Review: High Flying Kicks, Same Old Punches for ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’
“My son, you can’t run from your past.”
As the *twenty-fifth* entry in the MCU, and the second of four Marvel movies in the span of six months this year, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings arrives with the timeless promise of bringing something fresh for audiences. It features a new protagonist with a familiar origin story to help lay the ground work for Phase 4 and beyond, but even in the aftermath of Endgame, Marvel remains resolute in its formula for commercial success.
Shang-Chi is more insular than other Marvel films, provided you can weather a handful of hackneyed references to events and characters of MCU past. It centers on the titular Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) coming to terms with specters of his past and reckoning with what he may become. As a car valet, he is content with a simple existence alongside his longtime friend Katy (Awkwafina), until he is dragged into a scheme by the Ten Rings Organization, an international and long-running criminal group led by Shang-Chi’s father, Xu Wenwu (the indelible Tony Leung), who’s plans involve unleashing untold ancient forces on Earth in the hopes he can bring his deceased wife back. You know, world-saving kind of stuff.
All this comes with strained family relations. After the death of his mother (Michelle Yeoh), a death caused as the result of Wenwu’s criminal past, Shang-Chi is mercilessly trained by his father to become a highly trained martial arts warrior. His sister, Xialing (Meng’er Zhang), is neglected by Wenwu, forcing her to train on her own while a deep-seated hatred for her family festers. The interfamilial dynamic of loss, blame, and guilt among these three build out the emotional core of Shang-Chi, and when rubber mets the road —and the fate of the world hangs in the balance— these conflicts naturally rise to the surface.
Part of what differentiates this film from other Marvel entries is its influence from the martial arts genre, but for as much as the film prides itself on its action choreography, going insofar as recruiting Team Jackie Chan alumni Andy Cheng and Brad Allan to assist, the film actively conceals its images with muddied CGI and lacking camera work — a shame considering how relatively strong the film starts. In the first act, the action is scaled down, allowing for the camera to track motion naturally and without digital aids. Namely, the first big set piece takes place on a San Francisco Muni bus, and even as the film teeters on the digital abyss, it still maintains a consistent line of action within its cylindrical, narrow confines that is less dependent on all out CGI. A highlight of the film no doubt.
As the film progresses, however, Shang-Chi abandons reverence for grounded stunt work as it careens towards the requisite Marvel spectacle. The final act itself is a shamble, reverting back to the yesteryears of cinder block color grading in the MCU and augmenting its images with an unacceptable level of CGI so severe you truly wonder why Cheng and Allan were brought in at all. If labor was put into the film’s action choreography, it certainly wasn’t captured in any meaningful way when it mattered the most.
Shang-Chi’s problems are the same as they’ve always been for Marvel, and indicative of long-running, pervasive issues within the MCU. Climatic action on the back of muddied CGI is all but one constant in these commodified products playing out three or four times a year now alongside several other valid critiques — namely, conventional thematic arcs, piss-poor comedic beats, and strong-armed cinematic universe plugs that only service future films. Frankly, the critiques themselves have become clichés, and nothing I, nor any other critic, will say about these films’ shortcomings will stop or change the cavalcade of movies and Disney+ shows on the horizon so long as audiences keep consuming them.
It would appear that, even heading into Phase 4, the Marvel Cinematic Industrial Complex is alive and well. Best hope you like the taste of gruel.
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