Movie Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings [2021]

Yeah, this is a movie that took me a while to review. To wit, this is probably the reason the Phase 4 MCU movies review got pushed back so far into 2022. But... y'know, after bitching about representation with the terrible adaptation of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 and the unfortunate implications of Iron Fist and Ancient One's casting, it's a genuinely unexpected but very welcome announcement for me to realize that they're (honestly quite randomly) deciding to adapt Shang-Chi, a relatively long-running but pretty obscure kung fu superhero, into a MCU movie, standing alongside the likes of Black Widow and Doctor Strange and Spider-Man within MCU's fourth phase. It's... it's kind of unreal, really. 

And I really don't want to make this a whole review about how great the representation is. People with far more insight and knowledge about the subject topic have probably written massive essays on this movie and its impact on non-tokenism racial representation. I, for one, am very much appreciative that this movie doesn't go for the most terrible attempt at representation, i.e. making it a binary "traditional ways bad, modern way good" or the other way around. The fact that the movie essentially ends with Shang-Chi and his allies kind of rediscovering Shang-Chi's history is absolutely something that I appreciate a lot. The movie runs the gamut from representing the multiple extremes of the ethnically-Chinese people out there, and I appreciate it. 

But how does it stack up as a superhero movie, or as an MCU movie? Well, it most certainly is a very solid action movie. I'm... I'm not entirely sure how it does on the second front, considering that beyond Ben Kingsley's Trevor Slattery showing up in the second half (all in service to a wonderful 'Mandarin' joke and a great way for Disney/Marvel Studios to acknowledge how unfortunate the portrayal of the character in Iron Man 3 is) the only real acknowledgement of the broader MCU are just ancillary cameos by Wong and Abomination, plus post-credit apperances by Captain Marvel and Hulk, that have absoluetly no bearing to the story itself. 

But that's honestly okay, though, because the story mostly revolves itself around Shang-Chi and the mysteries around him. The first half of the movie (the better half) really does feel like a modern, urbanized version of a typical wuxia plot. A mysterious young man has integrated himself with a bunch of people -- in this case, his best-friend-maybe-girlfriend Katy and her family and they hang out and be dorky young adults in America. However, Shang-Chi's mysterious past catches up with him, and he and his civilian allies find themselves embroiled in the conflicts of a mysterious organization and Shang-Chi's actually-badass family members. Pretty cool, all in all. It's not a new story to me personally, but it is so interesting to see this genre adapted well into the MCU continuity. 

But Shang-Chi alone honestly doesn't carry the movie. Simu Liu is a great, charismatic actor and he portrays Shang-Chi's dorkiness very well... as is his reluctance and angst when we learn more about his backstory and his relationship with his sister Xialing and his father Wenwu. But... but it's no secret that Wenwu, a.k.a. the real Mandarin, played by Tony Leung, is the real star of the show. 

With more of an emphasis in making antagonists that are actual characters instead of a force of plot, Wenwu follows in the footsteps of the likes of Erik Killmonger, Loki and Thanos in being shot up to basically being one of the best villains the MCU has ever had. Like those two, he treads the thin line between being sympathetic but also making the audience understand why our protagonist needs to stop him. 

...and, you know what? Let's start off in a chronological order, and not the way that this movie delves into things. 

In fact, the movie actually starts off with Wenwu. This new, refreshed reinvention of the Mandarin takes the place of the even-more-culturally-insensitive comic-book father of Shang-Chi, Fu Manchu (whose IP rights are probably up in the air anyway), and we get to see this far more comic-book accurate Mandarin rampage throughout history, fighting in ancient wars and creating his Ten Rings organization. Sure, the Ten Rings themselves are reimagined into... well, ten bracelets, I suppose, but I do really feel like the visual team did a great job in making them work in action scenes, showing them alternately as the 'focus' for Wenwu to create like whips or piledrivers or just a bunch of flying chakrams. 

The focus of the more mystical aspects of this movie comes when Wenwu arrives in the mystical village of Ta Lo deep within China, guarded by murderous, moving bamboo forests and a powerful martial artist Ying Li. We see this part of the backstory as the prologue segment of the movie, but we learn bits more of it from Shang-Chi and the rest of his family as we go through the movie. It's done in a surprisingly well-done way, drip-feeding us parts of Shang-Chi's past which really ends up reaffirming just how Shang-Chi, Wenwu and Xialing ended up in their present day selves. 

Ta Lo itself is a mystical land (not too unlike K'un Lun from Iron Fist) but Ying Li and Wenwu fall in love and end up leaving Ta Lo to start a family. They have two children and spend their time as regular civilians playing Dance Dance Revolution and shit, and it actually does come as an interesting surprise when we find out around halfway through the movie that, yes, Wenwu actually did abandon the Ten Rings and locked them up. 

