Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - A Classic Marvel origin story with its unique sty
“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” is the perfect movie for the start of Marvel Studios phase 4. It introduced a new interesting hero and showed us a whole new side of Marvel with great martial arts choreography and culture that it created.
The movie follows our new hero Shang-Chi played excellently by Simu Liu as he must return home after being on the run for 10 years, as his Dad (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) the Mandarin who is trying to bring his family back together.
As someone who loves those old classic martial arts movies (i.e Hero, Kung Fu Hustle, IP Man, etc) this movie had some big expectations from me, and they delivered. The way that the Cinematographer William Pope and the choreographers planned the fights to look similar to the old classics.
It felt like director Destin Daniel Cretton had a lot of creative freedom which made certain parts not feel like an MCU movie so it did not feel like your typical Marvel movie really until the finale.
Simu Liu is a great cast for Shang-Chi as he really cares about portraying Asian culture properly and he gives us an excellent new hero that hopefully will get a couple more movies and be a part of the Avengers sometime in the soon future too.
Other than Liu, Tony Leung was a terrific villain with the ten rings one of the coolest weapons in the MCU yet. He is intimidating but by the end, you know that he was someone who still loved his family.
Awkwafina who played Shang-Chi’s best friend Katy was perfect and won me over as a fan, because before this I thought she was just a silly comedy movie but after Raya and the Last Dragon and this movie proved she has some talent.
Also, the surprising role of Ben Kingsley back as Trevor Slaughtery from Iron Man 3 was perfect. I saw some reviews saying that they think he was in it too much, but for me, I thought it was the perfect amount as he did not overstay his welcome.
One character that I thought could have been better was Xu Xialing, Shang-Chi’s sister. She just seemed to be there the whole movie but did not have much to offer besides some great fighting.
I do also think that the pacing was a little off, the second act kind of dragged on a little bit and lost some people but to me, it did not take away from the movie at all.
Overall Shang-Chi was a good Kung Fu movie and a great addition to the MCU that proves Marvel is not done with this universe. I can’t wait to see where the characters go from here and how they connect to the rest of the universe. Rating:8.5/10