Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021, Dir. Destin Daniel Cretton):
A razor-thin line often separates good franchise movies from bad ones, especially in the Marvel cinematic universe. With so many of the same elements persisting across every film—wisecracking dialogue, slick visuals, peppy pacing, big-bang finales—the slightest shift in emphasis can elevate an individual entry, or consign it to mediocrity. Get too preoccupied with setting up future franchise milestones at the expense of making an actual point, and you get sub-par stuff like Black Widow. Add just a dash of subtext, or get a little freer with tone, and you end up with an unlikely winner like Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Guardians of the Galaxy.
Which brings us to Shang Chi, which has an undeniable hook: the first Marvel Asian superhero movie. As originally portrayed in the comics, Shang Chi was a somewhat stereotypical kung fu hero (and the son of Fu Manchu, to boot); the film comes up with its own, more nuanced take on the character and his world. But is it groundbreaking? Not really. Twenty-five films in, Marvel isn’t looking to be innovative: formulas and audience expectations are now set in place, and overarching narratives must be fed, with new Avengers like Shang Chi shuffled dutifully into place for a big-event team-up down the road. But if Shang Chi falls short of revelatory, it opts for being refreshing as the next best thing, and for the most part, it is.
The first five minutes alone herald something different, as the ruthless, all-conquering warlord Wenwu (Tony Leung) seeks an ultimate power hidden deep in a mystical forest, only to find love instead when he confronts Li (Fala Chen), the forest’s protector. Their duel is all sweeping martial arts movements and flirtatious glances, a pas de deux both dexterous and sweet. While the scene steals its approach from Zhang Yimou’s ornate kung fu movies, it’s easily the most entertaining battle in a Marvel movie in many a moon. Ten minutes later, it’s equalled in quite a different way when mild-mannered Shawn (Simu Liu) and his pal Katy (Awkwafina) are set upon by assassins on a San Francisco bus. Shawn proves that he does indeed know kung fu, as he disposes of his foes in comic, bone-crunching fashion, making like Jackie Chan as he caroms off his surroundings.
Just from those two scenes alone, it’s clear that Shang Chi is an encyclopedic homage to its Chinese action cinema predecessors, but it’s also a very literal rumination on ancestors and family obligations. Both Shawn and Katy are your typical Asian-Am slackers, shirking from the pressure of living up to their parents’ exhausting standards. But while Katy’s sins include having a dead-end job and not learning the mother tongue, Shawn’s relations with his family are every model minority kid’s worst nightmare: as it turns out, he’s actually Shang Chi, Wenwu’s son, brutally trained to be an assassin since childhood and the would-be inheritor of his father’s dark empire. With Katy in tow, Shang Chi is drawn back to the Far East and the underworld he fled when he was a teen, teaming up with his estranged sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) to face his aberrant dad one final time.
If nothing else, Shang Chi‘s Eastern trappings and philosophizing give it more color than the standard faceless, tech-heavy milieu of most Marvel movies. (Lengthy passages are presented in subtitled Mandarin.) Destin Daniel Cretton isn’t that distinctive as a director, but he generates an agreeable pace while second unit director Bradley Allen (who tragically died just before the movie’s release) and fight coordinator Andy Cheng do most of the heavy lifting. Most of all, the generational conflict at the heart of the film grounds it even when the third act gets hot and heavy with CGI-ed dragons and soul-eating monsters. Forget tiger moms; Wenwu is a tiger dad of extreme proportions, literally beating his son into conforming with his expectations even as he ignores his daughter. He’s also a tragic, almost forlorn figure, his one chance at a peaceful life snatched away when his wife is murdered. Bent on revenge and deluded by visions of Li speaking to him from beyond the grave, he’s certainly one of the most compelling Marvel baddies, and Leung, making his English-language debut, is mesmerizing in the role. Deploying his quicksilver gaze to full effect, shifting from amusement to cold rage on a dime, he adds operatic dimensions to his lightly-sketched character through pure charisma alone.
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.
Jiang Nan (Michelle Yeoh)
Leung’s presence (along with that of Michelle Yeoh as a martial arts guru and Ben Kingsley as a familiar comic-relief character) gives Shang Chi plenty of old-school star power that any actor would be hard-pressed to match, so it’s perhaps a little unfair that Liu suffers in comparison. Limber and likeable, he’s a serviceable hero, but he’s not all that expressive, which places him at a major disadvantage every time he comes face-to-face with Leung’s eloquent mug. (It’s ironic that in a movie that’s all about children rising above parental expectations, the father all but eclipses the son.) Not that the screenplay gives him much to work with—as has become the case with many Marvel movies, Shang Chi does far more telling than showing. We come to learn that Shang Chi committed a horrific act in his past, but we never witness the actual act, thus dulling the revelation’s impact. Likewise, Li’s death, a moment that should be the emotional crux of the film, happens off-screen, as does the development of her tragic romance with Wenwu. And as for Wenwu, apart from a single fleeting scene in which he wreaks havoc on his wife’s killers, we’re kinda-sorta informed of his villainy more than we’re exposed to it. One can cynically surmise that the filmmakers made this decision in order to render the film more palatable to Chinese censors wary of Fu Manchu-style stereotyping (it didn’t work—as of this writing, the Chinese government has refused to sanction the film for release in the PRC). The writers’ reluctance to commit to something truly dramatic results in a script that often reads more like a synopsis.
Nevertheless, Shang Chi maintains its ingratiating vibe to the finish, and the film’s central message—acknowledging your ancestors’ influence while forging your own path—is something that people of every stripe can get behind. If the characters and story never truly catch fire, there’s still plenty to enjoy, whether it’s the fluid fighting moves, Awkwafina’s gawky line deliveries, or even some of the usual overwrought and indulgent special effects, which at least have a mythological charge to them this time. Shang Chi may be only a brief detour on Marvel’s universe-building roadmap—ending credit teaser scenes indicate that Shang Chi and his buddies will team up with the usual suspects soon enough—but at least it’s a decent example of how even a set-in-stone franchise can liven itself up with a little cultural context. ■
