You are useless. Katy and Shaun, best friends, live in San Francisco, work for an upscale hotel during the day by driving guests’ cars into the parking garage, at night they drink the local karaoke bars empty. They wave of indications of the seriousness of life unmoved, parking a car is professionally demanding enough for them, so they are very determined. For the movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, that drives expectations upwards: These two want fun. One will share it with them.
The fun explodes quickly in all directions, the film sets a speed and variability that you can hardly keep up. It begins in local public transport, in a bus, in which the friends are standing hungover when a group of thugs shows up and involves Shaun in a brutal fight between seats, bars and straps. The brakes strike in the turmoil, the bus driver too, Katy takes over the wheel, the whole bus breaks apart at full speed. One sees a battle choreography of breathtaking precision in a very small space, in which director Destin Daniel Cretton also reveals a secret: Shaun is actually an indomitable Chinese martial arts hero named Shang-Chi, who is on the run from his even more indomitable father.
The Marvel studios have perfected virtuoso action scenes, even under difficult conditions, such as in local public transport.
(Photo: Walt Disney Pictures – Marvel Studios / imago images / Prod.DB)
The usual mischief of the Marvel universe gathers in this father, so he is a sinister villain on the one hand who has subjugated entire peoples for generations, immortal through the power of ten magical bracelets. On the other hand, he lets himself be tamed by a magical martial artist with whom he has two children and remains peaceful until her untimely death. He puts the pain about it in the kung-fu training of the offspring and in a jagged resumption of his criminal career. The film tells of the love-hate relationship between children and their father, who sometimes fight against him and then with him again. Their overriding motif is to save China from evil forces that steal people’s souls, or even greater, to save the world – that is the minimum for a film adaptation of a Marvel comic book.
For the first time in a Marvel movie, the leading roles are played by Asian actors
You can watch the movie well without knowing the Marvel worlds. The main reason the name has to be mentioned is because of the cast: For the first time in a Marvel movie, the leading roles are played by Asian actors, or those with Asian roots. There was a lot of pounding right away, Destin Daniel Cretton, himself an American from Maui, Hawaii, brought two of the early talents of Hong Kong cinema, Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh. Faces and movement of the two bring to life the magic of an old-fashioned martial arts genre, especially Michelle Yeoh with her expansive, flowing fighting style reminds of her presence in Ang Lee’s “Tiger & Dragon” twenty years ago.
Here they play villain father and hero aunt, facing them are Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Awkwafina as Katy, both young, urban comedy stars. Simu Liu is Canadian, the son of Chinese immigrants, legend has it that he got the role from Marvel Studios on a simple Twitter request. Awkwafina, whose real name is Nora Lum, can do just about anything, from ironic imitation rap to developing semi-biographical sitcoms like “Awkwafina is Nora from Queens”, and in 2020 she was the first Asian-American actress to win a Golden Globe for her leading role in tragic comedy “The Farewell”.
So there is a lot of personal fame flowing into “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, which is clearly visible on the screen. The actors take their superhero role seriously, even Awkwafina turns into an archer of stature in an emergency. The action rages through the night club or the fairytale forest, interrupted by a few lyrical moments in which wise words are spoken for self-discovery. Destin Daniel Cretton wants to make a cinema of opposites, magical tricks and war equipment, martial arts and fights, lucky dragons and bat monsters share the plot. Occasionally the combination works like the American idea of a Chinese fantasy film; one often has the feeling that one has seen everything in a similar way before. But that doesn’t mean that the useless people involved aren’t having fun. And that is conveyed, because that is what Marvel can do very well: fulfill the entertainment mission, whether with or without realism.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – USA 2021. Director: Destin Daniel Cretton. With Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Michelle Yeoh, Meng’er Zhang, Ben Kingsley. Walt Disney Pictures, 132 minutes.