Shang-Chi review: Marvel retcons story, offers new magic

The Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings It starts out like a fairy tale. Long ago, an ancient warlord discovered 10 magical rings that gave him immense power and immortality, which he later used to conquer. For a thousand years, he accumulated power, until one day, he fell in love and put the search aside. Then his love was lost and he returned to his warmongering in secret, losing his family in the process. The story continues in a current environment, when he decides that it is time to unite his family, violently.

This mythical opening perfectly sums up all the aspects Shang-chi it tries to fold, mostly successfully. In its first half, it’s an action movie with remarkably good pacing and a useful family drama with elements of comedy. In its second, it is a striking but languid fantasy film where, as with Black widow Before, expectations of a Marvel ending collide with the rest of the story. That being said, as the first MCU movie was firmly established afterEndgame since 2019 Spider-Man: Far From Home (a Sony production), Shang-chi it’s refreshing in how little it cares about the details of building the big picture universe. Instead, the movie focuses on an extremely personal story that also involves exciting things about the future of Marvel movies.

At first glance, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) looks like the most normal guy to headline a movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He lives a low-key life in San Francisco under the English name “Shaun,” parking cars at a boring hotel valet job during the day and drinking with his best friend Katy (Nora “Awkwafina” Lum) at night. They are a bunch of lazy people capable of so much more, something that friends and family constantly remind them of, to no avail. Then the assassins come looking for Shang-Chi on a bus, and the audience and Katy learn that Shang-Chi was trained from childhood to be one of the deadliest fighters in the world, and still is. extremely good at combat.

The fight on the bus surprisingly happens in early Shang-chi, and it’s a solid summary of what the film does best: a lengthy show that fuses high-effects action with thrilling fight choreography and personal stakes. With a few small exceptions and a very large one, every fight scene in Shang-chi Advances in audience understanding of characters and their relationships. Fight scenes often do this better than plot, which is laden with exposure and eager to move its characters from scene to scene, from San Francisco’s Chinatown to the neon nightlife of Macau, China.

The narrative introduces the audience to Wenwu (Tony Leung), Shang-Chi’s father, but viewers know him through combat, first as a warlord who singlehandedly humbled entire armies, then as a man. on the threshold of a forbidden land. When he meets his guardian, Jiang Li (Fala Chen), his blows gradually turn into steps of a dance they fall in love with. Similarly, the fight on the bus reveals who Shang-Chi really is. Throughout the film, physical confrontations are the means by which he fights his family history and the tragedy that forced him and his sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) to leave home and not see each other for a decade.

In his heart, Shang-chi It is not a story of heroes and villains, but a family drama about three people who reconcile with anger and pain suppressed for a long time. Director Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, Just Mercy), who co-wrote the script with Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham, reveals this drama with tenderness and a lot of humor, anchored in a tremendous performance by Tony Leung, who brings a subtle level of humanity to every moment he is on screen.

When the color fades from the frame and it’s time for the cliche CGI battles in the third act, it feels like a betrayal. In its second half, the film turns into a fantasy film that takes its heroes to a beautiful land of myths, at the cost of gradually introducing a threat far removed from the vested interests of the story. It’s all in the interest of a prolonged fight against computer-generated creations that, while they look nothing like on screen in a Marvel movie so far, still swallow up the human characters at the height of their respective bows.

The change also does a disservice to not only Leung and the other artists (some of whom come as a shock and surprise to longtime MCU fans) but also cinematographer Bill Pope (Matrix), who presents the action clearly, without succumbing to Marvel’s urge to shoot fights with wide shots and zero subjectivity. The fights are observed through windows, against lights, from behind and from above and below. The stellar work of Shang-chiThe international team of fight coordinators is not lost on the screen.

When Shang-chi owns his place in the Marvel universe, he’s more interested in retcons than future developments. The film analyzes the previous points of the plot of the Iron Man films about the terrorist organization Ten Rings and its puppet leader, The Mandarin. It develops a coherent new status quo that pokes fun at racist stereotypes in the source material, while providing a new and less problematic way forward. It’s a fascinating part of the IP cleanup that aims to turn an embarrassing product of its time into a viable 21st-century franchise, and credit goes to Cretton and Callaham for creating a story that achieves these goals while continuing to tell a human story. The script’s light world construction reinforces the notion that Shang-Chi is not just a character in this universe, he is tied to his future in a way that can be made more explicit in future films.

Shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings it also ends up like a fairy tale. Some of the characters, returning home after their miraculous journey, return to their mundane lives and wonder how they will live in the boring day-to-day world from which they came. Then the obvious answer comes up: they don’t have to. Things are going to be very strange and exciting for them from now on. Hopefully that’s true for us too.

Shang Chi and the legend of the ten rings It opens only in theaters on September 3, 2021.