Been looking forward to seeing Shang-chi for a very long time. As an actor of Chinese descent, I would love to be part of it, but things don’t always play out in a way you wanted it.
Despite being that, I think it is still a milestone for us.
The other reason I really looked forward to it was because of Tony Leung and Fala Chen. Tony Leung has always been a mega star in the Asian cinematic world, Fala Chen, while maybe not a lot of people knew her, was one of the most outstanding and versatile actresses in the Hong Kong TV industry. Originally from New York, she moved to Hong Kong after her beauty pageant rounds in Miss China International and that’s where she started her acting career before moving back to the States to attend the Juilliard School to further her studies in acting.
Of course, all eyes were also on Simu Liu, who played the titular character as the first Asian superhero on the big screen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). A Canadian Asian actor best known for his works on the hit comedy series Kim’s Convenience, Simu Liu’s star seems to be on the rising.
So how does the movie stack up?
In short, I was not disappointed, and there were nail biting moments and there were lots of comedic bits too. I think the director Destin Daniel Cretton really captured the essence of an MCU movie within the fantasy world of Chinese mythologies. While Shang-Chi was a standalone movie, it did not ignore the rest of the MCU and managed to tie in characters in clever ways that opened a lot of opportunities for Phase 4 and 5 moving forward. At the same time, as a movie in its own world, it established a world that is unique to Shang-chi and its character. Destin also managed to use every main cast member to their very strengths, demonstrating how switched on he is as a director.
Simu Liu as the titular character Shang-chi delivered a balanced performance. However, I think the best bits for him were still his comedic parts with Awkwafina. The comedic chemistry was just everywhere when they were on screen together. In the film it said they knew each other since high school and have been friends for 10 years, that shows when they interact. I mean Awkwafina will always be Awkwafina when it comes to comedy (although I still think she was brilliant in The Farewell, a family drama), but there are new sparks with Simu Liu. Both of their comedic background I think helped solidified this duo as one of the funniest in the MCU. And adding Benedict Wong to the equation, it was just hilarious. For the more emotional heavy scenes, I think Simu was completely upstaged by the season royalties in the movie. For me I can’t remember much of his emotional scenes as all I could remember was Tony Leung, Fala Chen and Michelle Yeoh. That said, I am not saying Simu didn’t deliver, but when he was in the same scene with these actors, or appeared in between the sequences between these actors, you could see he was working hard to match, while the others just flowed like a smooth river.
Tony Leung, has, in my opinion became my favorite villain in the MCU. It used to be Cate Blanchett’s Hela, then Michael B Jordon’s Killmonger but now Tony Leung’s Wen Wu had shot up to the top spot. Tony just added so many more layers to an originally one dimensional and politically incorrect comic character. I always think the best way to play a villain is not making the audience fear or hate him, but making the audience to sympathise with him. And that’s what Tony Leung achieved. He wanted power, then he found love, so he gave up power for love, just to find himself wound up in the starting point again because of grief and guilt. His pursuit for his goals in the movie were fully justifiable from his perspective, and as an audience member you did want to root for him, even when you knew that something more sinister must be at play. However, this doesn’t mean that he became that pathetic wife-sick villain. He managed his composure and authority with just his postures, movements and looks. When he showed up after rounding up his kids, you feel the fear in the room for him. When Shang-Chi asked him how did he managed to find him and his sister, he just simply said, ‘I had never lost my kids’. He simply gave them a chance to live their own lives, until he needs them back for a purpose. These few lines already demonstrated how in control he is while his kids thought they had established their freedom. It also demonstrated that despite what his kids thought, he did care about what they wanted, and gave them a chance to live the lives they wanted.
Despite being a superhero movie, for me it is a family drama about grief and misunderstanding between generations. Wen Wu’s grief and guilt about his wife’s death had pushed him back into his old ways while the kids thought that their father chose the ten rings of power over them. They never understood that for Wen Wu, that was the only way he knew to grief and avenge his wife, and sending Shang-Chi to assassinate the leader of the gang was giving him a chance to avenge for his mother, thinking that this was the way for his son to deal with the guilt he developed. Wen Wu was basically dead inside when his wife died, and he could not look at his daughter directly because she reminded him how his wife looked was a testimony of how important his wife was to him. So, when there is a chance to make things right again – by hoping to bring his wife back, so the family will be completed again, Wen Wu went for it. His sight was dead set on casting the grief and guilt aside to reunite with his wife, and there is nothing that would stop him.
Shang-Chi is an MCU movie, so there are certainly a lot of actions. I always felt that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had over romanticised and stylised the fight sequence, I think Shang-Chi had finally managed to find the balance and mark the difference between hand to hand combat and martial arts combat. For me without a doubt the initial encounter between Wen Wu and his wife Li was one of the best martial art sequences in the recent years. It was stylised enough and yet you feel the strength and the strategies that are always involved in martial art fights. The fight moved from initially hostile to later mutually appreciative, and yet strategic aiming for a win for either side, was beautifully choreographed, and certainly Tony Leung and Fala Chen delivered. This probably should be credited to their years of training in martial arts TV dramas when they were active in the Hong Kong TV scene. Michelle Yeoh’s style, though originated from the same style as Fala Chen (being her sister), was different enough to exhibit higher strength and resolution as compared to Fala Chen’s fluid and gentle movements. Kudos must be given to the fight choreographer, Brad Allan, who had worked for a long time in Hong Kong. It shows that he truly understood martial art movies. It was a pity that this is the last movie he did before he suddenly passed away at 48.
Overall speaking, I really enjoyed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It was worth the wait to watch it in the cinema instead of waiting for streaming. I am glad that I did. I hope others would too.
