‘Shang-Chi’ Delivers Fresh Fights and Fun
It’s kind of tough to do an origin story movie so deep into the MCU, but with the breakup of the original Avengers band, Marvel is introducing some new faces into the mix. This is where we find ourselves with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
When we first meet our titular hero, played by the undeniably charming Simu Liu, he’s living a mellow and rather unambitious life parking cars with his friend Katy (Awkwafina). But one day, his mysterious past comes back with a bang and the two are thrust into an adventure filled with magic, legends, and some of the best fight scenes ever put to screen in an MCU movie. No spoilers here, so I won’t reveal too much, but I will say that his journey is filled with a nice combo of giant CGI set pieces and enough backstory to make him feel decently fleshed out, especially for his first outing in the Marvel movie world.
The MCU timeline is a complicated web of references and details to remember, and it’s kind of funny how they’re making us care about things we probably didn’t love the first time around. With WandaVision, they made people want to go back and watch Avengers: Age of Ultron, which at the time was seen as a step down from 2012’s The Avengers. With Loki, people were hopping on Disney+ to review Thor: The Dark World, another sequel that wasn’t as well-received as the first. With Shang-Chi, they’re making us go back and care about the Mandarin and the Ten Rings from Iron Man 3, which was an early incident of expectation subverting leading to fan backlash.
Casual fans and people who haven’t re-watched the entire saga probably won’t even remember Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), the washed-up actor hired by forgettable villain Aldrich Killian (Guy Pierce) to play the leader of the terrorist group the Ten Rings in Iron Man 3. But all those people who were livid that Marvel tricked them into thinking some lame dude was the infamous Mandarin will be excited to see them revisit and revise the villain in Shang-Chi.
This is Marvel, so you can count on epic visuals and expensive special effects, but sometimes the fight scenes in the MCU can feel a little samey. They’re usually tight shots, shaky cam, and quick cuts with a few wide shots mixed in. That’s all fine and good, but after more than 20 movies worth of punching and kicking, it was really nice to see some fresh, dynamic fight scenes in Shang-Chi.
Here, the fights are much faster and have more flow. There’s still some quick cutting and shaky cam, but each punch has more style and feels more engaging to watch than in previous Marvel movies. Props to the late Brad Allen and the stunt team for changing it up and giving us fights that feel exciting and genuinely difficult.
I was into the story and all-in for the magical legend of the Ten Rings, but at times the movie can suffer from Marvel quippy syndrome. These movies have the tendency to give you something epic or dramatic and then undercut it with a joke, which usually works, but can sometimes make the humor feel a little out of place. This has never really been something that bothered me, but I found it more noticeable here, particularly with Awkwafina, who bears the burden of being the plucky, funny sidekick. She’s the audience insert for much of the film, learning about the secret, magical world along with us, but occasionally her “this is crazy” observations can start to feel a little grating.
Overall, Shang-Chi does still manage to break some new ground and mostly avoids the pitfalls of more generic MCU entries, especially for an origin story this late in the game. Unfortunately, with covid cases climbing again, it’s going to be tough to see this film in all its theatrical glory, and Disney won’t be releasing it on streaming for a while as they struggle to find the right release formula to net them the highest profits. If you can safely see Shang-Chi in a theater, it’s definitely worth checking out, but if you’re in an area with a low vaccination rate and climbing cases, you won’t be devastated to wait for streaming.
