It’s always hilarious to me that the creative geniuses at Marvel are so good at crafting thrilling trailers that reveal close to nothing about the movie they’re promoting. It’s a genius marketing ploy, really: cultivating excitement without giving too much away. I mean, all it takes is an out-of-place voice over and a few carefully cut snippets of footage, and our imaginations run wild, often in the wrong direction. We walk into the theater expecting one thing and walk out satisfied with having watched something entirely different. How crazy is that?
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a textbook example of this phenomenon. After watching the trailer, I thought Shang-Chi’s struggle to escape his father’s legacy was going to be the central conflict of the film. And in a way, it was. But there was so much more to it.
I absolutely loved this movie. Everyone I know who has seen it has had nothing but good things to say as well, which is a rarity. So, as promised, here is my review of Marvel’s latest masterpiece. (Spoilers!)
What I Liked:
Brilliant martial arts and special effects
When I watched the aforementioned trailer, that bus fight scene was amazing enough for me to start planning out this section of my review. However, as they’re meant to be, those clips were only a teaser of what was yet to come.
As predicted, the bus scene combined elements of hand-to-hand combat and a high-speed car chase in the best possible way. But even better than that were the breathtaking scaffolding fight scene in Macau and the final battle, featuring legions of mythical creatures. Each of these segments alone would have warranted a mention here, but together? Ridiculous.
To top it off, I adored the balanced badassery between the sexes that we got in every major fight sequence in Shang-Chi. For example, Shang’s martial arts masterclass on the bus is perfectly complemented by Katy’s wild defensive driving. The movie establishes Shang-Chi’s sister Xu Xialing as perhaps even more of a force to be reckoned with than Shang himself. It also describes their mother’s and grants an active, vital role to each of its female characters in the film’s climactic conflict.
Grey morality
Wenwu is hands-down the best villain Marvel has ever made.
Why? Because he’s not pure evil.
Sure, Wenwu is a centuries-old warlord who continues to shape world affairs via a combination of assassination and intimidation. But Shang-Chi also portrays him as a human being. Underneath all the blood on his hands, audiences identify Wenwu as a devoted husband and father led astray by grief. Wenwu’s willingness to raze a civilization to the ground is motivated by a desperate need to save his wife. He falls prey to external manipulation rather than acting upon any sort of intrinsic greed or malice. And, in the end, he realizes his mistakes and makes the ultimate sacrifice to save his son.
And actually, Shang-Chi himself is pretty morally-grey as far as heroes go. He subscribed to his father’s darker motivations for years, and halfway through the movie, he admits that he killed a man to avenge his mother’s death. Real people do bad things for arguably good reasons. And Shang-Chi’s complex, conflicted characters portray this perfectly.
Its portrayal of Chinese culture
Building upon the precedent set by Black Panther, Marvel succeeds for a second time at selling a story centered around a culture underrepresented on the big screen without cheapening or distorting it. Sure, the movie dabbles in stereotype. But don’t all stereotypes grow from at least a grain of truth?
As someone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended a high school with a significant Chinese population, I recognized my own community in the world on-screen. And that was pretty cool. For example, the child-parent-grandparent dynamic portrayed in the scene where Shang-Chi joins Katy’s family for breakfast made me smile at its familiarity, and the ABC joke someone makes during the Macau sequence echoed a hundred similar jibes I’ve heard before. The movie also does a nice job of spotlighting the vibrance of San Francisco’s Chinatown. And while no longer prevalent, Wenwu’s differential treatment of his daughter, Xu Xialing, and Shang-Chi mirrors a historical bias toward male children in China.
It fixed IM3’s “The Mandarin” problem
If you’ve read my previous Marvel movie ranking post, you’ll remember that one of my biggest issues with Iron Man 3 was how the writers portrayed Trevor, the actor who poses as “the Mandarin.” Well, I don’t know if this was the original plan back in 2013, but Shang-Chi addressed the white-washing problem in a crowd-pleasing way.
In fact, the very traits that make Trevor problematic in Iron Man 3 become strengths in Shang-Chi. Trevor’s humor fits seamlessly into the fabric of this film. His ignorance explains his previously problematic portrayal of “The Mandarin” as a convenient strategy for a less powerful antagonist. Shang-Chi and co. first encounter Trevor in prison beneath Wenwu’s compound, where he languishes as punishment for his appropriation. This inclusion gives the Ten Rings a fresh start and undoes the damage done to audiences’ perception of the syndicate.
The Ten Rings emblem appears early on in the MCU in association with the terrorist cell in the original Iron Man movie. As a result, I’m excited to see where the writers take them next.
An appealingly spunky sense of humor
As I alluded to in the previous section, Shang-Chi takes Marvel’s predilection for effortless wit to the next level. With a recurring “Hotel California” gag, wry sarcasm from Shang himself, and Trevor/the furball thing as comic relief, you couldn’t ask for better. The film even makes time to take a pass at airplane food.
Awkwafina also plays the hilarious best friend as artfully as ever. (She OWNS that niche, seriously.) But I appreciated that Shang-Chi allowed her to explore a wider emotional spectrum than your typical wacky sidekick role allows. Given the hints dropped in this movie, it’ll be interesting to see if her relationship with Shang becomes romantic in the future.
What I Disliked:
Occasional gaps in narrative clarity
How did Shang-Chi and Katy end up working as valets? Did anything happen to Shang-Chi and his friends and family during the Blip? Is the wearer of the ten rings only immortal when he/she wears them? How did Shang-Chi survive when he first ran away and hid from his father in San Francisco?
We may never know. Little missing pieces like these were the only real issue I had with this movie.
The Verdict:
Marvel has done it yet again. Shang-Chi’s cast, cultural representation, humor, and battle sequences send it to the top of my list of favorite Marvel movies. For those who have seen my actual ranking, I would rank Shang-Chi somewhere in the top ten. That’s how much I enjoyed it.
I’m so excited to see where the MCU takes these characters in future films. But in the meantime, we’ve got plenty of other Marvel content to look forward to in the next few months!
I would give Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings an 8.5/10.
Thanks for the super review, Janie.
Although I have not seen a Marvel film, I must admit I’m tempted!
Delving into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is quite the investment, but definitely worth it! You should totally give it a try. 🙂