief, even for a Marvel movie.
The whole film is pretty ambitious, actually. It introduces new characters like Shang-Chi to the MCU, works out the tensions in his complicated family, and builds an entire mythos around the ten rings. And while, as I said earlier, all those elements seamlessly form a whole, the myth making does require considerable exposition, which bogs the film down. Anytime a film starts with exposition, I am a little skeptical, and I would have preferred Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings prioritized Shang-Chi more than the ten rings in its organization. And Loki has proven that there are more creative ways to deliver information.
Regardless, Shang-Chi proves its worth as a film. But, to circle back to the cultural significance and how load-bearing this film is for racial representation in American cinema, how does it fare as a “ceiling-breaker,” as Simu Liu said in his social media response to Bob Chapek? Daniel Chin wrote a piece for The Ringer (what a great website) that helps put Shang-Chi as a comic book character in historical context, and very thoroughly outlines how it is basically this film’s job to combat the “Fu Manchu” stereotype that has plagued Western pop culture for decades. I can vouch. They did it. Through Katy, ingeniously played by Awkwafina, we see a second generation Asian American who isn’t fluent in Chinese and has trouble pronouncing her best friend Shaun’s real name, Shang-Chi. I strongly identified with her character not only because I’m still miffed I never learned Chinese or Thai and I loved my Chinese grandma dearly despite a massive language barrier. Katy went to a fancy school and has a fancy degree, but buckles under the pressure of the expectation to achieve. She just wants to sing karaoke with her friends and drive fast cars at her valet job. As someone who learned to drive as an adult, I identified less with that last part, but my point is that her character, despite being the comic relief sidekick, felt real and fully formed to me.
Shang-Chi himself represents a different Asian American, one who still has one foot in his supposed “home” country. And a large part of the film’s plot involves pulling on that foot. He immigrated to the US as a teenager, speaks four languages, and can code switch from dorky San Francisco dude in a red bomber jacket to the son of an ancient Chinese crime lord turned superhero with ease. Even his Ten Rings-leading dad, who Marvel fans know as The Mandarin, is so complex a character that I found myself empathizing him one moment and loathing him the next. He is so far from the thin-mustached, devious and grotesque stereotype, and it’s great. What’s more, he’s played by the legendary Tony Leung, who has starred in countless martial arts masterpieces, but is most widely known for Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) and The Grandmaster (2013), as well as Infernal Affairs (2002), which few realize is the source text for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006). Leung’s acting in this is incredible because he can convey so much pain, rage, and sadness without any dialogue. The complexities of this iteration of The Mandarin would not have radiated without his performance.
[SPOILERS: I’ve gotten to the point where I’m talking about The Mandarin, so if you don’t want this film or Iron Man 3, or the one-shot “All Hail the King,” spoiled, this review is no longer safe for you. I’m about to go deep into MCU nerd territory here. If you do stop here, I just want to say that I would recommend watching the short film, “All Hail the King” on Disney+ before you go see Shang-Chi.]
If you’re still reading, I’m going to assume that you already know the kerfuffle surrounding Iron Man 3 and The Mandarin. Incidentally, I watched Iron Man 3 for the first time in preparation for Shang-Chi, and it’s not nearly as bad as some critics and fans said it was. But that’s a spin-off review for another day. The primary source of ire stemmed from Ben Kingsley playing an actor, Trevor Slattery, who adopts a persona, appropriating The Mandarin in order to fuel an American terrorist organization. At the time, a washed up, daffy British actor impersonating a Chinese terror cell ring leader did not look good. It still doesn’t. But the difference is that Marvel recognized its mistake, and course corrected.
Disney+ subscribers may have noticed a new Marvel “one-shot” or short film pop up last weekend. Only it’s not actually new. “All Hail the King” originally appeared in 2014 as bonus content on the DVD/BluRay for Thor the Dark World (and I’m going to guess those were not flying off the shelves). Disney+ chose to release the short in anticipation of Shang-Chi’s release because [HUGE SPOILER] Trevor Slattery shows up in the film. In the short, we glimpse into Trevor’s life as a high profile prison inmate. A Ten Rings — the real Ten Rings — agent poses as a documentary filmmaker to kidnap Trevor and bring him to the real Mandarin (Shang-Chi’s father) so he can punish him for using his name in vain. This effectively retcons Marvel’s controversial adaptation of The Mandarin and makes it seem like they understood Trevor’s portrayal was problematic all along. I was going to recommend the short on entertainment value alone (it’s quite funny), but now, having seen Shang-Chi, I should spread the word that this will actively enhance your experience of the new film.
Trevor’s extended cameo was a genuine surprise to me, but Marvel’s doubling down on this retrofitted narrative arc is impressive because it creates a conversation around the Western appropriation of Asian culture rather than trying to sweep it under the rug. Xu Wenwu (The real Mandarin’s real name) has a whole monologue in the film deriding what Trevor did. How silly of Americans to name someone of his stature after an orange.
Ben Kingsley is still as hilarious as ever, and his appearance filled the comic relief void temporarily left by Katy as she became more heroic and less comedic. But I also felt like they were stuck with him and didn’t know what to do with him after a certain point. Unnecessary cuts to his reactions or one-liners became distracting at times. His rapport with Morris did make me very happy.
There were plenty of other more consequential characters from the MCU’s past that have major implications for the future of phase 4. [If you haven’t seen not one but two end credit scenes, then do not read the rest of this paragraph.] Wong, who we see exiting through an inter-dimensional portal in the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer, pops up more than once here, always entering and exiting via the portals. And in the second end credit scene he is the one orchestrating the meeting about the Ten Rings and what kind of technology or artifacts they might be. In true Marvel fashion, this raises more questions than answers. What is the homing beacon in the rings? Who put it there? Could this be a tie-in to our next film, The Eternals? A reader better versed in the lore behind The Eternals might be able to help me out here, but the “deviants” from the Eternals trailer seem a lot like the soul-sucking demons busting out of the portal in Shang-Chi. Or maybe they’re just two different cosmic menaces. My point is that Shang-Chi isn’t going to be a side character with a parallel story; he and Katy will actively participate in whatever crisis awaits.
I hope other fans are as excited by this prospect. I made the mistake of peeking at Letterboxd right before I started writing, just to see what my fellow cinephiles thought of the film. When I saw a couple of reviews complaining that this was more of a martial arts fantasy and not enough of a superhero comic book movie, disappointment knocked the wind out of me. Shang-Chi expands the comic book hero origin story genre because he is, by the end, every bit as much of a superhero as Thor or Spider-Man. Once adrift, he has now, after the events of this film, discovered the dragon in his heart and unlocked powers beyond anyone’s imagination. So much so that Captain Marvel and Bruce Banner, over a holographic zoom call, both welcome Shang-Chi and Katy into “the circus” that is the MCU, without a second thought.
So, if you’re vaccinated and feel comfortable going to a theater, I strongly recommend this film.
Let’s keep pushing the MCU forward.