Out in cinemas
La la la! Here’s another Marvel movie! Yay! I love Marvel movies. I’m so looking forward to this! Wait… Shang-Chi? Who? What? Maybe even… why? Trailer, please… Huh. A couple of cameos by people I’m not that interested in, some okay martial arts, Awkwafina being annoying. Aren’t trailers supposed to make me want to watch a movie, not put me off?
It really was an unpromising start and when I sat down to watch Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), I was confidently expecting to be as underwhelmed as I was when I watched most of the Disney+ Marvel shows. Bar Black Widow (2020) and certain parts of WandaVision (Disney+), it’s been feeling like Marvel has been struggling to kickstart its franchise back into action, following the closure that Avengers: Endgame (2019) brought to its decade-long story.
Surprisingly for me at least, Shang-Chi manages to both restart that storyline and make us care about – and let’s be clear about this – an absolute nobody of the Marvel comics whom nobody but nobody outside of a comics shop has ever heard of. And who goes into comics shops?
It’s one of those movies that transcends many of its sillier foundations to become something much more. Shang-Chi, while by no means a threat to Shakespeare or Mamet in its writing, is fun, engaging, character- rather than punch-driven, and generally a pleasure to watch from start to finish – and beyond, because of the obligatory credit scenes.
Shang-Chi’s no Nobody
The movie initially feels a lot like the recent Bob Odenkirk riff on John Wick (2014), Nobody (2021). Simu Liu is ‘Sean’, an aimless San Francisco car valet, who largely just wants to hang out with his childhood friend Katy (Awkwafina). They have fun, they homage Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). You can see why that’s all they want to do.
Then, for reasons that are initially unclear, he’s attacked on a bus by a gang of assassins, including one guy who has a giant knife for a hand. Sean kicks arse, much to Patty’s surprise, and soon it’s clear that his dad (Tony Leung) has sent the gang to reclaim something from his errant son, who is really called Shang-Chi. Shang-Chi was trained almost from birth to be a human weapon (© Iron Fist), but something made him abandon his training and go into hiding.
To say more than that would spoil the movie, which often requires elements of surprise in its plotting to wow the audience as it takes the story in unexpected directions. Just as you think you know where this story is going, you suddenly discover yourself going into much stranger or funnier territories. It’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of the movie.
Shang-Chi decolonises Iron Fist
Where it also excels is in how it handles its characters, which isn’t too surprising given it’s Marvel and Marvel does at least pride itself on its character-work. But the movie’s cast includes not only martial artist Liu and Leung, one of Hong Kong’s greatest ever martial artist-actors, it also features Michelle Yeoh. Surely, you’d think, this would be a movie about martial arts and that would pride itself on its fight scenes?
It does. You’re right. But, the fights, even at their most acrobatic, never overshadow the drama or the characterisation and are usually there to advance both. Equally, the fights tie into another key theme of the movie: reverence for Asian culture.
Marvel has, of course, tried something similar on Netflix with Iron Fist and The Defenders. If you’ve seen both of those, you’ll be sitting there throughout the movie getting an eerie sense of déjà vu, since there are many, many aspects in common. However, Iron Fist is very much the cultural appropriation version of this story done on a small budget. This is a movie intended for global consumption, featuring numerous stars of Chinese cinema and many actors who can and do speak Chinese. It’s an attempt to do Iron Fist right, while almost apologising for both it and the problematic aspects of Iron Man and Iron Man 3.
Crouching Tiger, Really Really Big Dragon
The fights can be enjoyed purely at the visceral level. They are really balletic, fast and furious, and make even some of those in Winter Soldier looked underpowered. But they won’t threaten Hong Kong cinema and there’s more than a hint of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) to some of them.
However, they also speak to Chinese philosophy, with hard styles of kung fu being defeated by t’ai chi. It’s not something most people would notice, except perhaps subconsciously, but there are clear messages being delivered throughout about the vitality and beauty of Chinese culture, and with Asians around the world being spoken to directly.
It’s wide-ranging, too, beginning with the modern Chinese-American lifestyle of Awkwafina and Sean that somewhat echoes Crazy Rich Asians (2018)’s diversity of people, but is actually more reminiscent of Ali Wong and Randall Park’s relationship in Always Be My Maybe (2019). It takes in modern day Macao and the modern day Asia (you might even spot Ronny Chieng if you look closely), hops back occasionally 1,000 years ago to echo Hero (2002), before visiting Chinese mysticism.
Upset you never got to see Shou-Lao the undying in Iron Fist? Well, this is the movie that will give you dragons and more in spades.
It’s also beautiful. Marvel movies are often fun to look at it and depict incredible things, whether it’s giant spaceships or the impossible city of Wakanda. But the only other that’s really tried to show us true beauty is Thor (2011). Shang-Chi both tries and succeeds.
Things I loved and noticed that you might, too
For I am a Marvel movie nerd and you probably are, too.
- Wong is back and so is The Abomination!
- The first end credit sequence, which effectively sets up the rest of the MCU going forwards, probably via The Eternals (2021) and features (spoiler alert) Captain Marvel, Hulk and Wong . The appearance of the second character will confuse the big fan because he’s the wrong colour; the first character’s appearance is a delight because she’s a lot more like that in her comics than the movie depicted her
- The rather surprising and large role given to (spoiler alert) Ben Kingsley . He’s just hilarious
- Morris!
Things I didn’t love so much
- The fact that the first end credit sequence effectively sends us off on another McGuffin hunt. Didn’t we do that with the Infinity Stones already
- Why can’t Marvel movies just stick with a language? Everyone in a scene speaks Russian/Chinese/German/French/Wakandan? Let them either speak it or stick to English. Stop switching!
- Martial arts movies obviously have their own conventions, but why send an army of assassins out armed with crossbows? Why does no one have a gun… right up until they have to deal with someone who has a way of dealing with guns?
- The fact that it never even mentions Iron Fist. Even a K’un-Lun reference might have been nice
Legendary
Shang-Chi is just a great little MCU movie that I will probably be going to see again next weekend. Yes, it’s a superhero movie. Yes, there is a certain degree of “being there, done that” with the plotting. Yes, characters lack much depth.
But unless you watch a lot of Chinese cinema, chances are you won’t have seen anything like Shang-Chi before, so simply as a piece of spectacle, it’s worth watching. But honestly, it’s such great fun, too.
