With Endgame, Marvel had somewhat boxed themselves into a corner. A huge commercial and dramatic success but also chock full of those delicious fan service moments which elevated it above standard blockbuster fare and gave us those emotional payoffs you need with a grand finale. Face it, if you didn’t crack a smile at “Cap… on your left,” you were watching the wrong film. However it also ended the stories of its two biggest stars and lead (but not strongest) Avengers. Thor will fight on and probably lose the gut, Hulk will cameo here and there, Hawkeye will get his own series in which he will most likely be retired, and we have a roster of established characters to play with. But where do they go from there?
I get the distinct impression that Kevin Feige and co. are looking forward to the challenge and not shying away from taking chances with it. Far From Home and Black Widow have been very good, if safe, follow up films and the Disney+ series open many new doors using existing characters, but with Shang-Chi, the first truly new Marvel hero just announced his presence with an expertly delivered roundhouse kick.
Much has been made of the studio’s decision to make its first Asian-led superhero film and it’s pleasing to see that Shang-Chi and the Legend Of The Ten Rings does so much more than simply recycle the Marvel formula but with a Chinese cast. What we have here is a story steeped in wuxia styling, epic family struggles and mythological creatures. Touch points would be the likes of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and even Disney’s 1998 Mulan; yes, there are dragons. For what starts as a martial arts film, it goes to some bold places.
Cast-wise, director Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, very much worth a look) marshals a very able cast around newcomer Simu Liu in the title role. The always-excellent Awkwafina drops the “what the hell is going on?” Marvel wisecracks, and Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, a man who practically sweats 100% proof charisma, does well in a slightly undercooked villain role. At times sympathetic, he’s never a moustache-twirling Big Bad (there is a much bigger bad) and his goal is more personal than megalomaniacal. Backing them up is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Iron Man 3’s Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley, in on the joke and adding comic relief), fully leaning in to that film’s ‘The Mandarin’ misdirection, and a sadly under-used Michelle Yeoh. Asian actors make up most of the cast, with only Kingsley and Florian Munteanu’s Razorfist (sensibly never named out loud) the only white actors with significant roles. It’s refreshing to see a major studio do this. Liu himself broods and handles the physical stuff well, the fight choreography is breathless but not edited to death to hide actors’ failings, but on the strength of this it remains to be seen whether he has the magnetic presence to carry a solo film. It’s fair to say he’s upstaged by the talent around him.
Cretton’s direction provides the impressive fight scenes one would expect, some affectionate family drama with themes of expectation and ambition, as well as some less-affectionate tragic family drama. Admittedly it takes something of a leap into magic, mysticism, and mythology and away from pure martial arts, one which the film expects you either go along with or be left behind. The titular Ten Rings are (sensibly) retconned from their (quite silly) comic origins, their powers established visually but never fully explained (stick around for the post-credits bit). The obligatory final battle switches gears midway into a fight against demonic (and somewhat Lovecraftian) creatures.
Dragons should come as no surprise to a Marvel audience having appeared in Ragnarok and been a plot point in Iron Fist, but here Cretton makes full use of them as an important symbol to Chinese culture – no, it’s not the Marvel comics dragon with the silly name – and makes it work.
Ultimately it’s not a perfect MCU entry: the pace could have eased at times, the stakes are not raised particularly high until late on, there is no standout ‘MCU Moment’, and doubts remain over Liu’s (acting) chops. But this is a huge, brave, bold step in a different direction, one which embraces rather than appropriates its culture and feels very much like an Eastern epic rather than a template Marvel film.
