San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘Shang-Chi’ movie’s superpower is re-creating S.F. in Australia.
“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” Marvel Studios’ first movie focused on an Asian hero, is packed with gravity-defying stunts, fantastical legendary creatures and awesome martial arts action.
Perhaps its most impressive trick, though, was re-creating San Francisco in Australia.
“We originally had planned to film a week in San Francisco at the tail end of our shoot,” Simu Liu, the Chinese Canadian actor who plays master of kung fu Shang-Chi, told The Chronicle in a video interview. “Then, of course, COVID happened and we had to drastically re-evaluate what was plausible. We rebuilt the entrance to the Fairmont San Francisco on a giant parking lot in Sydney, and we used matte paintings and all sorts of awesome effects technology to, basically, cheat it.”
In the movie Shang-Chi, the highly trained son of Chinese crime lord Wenwu (Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung), hides from his father’s Ten Rings organization in California. His best friend, fellow Fairmont parking valet Katy (Awkwafina), knows nothing about his violent past — until they’re attacked by Ten Rings operatives on a bus, forcing Shang-Chi to reveal his formidable fighting skills.
Though mostly shot on a soundstage Down Under, a second photography unit did capture exteriors of the bus careening down hills and crashing outside Ghirardelli Square for a week in October. It was the first major production in San Francisco since the pandemic began.
“I was looking at those dailies in Sydney,” the film’s director, Destin Daniel Cretton, said in a separate video “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (PG-13) in theaters Friday, Sept. 3.
Online extra
For The Chronicle’s review of “ShangChi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” go to datebook.sf chronicle.com. interview from Los Angeles. “We had two San Francisco buses shipped out to Australia and had them up on these giant, mechanical gimbals, 20 feet in the air. We could make them turn and shift so it was like they were going down a 45-degree angle and we were right in San Francisco. It was a big coordination with the second unit to make sure that what they were shooting would fit with all of the choreo that we did onstage.”
The sequence’s creation was fascinating to watch according to New Yorker Akwafina, even if it did cause a little friction with relatives.
“All of my family in San Francisco was like, ‘You were in San Francisco and you didn’t call me?’ because they knew we were filming something there,” the actress said with a laugh during a video interview also from L.A. “I was probably giving good acting because I genuinely did not know what was going on in terms of how we were spinning and seeing the most intense fight sequences when I turned around. I was in awe.”
“It was tough, we spent nearly a month on that bus,” Liu confirmed. “I banged my shins, my forehead, my elbows on every possible part of that bus!”
The “Kim’s Convenience” actor trained for months in Toronto and Los Angeles before heading to Sydney in October 2019, where he continued to practice, stretch and build strength for three to four hours a day throughout the COVID-disrupted shoot.
“Just to get that Marvel body, that superhero look, whatever you want to call it, meant a lot to me,” Liu said. “As
the first Asian title hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I didn’t want to be lacking in that department.
“The shared goal was creating some of the best action that Marvel’s ever seen,” added Liu, who credits the film’s unique blend of martial arts and superhero movie aesthetics to supervising stunt coordinator Brad Allan, an Australian veteran of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team who tragically died on Aug. 7. (The film is dedicated to Allan.)
Cretton, whose filmography mainly consists of small-scale, real-world dramas with a not-in-Captain-Marvelmode Brie Larson (“Short Term 12,” “The Glass Castle,” “Just Mercy”) hadn’t even wanted to tackle anything as huge as a Marvel movie before he learned “Shang-Chi” was in development.
“It was really daunting at first. It was like going back to film school,” the Japanese American filmmaker admitted. “But I was surrounded by such a great team that it became a really fun process for me. When I would ask questions and try to understand what their craft was and what we were able to do, they were extremely generous and helped present to me what was possible.”
Even within the big Marvel mythmaking machine, Awkwafina said she was glad to see that Cretton stayed true to his indie director roots.
“Destin was always open to improv,” said the star and creator of the TV show “Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens.” “I felt totally safe and free and, like, not crazy that I was doing this. The thing with Destin is, nothing was ever too big or small to ask.”
Liu, Awkwafina and Cretton never read “Shang-Chi” comics before getting involved with the film. But that’s probably just as well; created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin in 1973, the character was originally conceived as the son of Fu Manchu, the stereotypical Chinese villain dreamed up by English author Sax Rohmer more than 100 years ago.
“I didn’t really feel a connection to the character, despite the fact that he was portrayed as Asian,” Liu said of the comics’ hero. “He was created by non-Asians, and that resulted in something that was well-intentioned but ultimately didn’t reflect an accurate Asian character with a fully dimensional background. What was really exciting about this movie was that, from very early on, we put the pieces in place to tell an authentically Asian and Asian American story.”
“We wanted to do this movie to bring this specific character into the MCU, but just as importantly to bring representation of another kind to this film,” Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said during an online news conference. “That was really what Destin brought in his pitch.”
However, corporate faith in the project was interpreted as shaky by some when Bob Chapek, CEO of Marvel owner Disney, described “Shang-Chi” in a mid-August earnings call as “an interesting experiment for us.” He was referring to releasing the movie exclusively in theaters Friday, Sept. 3, during a COVID resurgence, and not simultaneously for home streaming, as was done in July with Marvel’s “Black Widow” (and which that film’s star, Scarlett Johansson, is now suing the studio over).
Liu quickly responded to Chapek’s remarks with a tweet that read, in part, “We are not an experiment. We are the underdog; the underestimated. We are the ceiling-breakers. We are the celebration of culture and joy that will persevere after an embattled year.”
Liu later clarified his position to The Chronicle.
“I just want people to know that everybody at Disney, everybody on my team and myself, we’re all on the same page about this movie,” Liu said. “We are incredibly fired up and so incredibly excited for people to see the movie when it comes out in theaters. When I made that initial tweet, that’s what I wanted to convey more than anything.”
Awkwafina summed up what makes “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” so significant.
“In my career, I’ve had the privilege of being a part of all-Asian casts,” said “The Farewell,” “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Raya and the Last Dragon” actress. “I can see its importance in this film, and how representation is always evolving. To see now a superhero that kids in generations to come can look at and see themselves in is really special.”
Bob Strauss is a Los Angeles freelance journalist who has covered movies, television and the business of Hollywood for more than three decades.