Bypassing stale by-the-numbers superhero origin stories, Shang-Chi instead focuses more on the family legacy and discovering who you are, which works to great effect.
You can catch our video review from last month’s Commander Shipp show here
Marvel’s track record with freshmen comic book origin movies has been pretty solid as of late, but it can also mean they fail to innovate outside the formula. Luckily for Marvel and moviegoers, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings shifts the focus to family legacies, dealing with your past trauma, and growing into a more complete person.
**Light, generic plot spoilers included in the main article**
Are You Defined By Your Past?
That question is ultimately something that haunts Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), his father Wenwu (Tony Leung), and his sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang). So rather than putting our protagonists through a now ritualistic Marvel-style hero’s journey, this question takes center stage in the plot unfolding. To that end, there’s a fitting line from Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh), the aunt of Shang-Chi and Xialing, that sums up Shang-Chi’s journey and what he needs in order to grow.
“You are a product of all who came before you. The legacy of your family, you are your mother and, whether you like it or not, you are also your father.”
Those words of wisdom are what ultimately lead Shang-Chi to grow as a character and director Destin Daniel Cretton is able to showcase that growth in a key way: through Shang-Chi’s fight choreography. Sure, it’s a subtle thing, but it’s a visual storytelling piece that viewers don’t have to think too hard on. As the movie starts, his fighting technique represents someone who hasn’t been the master assassin that his father trained him to be. Later, in an effort to punish his father’s mistakes and make up for his past transgressions, Shang-Chi tries to emulate the anger and passion of his father and still fails. However, it’s not until he combines the teachings from his aunt (and as an extension, the fighting style of his mother) that he truly finds a balance and starts fighting like himself, or rather for himself.
Wenwu has tried to move past his earlier life and transgressions, but his arc is ultimately defined by his inability to let go and accept his wife’s death. He may be right that she died due to his past life, but he never learns to continue growing and cherish the children left behind in her death. That being said, he does truly care for his children, albeit in a dark, twisted way, which is why he’s able to recognize at a final, crucial moment how much his son has grown and entrusts him with his legacy (keeping this intentionally vague, you’ll see what I mean).
While Xialing is dealing with similar grief, she’s effectively abandoned and ignored by her family, so the work needed to process that lays more with her brother and why he left her behind. It also means they have a cathartic moment earlier in the narrative as they are forced to work together. Her scenes serve the movie well as this allows us another window into the family’s dynamic. Unfortunately, Xialing gets the short end of the character development stick, even having a key moment saved as an end credits scene.
Great MCU Debut Performances
Simu Liu simply knocks his movie debut out with flying colors. Similar to how well Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland packed in a lot with their first appearances and later solo movies, Liu does well balancing the chemistry in his various relationship dynamics, like Shang-Chi’s friendship with Katy (Awkafina), interacting with his father or sister, and receiving advice from his Aunt Nan. Liu’s hard work at his stunts clearly shows, as most of his fight scenes live up to the movie’s lofty fight choreography expectations.
Awkafina doesn’t steal the show; she compliments Liu very well and they have a sweet, endearing relationship throughout the entire film that may hint at a future romantic subplot, but is wisely avoided in this film (cause there’s simply too much going on). She is also not relied on simply to be comedic relief, though Katy does provide plenty of levity when it’s called for.
Tony Leung excels as the antagonist, but not because he’s a true supervillain in the sense that he’s actively doing horrific things to the world (well I mean Wenwu’s done that, too, but that’s not what the film focuses on). Instead, he shines for being much simpler and down to earth, makes you relate to his grief as a widowed husband. If you’ve never seen a Tony Leung movie, the scene where we get a slowed down, close-up of his eyes may seem odd until you realize he communicates incredibly well through them. It’s been his hallmark throughout his entire career and here, it works well to sell his grief and regret to the audience.
Honestly, there was no one better to play Shang-Chi’s aunt than Michelle Yeoh, especially with her track record in international cinema and sci-fi/action genres. Her words, like the quote I pulled from the movie, are speaking on multiple levels outside the narrative. Simu Liu wouldn’t be in a position to lead a Marvel production like this without the sacrifice and hard work that Yeoh, Leung, and other southeast Asian actors have put in over decades of cinema. While I’ve avoided comparing this film to Black Panther, having that elder cinematic presence reminds me so much of Angela Bassett and Forest Whittaker’s roles in Wakanda. These castings are more than just a nod; they speak outside the script directly to the communities they represent, connecting the past to the future.
When MCU Elements Slow You Down…Cut Them Out
When the movie is focused on Shang-Chi and his family story, the movie excels. The MCU elements, however? Not so much
For the life of me, I don’t understand why Wong (Benedict Wong from Doctor Strange fame) or Abomination (Tim Roth, who we literally haven’t seen since Incredible Hulk) were in this film. Granted it doesn’t ruin the movie, but that distraction leads to my biggest issue…
The movie slams to a crawl in the middle, in part due to the second cameo we receive (check the spoiler section at the end of the article) and while they became less of a nuisance, they really didn’t add anything that couldn’t have been rolled up in another character. To be fair, I think moving a key flashback that was included in this section to earlier in the film might have helped so that the middle isn’t so exposition-heavy. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we have a comic relief character just dropping nuggets of the information left and right paired with a bad CGI forest sequence (more on that later).
Great, But Frustrating Cinematography
There were certainly some beautiful moments in this film, like Shang-Chi’s fight on the San Fran Muni bus or his mother’s first encounter with Mandarin/Wenwu. The camera work really showed an in-depth understanding of the fight choreography and were to be on the technical side for maximum effect. However, the key to those scenes was that they didn’t involve a ton of CGI for the fights to functionally work (though, obviously when you watch those scenes, there’s clearly CGI, especially the bus itself).
There are some eye-catching moments, too, like the water crashing together to create the map to Ta Lo or Shang-Chi’s fight with his childhood Ten Rings trainer in the construction site. The lighting effect reminded me a lot of this James Bond fight sequence in Skyfall with a better fight choreography…
And yet, the freshman Marvel director CGI issues rears its ugly head again. Like the problems that pop up in Ryan Coogler’s final Killmonger/T’Challa fight, this movie suffers from that same issue in spades:
The moving forest maze that leads to Ta Lo just looks incredibly fake and it’s hard to believe they are driving through it in a rev’d up SUV. I half expected Shia LaBeouf to come out of nowhere swinging on vines as he did in Indiana Jones 4. Some of the final fight monsters and their CGI are hidden under the gist of a water fight, but that too looks mindbogglingly bad and also highlights a fight choreography problem that can plague movies if they aren’t giving space to the fight and letting the choreography speak for itself.
This movie definitely avoids the fake creation of action with several cuts composited together, however, there’s another scene-sin hiding in the weeds: fight scenes zoomed in too closely. It obscures the flow of choreography and is avoided at all costs in the best southeast Asian cinema, so it’s maddening to see its use here actively cutting off parts of the film’s best moments. What’s more maddening is that Bill Pope, the cinematographer, has experience in this field because of his work on the Matrix films. I could never accuse those movies of having bad fight cinematography so it’s odd to see little issues like that pop up here.
Conclusion
Those small gripes aside, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a fun watch, like so many Marvel films before it. They deftly avoid plenty of hero clichés and genuinely gives the audience compelling characters to be enamored with while following their journeys. I’m not sure yet where this film will ultimately rank among the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but you’d be hard-pressed to pick a better origin movie among the bunch.
Score: 8.5 out of 10
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