Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings - Cheap Thoughts

 At this point, everyone is familiar with the same Marvel formula, whether it’s tiring or not varies by your own milage, but it lead to one simple result, for the longest of times Marvel seemed unwilling to try anything new, to attempt to fix their problems at risk of them interfering with the working elements. Namely that every Marvel movie looks like a pavement and the hand-to-hand fight scenes are as energetic as static cling. Shang-Chi has shown that it is possible to avoid that, while still following a traditional Marvel formula (again, for better or worse).

Shang-Chi is a visually vibrant film, the colour grading has depth to make the environments pop, the camera lingers on the fights, the sound design gives the hits impact. It might be the first non-super powered fight scene to have some life into it and convince the audience we are actually seeing two characters fight each other and not just stunt-doubles dance violently towards each other. Not that this should be surprising, the co-ordination of DoP Bill Pope and Stunt Co-Ordinator Brad Allan having worked together multiple times, they know how to make each other shine. The use of the environments as well to add dimension and creativity, a trait that any fan of martial arts films would be able to point out the importance too right away has finally been implemented, none of these fights scenes would work the same if they were in a different location.

Beyond the technical side of things the film has a character driven story that pushes the momentum of the narrative…for the most part. Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Xu Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) are the children of the immortal Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), a former conqueror of nations turned family man suffering from grief is easily one of the most compelling ensembles to grace a Marvel film. Particularly that of Tony Leung, which is not surprising as the man is a legend who at this point can play any role and make it award worthy. This is not the first time Marvel have tried to portray a sympathetic villain, but it’s the first one they’ve committed to. In most other occasions – take The Vulture for example – they give them clearly defined motivations that make them identifiable, but in order to prevent the audience from sympathising to much they just have them randomly murder people in a lazy attempt to make it clear they’re the bad guy. There is no trickery with Xu Wenwu, the audience is introduced to him as a one-man army who takes what he wants with no concern for the lives of others, and then as the film goes on shows the human sides to him to make us care. The dynamic between him and his children makes for genuinely compelling drama, a man who clearly loves his children but is so narrow-minded and absent that he’s unable to see the error of his ways, and though his kids do love him, they’re not willing to put their own happiness above the safety of others.

This is when Shang-Chi is at it’s best, its compelling character drama of a broken family, with flourishment of beautifully produced hand-to-hand fight scenes for style. Unfortunately it is still a Marvel film and it has to be broken down with generic CGI Monsters showing up and have to be fought off despite no emotional resonance to be made against grey slimy bats. This as you can imagine doesn’t take up a majority of the film, but it certainly takes away when the film loses focus on what’s important for the sake of powerful looking but empty monsters (Huh, kind of like Wenwu, ironic).

-Danny