REVIEW: SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS

 

Last weekend I went to see Shang Chi and the legend of the ten rings in theaters, making it the first time I've been to the cinema since Spider-Man far from home back in 2019. I..I missed it.

The movie follows Shang Chi, the son of a thousand year old leader of a criminal organization known as the ten rings. After the death of his mother Shang Chi was trained to be an unstoppable martial artist, but when his father asked him to do something he couldn't, he abandoned his family and leaving behind his little sister. Years pass and Shang Chi, his best friend Katy and his sister have to stop his father from unleashing a soul stealing monster from another dimension with the power of ancient artifacts called the ten rings.

As far as plots go it's very straight forward and well written, I especially like how it doesn't just stick to the martial arts aspect of the character and also goes into more fantasy aspects of the world they live in, thus further expanding the scope of the MCU's world building which I'll get to soon.

Characters

As far as characters go the ones in this movie were pretty likeable. 

Simu Liu gave a great performance as Shang-Chi, who is a largely stoic yet fun loving character, he seamlessly adapted to the tonal shifts from comedic to dramatic in the movie. The character of Shang-Chi himself was extremely cool and weirdly relatable personally for... reasons. 

Awkwafina played Katy who served as the best friend/sidekick/comic relief character and I honestly thought she would be the most annoying part of the movie but nah she was actually really likeable and had her own stuff to do and really pulled through in the end.

Fala Chen plays Leiko Wu, Shang-Chi's sister and the organizer of an underground fight club. She's one of the coolest characters in the movie and has some of the best action scenes and development.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai's portrayal of the Mandarin was really really good. He wasn't just a standard one note MCU villain, he actually had some nuance to him and I really liked that, he's definitely in my top 5 Marvel villains.

Visuals

The visuals were probably my favorite part of the movie besides the fight choreography, these have been some of the best special effects marvel has used in any of their movies so far(.... until Eternals anyway). Though my one complaint with the movie is how bad the lighting was, in really dark scenes I couldn't see what was going on and it got really irritating.

Ties to the MCU

There were so many ties to the MCU in this one, I can't get too deep into them because of spoilers but it really felt like it was deep in the universe as you can see in the picture above...WONG IS FIGHTING THE ABOMINATION!!!!  Which is pretty gas. (For those who don't know, Wong is Dr. Strange's sidekick and Abomination is the guy Hulk fought at the end of Incredible Hulk).

Conclusion

Shang-Chi was a good movie, the fight choreography was amazing, the acting was good, the question is...did I like it?

You bet your sweet bippy I did!

8/10