Year 14, Day 7 - 1/7/22 - Movie #4,008
BEFORE: Well, I sure had a lot of choices after "Spider-Man", a lot of possible paths. I've got about 8 films on the list with Alfred Molina, only three of them are sort of horror movies. I've got four films with Marisa Tomei (1 romance, 1 Christmas, 1 horror) and then there's "Dune" with Zendaya in it, only that's my link to February 1, so I want to circle back to that later. I've got four other films with Benedict Cumberbatch, that's another way to go, do you see my problem? Then there's also "Tick, Tick...Boom" with Andrew Garfield, and of course there are three other films with J.K. Simmons, but there are probably always three films with J.K. Simmons on my list.
But I'd like to get to one of the other Marvel films, so Benedict Wong carries over from "Spider-Man: No Way Home". I could also have linked to "Venom: Let There Be Carnage", but of course I didn't know that until I watched the Spider-Man film. But that doesn't really seem to go anywhere I want to go after that, and I've already worked out a way to get to February 1, through a bunch of action films. More about that tomorrow. I don't have a quick way to get to "The Eternals", at least not at this moment, but I'll work on that. And I think I can pick up those other Benedict Cumberbatch films when "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" comes out in...jeez, May 2022? That's not too far off.
THE PLOT: Shang-Chi, the master of weaponry-based Kung Fu, is forced to confront his past after being drawn into the Ten Rings organization.
AFTER: Yeah, I couldn't have really watched this one last summer when I was working at the movie theater, I think it premiered JUST after I left AMC. Anyway, it wasn't high on my priority list, but I've heard good things about it since then. How badly I want to see any particular Marvel movie usually depends on whether I read that comic book, and I've never read the "Shang-Chi" book. I think it was popular in the 1970's during the whole "Kung Fu" craze, and I just was never into that sort of thing. But this (plus vampire superheroes, multi-culti-Gods and such) is the direction that the group-mind says that the MCU should be headed in. A more cynical man would point out that somebody was clearly thinking about how huge the Chinese market is when they put "Shang-Chi" into development.
But I ended up really liking this one, probably more than I liked "Spider-Man: No Way Home", even though it doesn't have a superhero character, exactly, more like somebody well-trained in martial arts, and then he ends up with super-powers by way of these mystical rings by the end of the film. For most of the film, the rings - which are "rings" because they're circular, not rings to be worn on fingers, so I guess they're more like "bracelets" than rings - are worn by Shang-Chi's father, Xu Wenwu, who's been alive for a thousand years, and may have gone by other names, possibly even The Mandarin, only that seems to be a big joke now. The "Mandarin" seen in "Iron Man 3" wasn't who he claimed to be, he wasn't a Chinese villain or any kind of terrorist, he was just an actor hired to play a terrorist leader, a fact that this film keeps reminding us about by bringing back Trevor Slattery and portraying him as an actor, a very gullible and naive one.
If I do remember the Marvel Comics, Shang-Chi was the son of a villain, one named Fu Manchu, only to use that name now for a character would be very problematic, because that name is shared with a literary villain character created in the novels and short stories of Sax Rohmer, so there's no way Marvel/Disney could have cleared that. Plus anything written about Chinese characters back in the 1930's is probably wildly racist, so anything named Fu Manchu or even close to it could be perceived as pejorative now. That's OK, the MCU doesn't have to carry over ALL the details from a comic, just the key elements.
Still, I'm left with a feeling that "Shang-Chi" then sort of borrowed a bunch of elements from other Marvel movies and pieced something together that fits their playbook - there's a mystical hidden land of warriors, where technology is so advanced that it seems like magic, which sounds a lot like Wakanda, it just has a different name here. I know, there are a bunch of differences between Wakanda and Ta Lo, I just mean that the concept is the same, it's just in a different location. Shang-Chi had a dead mother and T'Challa had a dead father, so similar yet also different. And he has to train and fight and pick up his father's mantle in the end, that's all "Black Panther" kind of stuff, just transposed to China.
There's still a ton of new stuff here, like a martial arts battle on a runaway bus through the hilly streets of San Francisco - new to the MCU that is, but not new to people who have seen both "Speed" and "What's Up, Doc?" (RIP, Peter Bogdanovich!). But Razorfist is a Marvel comics character that I never thought I'd see on the big-screen - they've got thousands more where that came from, kids! And then of course when the gang finally makes it to Ta Lo, there are all kinds of wonderful magical, impossible creatures who live in that pocket dimension, like hunduns and giant lion-like things and maybe even a dragon or two. But then even there, aren't we borrowing just a little bit from the ending of "The Hobbit"? Hmm?
And yeah, Awkwafina's in this one, so a point off for that. I just can't stand her acting style, this isn't a racist Asian thing, I just don't like HER. She's got only two expressions, one where she's got this big goofy grin and the other where she looks very concerned or confused, and there's just no in-between. That's not acting, it's just reacting, if you ask me. Over-emoting, I guess you'd call it. Not a fan. Though she spends more time here doing the concerned/confused look, the other one still gets play here, and it's just too big a swing in either direction, most of the time. I won't watch that stupid show "Nora from Queens" that she's in, I can't even stand to watch the ads for it.
Martial arts is another thing I don't really understand - but not understanding boxing doesn't keep me from watching boxing movies, so I'm going to try to roll with it. I've got a couple other martial-arts movies coming up, I was going to watch a famous one tomorrow, but now I think I see a way to work in another couple of Asian-themed movies. Hey, if January 2021 had a focus on Swedish movies, then January 2022 can certainly take a couple of looks at Chinese culture. More on that tomorrow.
Also starring Simu Liu, Awkwafina (last seen in "Paradise Hills"), Meng'er Zhang, Fala Chen, Florian Munteanu (last seen in "Creed II"), Michelle Yeoh (last seen in "Sunshine"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Ronny Chieng (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Yuen Wah, Jodi Long (last seen in "Beginners"), Dallas Liu, Paul He, Tsai Chin (last seen in "Now You See Me 2"), Andy Le, Stephanie Hsu (last seen in "Set It Up"), Kunal Dudheker (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Zach Cherry (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Jade Xu (last seen in "Black Widow"), Stella Ye, Fernando Chien (last seen in "Warrior"), Jayden Zhang, Arnold Sun, Elodie Fong, Harmonie He, the voices of Dee Bradley Baker (last heard in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Tim Roth (last seen in "Arbitrage") with cameos from Brie Larson (last seen in "The Gambler"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "The Brothers Bloom").
RATING: 7 out of 10...umm. gee, if only this movie had ten of something that I could cite here.
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