Martial artistry
‘Shang-Chi’ a Marvel-ous take on superhero family fighting fun
Kevin Feige and Marvel have popped a new superhero franchise with “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (Can the next title be pithier?), and the result isn’t as ponderous or as long as the usual Marvel entry. If it sounds like I am damning with faint praise, I am, sort of.
After a short, subtitled, Chinese mythical prelude, we meet our protagonists Sean (a talented and athletic Simu Liu of TV’s wonderful “Kim’s Convenience”) and Katy (Awkwafina), two valet parking attendants at a posh San Francisco hotel. Katy likes to take customers’ super-cars for a spin. Little does she know that her drinking and karaoke partner Sean is really a super-heroic martial arts master named ShangChi. But she finds out fast when he battles several of his evil father Xu Wenwu’s henchmen, including a giant Romanian with a sword for an arm, on an out-of-control San Francisco three-segment bus.
The plot will fill out Shang-Chi’s backstory, his abusive childhood in a mythical village named Ta Lo, his heroic mother and her death, the origin of those eponymous rings of power, which his father wields, and Shang-Chi’s hatred for his father. If “Star Wars” and Marvel didn’t have Sophocles’ tragic King Oedipus as a template, would they even know how to tell a story?
The action, which is spectacular, violent, intricately choreographed and at times ballet-like, is almost constant. Who knew director Destin Daniel Cretton of the sweet, dark little indie “Short Term 12” was really good at this sort of thing? We hear about “the Great Protector,” which turns out to be a water dragon, and of the soul-sucking Dweller in the Dark, which sounds like a thing cooked up by H.P. Lovecraft.
Awkwafina is, as usual, the source of comic gold. Her reactions just get better, and she also serves ably as this film’s romantic heroine. Video of the bus fight goes viral, and Shang-Chi and Katy are swept to former Portuguese colony Macau, where Shang-Chi is thrust into the fighting ring with his martial arts expert younger sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang).
This is how superhero films stage family reunions. Scene-stealers extraordinaire Benedict Wong and Ben Kingsley stand in as extended family. Before you know it, Xu Wenwu (Hong Kong action star Tony Chiu-Wai Leung) returns, and he is up to world-ending no good.
The third act of the film sets the stage for a showdown between Xu Wenwu and his evil soldiers and the magical animals and people of Ta Lo, including Shang-Chi and Xialing’s “Auntie” Ying Nan (Hong Kong star Michelle Yeoh). Ta Lo is kind of a Chinese Jurassic Park, complete with giant lions. “Crazy Rich Asian” alumnae Awkwafina and Yeoh are reunited here for some real family fighting. Katy, who is not a superhero and can’t even speak Chinese, takes up the art of archery in Ta Lo and seems to have a knack for it.
Your inner Darth Vader just knows Shang-Chi is going to have to fight his father to the death. In fact, you know where this screenplay by the unimpressive Dave Callaham (“Wonder Woman 1984”), as well as Cretton and Andrew Lanham of Cretton’s “Just Mercy” is headed every inch of the way, which fans like. The “Hotel California” jokes are fun. Stick around to hear the real thing and see a bit more film.
Is “Shang-Chi” going to be the “Crazy Rich Asians” of superhero films? Or will it flop? Stay tuned.