Like recent Disney Plus shows WandaVision and Loki, Shang-Chi's greatest strength is its power to surprise. Shang-Chi is Marvel's first Asian lead, and the style of the film draws on the rich history of Asian cinema, from martial arts movies to gangster films to romance, and in particular the lush visual and emotional style of wuxia epics. Shang-Chi's fight choreography is unlike anything else in the MCU.īut as well as resting the big-name Avengers, the film itself is visually and narratively distinct from the rest of the franchise. Without going into spoilers, these nods are OK because you don't have to remember a complicated backstory, they make narrative sense, and most importantly they're funny. OK, so there are nods to the earlier MCU. And yes, I appreciate that's a low bar, but hey, that's the sequel/spinoff/reboot culture we live in. Though that's fun in its own way, it's really refreshing to watch a film stand entirely on its own two feet, without viewers having to remember other films. Even when Marvel previously introduced new characters to the big screen, like Black Panther, Ant-Man or the MCU version of Spider-Man, they tended to overlap with other films. I partly forgot Shang-Chi was part of the Disney-owned comic book-based franchise because of how little it relies on connection to the wider MCU. Wenwu is one of the most nuanced and intriguing antagonists of any recent blockbuster, let alone the Marvel franchise. Leung is hugely compelling as a villain who's by turns steely or romantic, loving or vengeance-driven. The film is carried by Hong Kong cinema legend Tony Leung as Wenwu, patriarch to both Shang-Chi and a shadowy ninja army. Except his name is really Shang-Chi and he's actually trained to be an assassin by his millennia-old warlord father, who shows up with a plan to conquer a magical village hidden deep in a Chinese forest. Simu Liu plays Shaun, a lovable goof wasting his life in San Francisco parking cars and doing karaoke with his buddy Katy, played by Awkwafina. Or if you're thinking of seeing the more recent Marvel epic Eternals, check your local guidance and follow COVID precautions to safeguard your health when seeing this or any other film in a theater. But Shang-Chi joins Jungle Cruise and Home Sweet Home Alone in a day of Disney Plus premieres this Friday. Unlike July's Black Widow, this latest Marvel adventure didn't premiere on streaming service Disney Plus when it opened in September.
12, Shang-Chi comes with Marvel strengths and weaknesses from opening battle to inevitable post-credits scene, while also feeling like something winningly new.
It's strange to say that one of the biggest strengths of this latest Marvel flick is how un-Marvel it is, but maybe it's fitting that a film about conflicting identity has a dual identity of its own. There was a point in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings when I forgot I was watching a Marvel movie. Simu Liu kicks off as Marvel's newest hero in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
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