IN HIS ELEMENT

Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi finds purpose and supernatural powers (above, across left).

IN THE MOOD FOR LEUNG

As much as the visuals divert, though, it’s the cast that proves the film’s most eye-catching element, Cretton wisely surrounding his likeable yet slightly anonymous lead with a line-up of top-notch talent. Leung, in his first English-speaking role, brings a lifetime of gravitas to the unusually complex Wenwu, a man whose devotion to his late wife (Fala Chen) provides the impetus for his world-endangering ambitions, while Michelle Yeoh exudes both warmth and strength in her role as Ta-Lo’s chief protector.

In Awkwafina, meanwhile, the audience has a perfect proxy, her slack-jawed bemusement at the craziness her workmate introduces her to providing a constant source of pomposity-puncturing humour. That their relationship remains staunchly platonic is one of the few missteps here, there being little reason why the duo couldn’t find romance between verses of ‘Hotel California’.

“You’re a product of all that came before you!” Yeoh tells Liu as he prepares to go mano a mano with his fearsome old man. At its best, though, Shang-Chi doesn’t feel part of some grand masterplan but its own distinct animal: flawed and overblown in places, admittedly, but always enthralling and with a zest that, unlike the backwards-looking

Black Widow, firmly steers the MCU into previously uncharted territory. Neil Smith