Of course, eventually Wenwu's past catches up with him. Little Shang-Chi is force to see as Ying Li faces off against an entire group of Wenwu's old enemies, the Iron Gang, and the death of this wife -- the wife that caused Wenwu to readily give up his immortal life of being the head of a secret organization -- to basically snap. It's a very, very powerful scene as Wenwu brings little young Shang-Chi with him to a restaurant, and we get to see the fight as Wenwu uses his magic rings and martial arts to murder the Iron Gang. 

After this point, we chronologically get the moments when Shang-Chi and Xialing are brought to the Ten Rings hideout, forcing Shang-Chi to train under the silent, masked Death Dealer. We see hints of this training segment a bit earlier, and I do feel like it's actually kind of an effective way of drip-feedng to us Shang-Chi's backstory of being a trained martial artist first before we learn about the "Uncle Ben moment" that broke the family. 

Also, while Shang-Chi's sister Xialing isn't the primary focus of this movie, we do a pretty great job showing the sexism often seen in more traditional Asian parents. It's not quite as in-your-face as something like Captain Marvel's long flashback montage is, but I do feel like showing Xialing in the background of these scenes, eventually self-training in the sheng biao (rope dart) weapon is great. As is her off-handed remark of how her father almost always forgets that she exists because she's a girl when she's an adult. It's a great way to acknowledge this haevy topic without making it distracting and eat up chunks of screentime. 

Ultimately, when Shang-Chi is 14 years old, Wenwu sends him off to kill the Iron Gang leader, avenging Ying Li's death and making Shang-Chi a worthy successor to the Ten Rings. And this, I feel, is one of the best dramatic moments of the movie. We don't see the event happen, but Shang-Chi constantly insists to Katy (and the audience) that he couldn't go through with killing and ran off, which is why we see him being a valet in San Francisco in the present day. 

Except he actually did. It's the confession that Shang-Chi did before the final battle, that he actually did kill the Iron Gang leader in cold blood, and that's something that has been bugging him. Some fear of becoming just like his father, and the general guilt of being a young boy who experienced killing. 

It's something that's genuinely surprising considering how... safe the MCU movies have been with their heroes. I felt like it was by and far the weakest part of Black Widow when it's revealed that Natasha's Big Morally-Gray Sin (tm) turns out to be something that is totally absolved at the end of the movie -- that the young girl she kills not only turns out to be alive but forgives her instantly. We don't really dwell on Shang-Chi's murder too much, but I really do feel like it does add a whole ton to his character.

...and this is around the point that we start off in the movie proper, isn't it? Present-day San Francisco, where Shang-Chi (or 'Shaun') parks expensive cars with his best friend Katy. And... a lot of people out there really hate Katy and her actress, but I find her pretty fun, honestly. This sort of movie was always going to need an 'everyman' to react to things, and Katy as a loyal best-maybe-girl-friend does work in that regard. I wouldn't say that she's a favourite or anything, but I most certainly don't dislike her. I do have a special place in my heart where Shang-Chi shows up for breakfast in Katy's house and we get to see differing viewpoints from her family about being 'Chinese' or 'American'. A lot of the more civilian scenes -- like the family scene, or Shang-Chi and Katy meeting their friends and gossiping -- erally do a lot to add to that 'Peter Parker's dorky life' sort of deal to make us care about Shang-Chi before the craziness happens. 

And the craziness quickly happens. A mysterious letter allegedly from Xialing (it's not) leads to an attack on the bus by a bunch of kung-fu masters led by Razorfist, a man with a giant fuck-off razor for an arm. This leads to a very cool action scene and I'm always a fan of martial arts scenes in cramped spaces, and... again, people who can break down action scenes and martial arts better than me have probably written more words about the action scenes in this movie, but yeah. 

Shang-Chi drip-feeds his history to Katy as she insists on following him to Macau as he goes off to look for his sister. Xialing has grown up to be the badass underworld boss of a metahuman underground fighting club, the Golden Daggers club, which features the aforementioned Abomiantion and Wong cameo. Shang-Chi gets drafted into the cage match, and turns out that he has to fight against Xialing, who has some severe abandonment issues because Shang-Chi never went back to the Ten Rings fortress to find her. Again, we get more bits and pieces of the Xu family's backstory, but then ninjas attack!

This time, it's led by Death Dealer, the silent, masked trainer of Shang-Chi we saw in the flashbacks, and the fight here is a bit darker and we ge some wacky hijinks as the fight ends up being dragged outside of the club and onto the construction scaffolding outside. Very much reminiscent of more modern martial arts movies for sure. We get Katy in distress, we get Xialing showing up to help out a bit, and a brief 1v1 between Shang-Chi and Death Dealer. But ultimately, we get the big, dramatic entrance of Wenwu, who 'captures' Shang-Chi, Xialing and Katy. 

