Starring Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Leung, Michelle Yeoh

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

Disney, out now

His past life returns to haunt Shang-Chi…

On the way to the screening I mentioned to the family how excited I was to be going to the cinema to see a Marvel movie again and how it felt like it had been forever. They quickly responded that we’d see Black Widow on the big screen and I was left wondering at how quickly it had sunk in my mind. The film was good but late and that little correction had me worrying about how I’d end up viewing the latest film in the MCU.

I needn’t have worried – Shang-Chi is an old-fashioned epic but with thoroughly modern sensibilities.

Simu Liu plays Shang-Chi, or Shaun to his American friends. He’s a doorman at a hotel, a slacker with no ambition and fighting to convince both himself and others he’s happy with this lack of direction. He’s joined in this spirit by his best friend, Katy (played with comic zeal by Awkwafina). Together they’re channelling Ferris Bueller energy and loving life, shrugging of those around them who want to know when they’re going to start behaving like adults.

Barrelling into the life they’ve chosen come thugs intent on taking something from Shang-Chi and when they succeed he has no choice but to follow them and warn those others he believes to be in danger. Katy, shocked by this hidden life her best friend’s never revealed to her insists on coming along and from there we’re deep into MCU territory with fights and chases and family, magic, monsters and super powers.

I don’t want to say too much more about the story here because the movie contains a lot of content, most of which is thankfully not revealed in the trailers.

What I do want to cover is where this fits in the MCU and the kinds of themes which the makers cover in the story.

Firstly, we’re witnessing an origin story – it might be called the Legend of the Ten Rings but it’s really about Shang-Chi becoming himself. Except this doesn’t feel like an origin story. In all the ways that count it has more in common with Raiders of the Lost Ark than Captain America: The First Avenger. It is structured to have the feel of a golden age serial like Flash Gordon or even A New Hope. The touchpoints thematically are as much Takeshi Kitano, Kurosawa and Anime (think Seven Samurai crossed with My Hero Academia) as they are western.

I’m not implying it’s a tired formula. I loved this take on the genre. I loved that they spent time establishing characters, their relationships and finding space to explore who they were more than what they had to do to ‘win’. I find movies in which the character moves from one set piece to another with no sense of who they are wearisome and so the ebbs and flows of Shang-Chi worked really well for me.

This isn’t to say there’s no flab. In particular it felt like the two main female characters – Katy and Meng’er Zhang’s Xialing, were underwritten and sometimes only there to either move the plot on or because Marvel knew they needed female presenting characters on the screen. It’s a shame because there are one or two moments when Awkwafina is given more than comedic relief and she shines – there’s a great actor in there waiting for the right material. The same for Meng’er Zhang whose Xialing lives in the shadows through the film and does so structurally as well. Zhang brought a great sense of presence when on screen and I wanted to see either more or less of her. More because she was great to watch, or less because the film just didn’t quite know what to do with her apart from ‘plot’. Sure, there’s a bigger MCU world to think of and into which this movie fits but that doesn’t excuse the underwhelming use of these characters.

Thing is, Shang-Chi fits right in with Guardians Vol. 2, Black Widow, WandaVision and even What If? In being about fathers and family and their impact upon people’s lives. I feel like Eternals and Spider Man: No Way Home are going to have similar vibes and so can’t help wonder if this isn’t unfortunate accident or built by design. Knowing how closely they plot the larger arcs of the MCU, I suspect this is design mixed with, perhaps, unfortunate timing forced on them by pandemic created delays to the release schedule. Either way, we’ve seen several outings from Marvel in which fathers play a critical role in character motivation, in which loss of a loved one drives extreme actions and in which the rest of us have to pick up the pieces as a result of powerful people assuming they’re the only real people in the world.

Yes, it’s a well-used trope, but it remains more interesting than Thanos’ kindergarten economics.

In isolation, Shang-Chi handles this exploration of father and son relationships well. Tony Leung is majestic as Xu Wenwu, a man who’s lived many lifetimes but is still capable of learning and discovering new things about himself. He brings a sense that all through his life he’s never found what he was looking for, that nearly everything he’s done was driven by an emptiness which he couldn’t fill. Mirroring this, his son Shang-Chi’s own lack of direction feels rooted not simply in the trauma he’s suffered but also grounded in the model his father provided for him.

Interestingly, the writers, Dave Callaham and Destin Daniel Cretton situate the story in a non-western view of what it means to find meaning. Specifically they look to the idea of who we are being a product of the long line of those who came before us. When a character mentions someone should move on from grief, someone else rebukes them by saying ‘this is a Western idea’ and reminding them that continuity with the past, respect for those who came before, helps us understand who we are now. It’s not a call to grieve forever – it’s much more subtle than that and it’s left on the table without trying to explain for unfamiliar viewers what it really means.

The film has many of these moments – some of them properly cliched but others smart little nods to both immigrant culture but also the way people outside of Europe and the USA live. I am sure I missed many of these, but I noticed enough of them to nod along and feel like the worlds on view were different not simply because we had fantasy monsters but also because the basic ideas people were living by were other than those accepted as normal in the West.

Yet this is still the MCU. It’s a metaverse in which the only true truth is that created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. You can include ideas about animism, veneration of ancestors and generic East Asian mythology in the world but, in the end, it’s got to be explained away within the context of Thor and Iron Man. That many people regard these non-western elements as true, as part of their lived experience isn’t addressed and, structurally, can’t be. In the MCU sensible people are disbelieving in the spiritual even if they’re met by Thor on the Jubilee line. Demons and angels, dragons and spirits are nothing more than ‘others’, unrelated to us and whose intersection is little more than a clash of competing interests. It’s interesting and flexible as a narrative approach but it leaves no room for the truly magical, the truly spiritual and this, in the end, remains an emotionally secular Western film at heart because of it. Which in many ways is a shame as we’re given fleeting shots of nine-tailed foxes, qilin and other creatures which, in their own context, are powerful and mystical beings with agency and an interest in the kinds of things happening in the film.

Something which would bring me back to the big screen to see the film again are the action sequences. They are balletic, weighty and full of life. The scene in the trailer set on a bus is, in the movie, much longer and packed with thrills and great comedic moments. The majority of the other set pieces feel just as fun. In Shaun/Shang’s bedroom we see a Kung Fu Hustle poster and you can feel the positive influence of this film on the production, the fights and even the story.

Verdict: In short this is a great film and a great, invigorating entry into the MCU. It was just what I needed and, regardless of its shortcomings, it succeeds far more than it doesn’t. It deserves to do well and I would dearly love to see another outing from the titular hero.

Rating? 9 Legendary rings out of 10.

Stewart Hotston