Mark Reviews Movies: SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 2, 2021

We've been introduced to a couple new heroes in the ongoing—and seemingly never-ending—Marvel Cinematic Universe in recent years, but the superhero of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is the first in a while to genuinely feel like someone new and different. As far as we can tell, he has no actual superpowers (until those eponymous rings come into the mix, obviously), only incredible fighting and acrobatic skills from years of formative training in the martial arts. He's just an ordinary guy, as displayed thoroughly, comically, and excitedly during the first and best act of this yet-another-origin-story movie.

His birth name is Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), of course. After a prologue informs us that he's the son of an all-powerful and secretive master of all things criminal—and political and terroristic and lots of other matters—who was seemingly transformed by his love for a warrior woman from a mysterious and mystical village of legend, we expect great things of our hero.

Some early shots show a man of great wealth, driving somewhere in his expensive sports car, and surely, the history of comic-book superheroes has taught us that, without great power, a great amount of money can be just as effective in the hero game. Instead, Shang-Chi, known as Shaun in his perfectly ordinary life in San Francisco, is on the receiving end of the car—as a valet.

It's that sense of normalcy that makes Shaun, soon to be Shang-Chi, so instantly endearing, because he's so unassuming, so ignorable, and just so damn ordinary. He works a regular job. He has dinner with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) and her family, and after that, he blows off a good night's sleep to sing karaoke with his best friend.

One of the (many, many) issues with the current onslaught of superhero stories, on screens both big and now small, is that the makers of those stories have become a bit too comfortable with familiar and established characters. Watching Shaun just have a normal life feels so refreshing, especially in this particular universe of superheroes.

That's why the earliest section of Dave Callaham, director Destin Daniel Cretton, and Andrew Lanham's screenplay feels like something different. Shaun is just a guy, and when he's finally forced to fight some assorted goons who have been sent by the movie's eventual antagonist, he also brawls without any technological, magical, or radioactive assistance.

The plot here almost feels unnecessary. Indeed, when it finally comes time for the screenwriters to come up with one, they seem uncertain about what to do, since there's a pretty lengthy checklist of things this movie has to accomplish as part of a larger, ever-growing universe of superheroes.

Some goons, sent by a not-so-surprising antagonist, are after a jade pendant that Shang-Chi's mother gave to him. He fights them on a bus in a dynamic and constantly escalating action sequence that, while using a lot of visual effects to up the spectacle (The bus is nearly cut in half and ends up out of control), is foundationally built upon watching Liu, other actors, and some real and occasionally digital stunt-people pull off some impressive fisticuffs choreography. Another sequence, which unfolds along some bamboo scaffolding on the side of the upper floors of a skyscraper, is a similarly solid idea, although Cretton has to and does rely a bit too much on visual effects and murky cinematography for that scene to feel authentic.

The rest of the plot feels mostly tacked-on, giving us Shang-Chi's origin story, by way of being re-united with his long-lost sister Xialing (Meng'er Zhang), who resents her brother's lengthy absence. The two eventually re-unite with their father Wenwu (Tony Leung), the in-the-shadows man of power, who was granted immortality and has lived for millennia by possessing the ten magical bracelets from the title (An amusing but distracting extended appearance from a previous impostor of the character is one of a couple cameos, which remind us the powers-that-be behind these movies are still uncomfortable letting these stories exist wholly on their own). He wants his children to join him and his gang of warriors, believing that a mystical gate can bring back his dead wife, the siblings' mother.

Things admirably—because it allows Leung to create a surprisingly sympathetic and emotionally wounded antagonist—and unfortunately—because the constant revelation of back story feels like running in circles after a bit—slow down at this point. Beneath the exposition is a tale about Shang-Chi's past abuse and him still feeling its control, as well as that of his father, over him. Obviously, such an idea and its emotional complexity cannot stand in a movie that ultimately exists to establish this superhero, his powers, and his place in the franchise's future, so instead, Cretton and his fellow screenwriters ignore that in order to rush to a big, bloated, and visual-effects-heavy climax.

Such have been, are, and seemingly will continue to be the ways of this franchise, especially when it comes to introducing us to a new superhero. Whatever problems Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings possesses, the movie does at least give us a promising new character, so let's hope his inevitable future adventures are more satisfying than his first one.

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