And this is where the more mystical aspects of the movie start to come in. The fights in the bus and the club have mostly been just quasi-realistic martial arts movie, with your typical movie flair, but Wenwu uses the two plot device pendants to reveal a magical map that leads to Ta Lo, complete with bizarre magical water maps and stuff. It is at this point where Wenwu also explains that he's been hearing the spirit of Ying Li calling for him from Ta Lo, asking to be freed, and Wenwu plans to invade the mystical village and free her. There's an almost sinister undertone where their dinner conversation almost seems normal if not for the fact that Wenwu's clearly... hallucinating, influenced by either the Rings or the Dweller (more on that later). 

While imprisoned, Shang-Chi and Xialing get a bit of a heart-to-heart about their past, which is neat... but then we also get to see Trevor Slattery! From Iron Man 3! The fake Mandarin! At some point since All Hail the King, apparently Trevor was captured by Wenwu, who decides not to execute the actor. Trevor also notes just how insensitive Iron Man 3's sorry excuse of 'the Mandarin' is, which... I love this. I love that the studio, as a whole, can acknowledge their past misstep and even work it into a way that benefits this movie. 

Trevor has also befriended the strange creature, the Hundun called Morris, who comes from Ta Lo. After planning it out, Shang-Chi and his group ends up breaking free of the Ten Rings compound, steal Razorfist's car, and ends up driving all the way to Ta Lo. Again, Trevor and Morris give some pretty grat comedic moments as we arrive on Ta Lo, and it's a mystical realm that's apparently existing in a separate dimension, filled with various Chinese mythological creatures. Very great work in showing this off, and with so many other Marvel movies with weird stuff inside, I love that this is just something that's casually there, building up on the Shang-Chi 'mythos'. 

In Ta Lo, they are met with the local villagers who explain more about the history of Wenwu, Ying Li and their mystical dimension. Ying Nan (played by the always-excellent Michelle Yeoh), Shang-Chi and Xialing's aunt, ends up welcoming them, giving them fancy dragonscale armour, and training them in some Ta Lo martial arts. Ying Nan basically tells Shang-Chi to try and accept his legacy instead of constantly trying to run away from it, which is a good message. 

We also get the exposition about the plot of the second half of the movie -- Ta Lo seals a demon called the Dweller-in-Darkness (a minor Dr. Strange villain in the comics), but was saved by the powerful dragon called the Great Protector. But this Dweller has been impersonating the voice of Ying Li, influencing Wenwu to open the gate and unleash the demons. 

It's... it's honestly not my favourite part of the movie. I don't mind the extra mythology, but the fact that we don't learn about the Dweller until the third act is a bit off for me, and I'd rather the corrupting voic (if we even needed one) is tied to the eponymous Ten Rings itself. I don't know... it is something that helps to make Wenwu feel a bit more sympathetic, but making him a pawn of a giant faceless demon without a personality is kind of questionable. It doesn't ruin the movie for me, but I really want to see what a version of this script without the Dweller-in-the-Darkness would look like. 

It's at around this point that we get Shang-Chi's huge reveal that he killed the Iron Gang leader. Katy ends up 'doing something with her life' by studying archery under one of the warriors, Guan Bo -- a bit of a plotline that pays off in one moment but otherwise is kinda shrug-worthy. And Xialing's storyline basically has her find out that Ta Lo teaches martial arts to everyone regardless of gender. 

And the third act is a huge, huge battle. The fight is pretty damn cool, yeah? We get Xialing with her glowing rope darts, we get giant mythological lions jumping and attacking the Ten Rings goons, we get Razorfist and Death Dealer being what they are, one-off 'elite' goons with eye-catching designs...

 

But, of course, the primary focus here is the confrontation between Shang-Chi and Wenwu. There's a great discussion here in the midst of them fighting where Shang-Chi confronts Wenwu for not being a good father, basically, focusing too much on what he's lost instead of what he still had -- his children. Wenwu overpowers Shang-Chi and tosses him into the lake, but then as he attacks the Dweller's prison with his Ten Rings, he unleashes these tiny bat-octopus-demon things that start attacking everyone in sight. Poor Death Dealer gets killed off unceremoniously, but so does Katy's mentor Guang Bo. Xialing manages to rally the Ten Rings and the Ta Lo warriors to work together and fight the bat-demons with dragonscale weapons... it's pretty fun CGI action. 

