Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Review

Oh boy, so this is a hard movie to review. It does a lot of things so, so well. For 2/3 of the movie you have these amazingly choregraphed fight scenes, certainly some of the best if not the best in the MCU. It manages to pull off both wuxia and Hong Kong action in the MCU and it fits! I also think the cast does well, Awkwafina's role is a little too Awkwafina for my tastes but the movie does a pretty good job of fitting this normie into a super powered situation. And I also want to call out the movie's tone which is remarkably well done, this is one of the more serious MCU movies and jokes are few and far between, but that helps them land better. Most of the punchlines are unexpected which makes them funnier than the constant quips in some MCU films. And yeah, going back to the action it's so so good for most of the film. There are a lot of fights, and they're just great. Also, I want to call out the Ben Kingsley bit for being just fantastic. Now for the mixed bag: I think the film's visual design is mostly very good. Things make sense and look good. However there are some things that don't hit. The film does have a nice visual distinction between Shang-Chi and his father's use of the rings (going to call these yellow and blue below). However many times his father's use looks very out of place. This is best seen in the first scene with the rings where they create a forcefield bubble. And there are a lot of moments like that where the blue ring powers look like MCU bullshit, not martial arts. And this is a shame because the film does manage to have plenty of moments with the blue rings showing them used as raw, brute force. Whereas when yellow are much more graceful. And this works well! It's just unfortunate they didn't stick to brute force vs elegance and added in all the lighting whip bullshit. On a similar note the ten rings goons are fine but the crossbows stood out as something stupid. They generally fire one or two shots in the 30? minute final battle and having them at all raises more of the "why don't they have guns?" question. They're fucking ninjas, they don't need energy crossbows. And on to the bad. The final act is a mess. On so many levels. First of all the big bad and his stuff look stupid and out of place for both MCU and wuxia. The dragon and the pixiu look fantastic, it's a shame they're fighting something that doesn't fit. The core problem here is that the action (Hong Kong and wuxia) that has propelled the film so well falls by the wayside. We've got the dumb crossbows, we've got the soul suckers, and then Shang-Chi, who propels the movie with his fists can't even use them. Even the narrative beats in the end make no sense. Shang-Chi shows his father he can master the rings (in a way that is never explained) and yet that is entirely pointless as narrative or character development as shortly after, in a much more important story beat his father passes them on to him to defeat the big monster. In no way is it shown that his father passes them on because of that mastery, it's just that he's dying. It's a real shame that the final act of the movie abandons what made the film exciting and fun in favor of upscaling the threats and becoming very generic MCU fighting the big bad (I have to imagine there are some shots from the final fight that look similar to Avengers 1's battle in New York). It's not all bad, the water magic in this fight is very cool, but that doesn't make up for how long and boring the sequence is as a whole. This movie excels, just excels when people are punching each other. I just wish the writers had realized that.

Consumption history1

1. Sep 8, 2021

   Completed★ 3.5 / 5

   Theater viewing