The giant dragon, the Great Protector, rises from the lake and brings Shang-Chi up with him, and we get round two between Shang-Chi and Wenwu. Shang-Chi manages to take control of half of the Ten Rings by remembering what Ying Nan taught him, but ends up sparing Wenwu... just in time for the Dweller-in-the-Darkness to break free. In his last act, finally realizing that he's been duped and that his son has a point, Wenwu pushes Shang-Chi to safety before his soul is consumed by the Dweller. 

We get a whole giant CGI fight between the Great Protector, Shang-Chi and Xialing against the Dweller, and... and it's an all right Summer Blockbuster movie final battle, y'know? Katy gets a nice moment, Shang-Chi and Xialing resolve their earlier conflict because Shang-Chi refuses to let Xialing go this time... and ultimately, Shang-Chi manages to use the full control of his father's Ten Rings to kill the Dweller-in-Darkness. 

Again, it's pretty fun to watch and with what was shown to us in this movie, it ties up all the antagonists and the conflicts. It's just that... yeah, the Dweller is nowhere close to being as interesting as Wenwu is. I definitely do appreciate that we don't get a reversal of the Snap thing going on, though. It would've been so easy (and so lame!) if Wenwu, Death Dealer, Guang Bo and everyone else killed by the Dweller was resurrected because of some magic soul-reversal nonsense. Again, it's very appreciated. 

Ultimately, the movie ends with some typical 'MCU-setup' scenes. Shang-Chi and Katy ramble about the events of this movie to their friends, who don't believe them, until Wong shows up with a portal and summons them to Kamar-Taj. We learn in a mid-credits scene that the Ten Rings are acting as some sort of beacon to... something. Meanwhile, Xialing has gone off to become the new leader of the Ten Rings, although whether as a villain or as a more benign version of Wenwu, we don't really know. 

And... and yeah. It's not a perfect movie, not by any shot. Mostly, my problems lie with the Dweller-in-Darkness and its effect on Wenwu. But the movie itself really does well in all other aspects. Characterization-wise, Shang-Chi and Wenwu are really well-written, and Xialing has unexpectedly turned out to be basically my favourite secondary charater in the MCU franchise. The martial arts scenes -- even the ones involving the CGI Ten Rings -- are all very nice to see, and I am a huge fan of the world-building around the Ten Rings, Ta Lo and these characters. The movie itself is also enough of a standalone story to not fall into the same trap as a lot of the other Phase 3 MCU movies. And... yeah, it's hard for me not to be biased because of what the movie is about. I'm definitely happy about this movie overall!

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene: Wong, Captain Marvel and Bruce Banner discuss about the origin of the Ten Rings, noting that it is something phenomenally ancient. Afterwards, Shang-Chi, Katy and Wong go off to karaoke and sing Hotel California. Another post-credits scene shows Xialing on the throne of the Ten Rings organization with Razorfist and the rest of the Ten Rings soldiers on her side. 
  
• Past Movie Continuity: Trevor Slattery and the plot of Iron Man 3 with Aldrich Killian appropriating the identity of a 'Mandarin' is mentioned in his backstory; whereas we've seen the Ten Rings organization in Iron Man and Iron Man 3. How Trevor was abducted by the real Ten Rings is covered in the brief Marvel One-Shots: All Hail the King. Bruce Banner still retains the injuries to his arm sustained when using the Infinity Stones in Avengers: Endgame. Abomination was last seen all the way back in The Incredible Hulk, although he has grown some comic-accurate fin-ears. A Black Widow (one of the background characters in Black Widow) and an Extremis soldier from Iron Man 3 are seen among Xialing's fight club participants. The man that livestreams Shang-Chi's fight in the bus is the same guy that filmed Spider-Man in Homecoming. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: Shang-Chi is literally the guy's name, so... yeah. Ditto for Dweller-in-Darkness. Wenwu does discuss the usage of the term 'Mandarin', although it's mostly a deconstruction of that codename. Razorfist's codename is mostly referred through secondary means ('that guy with the blade for a fist' and his vanity plate), whereas I don't recall Death Dealer's name as being mentioned.
• Favourite Action Scene: That bus scene, for sure. 
• Funniest Line: "It worked. America was scared of an orange!" Katy lampshading how stupid it was for Shang-Chi to change his name from 'Shang' to 'Sean' is also comedy gold. 
• Xialing's comic-book counterpart (Fah Lo Suee) leads a group called the Golden Daggers. Her Macau fight club is called the Golden Daggers Club. 
• One of Wenwu's aliases is 'Master Khan'. The comic-book Mandarin, depending on the continuity and writer, is often acknowledged as either a descendant of Genghis Khan, or being so long-lived that he is Genghis Khan.