It’s an entertaining romp, although the formulaic quality is becoming a little obvious. The mythical component of Shang-Chi is closer tonally to Thor. Inevitably, there is a mid-credits sting that folds Shang-Chi back into the larger MCU picture, and establishes the essentially genial and good-natured comic strand which is an important part of the film: it is different from the theatrical seriousness of, say, Black Panther. She is also the sister of Shang-Chi’s late mother, whose tragic death is the source of all this drama, and whose memory fatefully haunts Mandarin’s every waking thought. In fact, the word “Mandarin” could itself be regarded as problematic and orientalist, but the movie itself has a witty and spirited rejoinder to these points, dredging up a surprise character of the same name from a previous MCU movie, who has something to say about racist typecasting in the acting world.Īnd so Shang-Chi and Katy are to encounter Shang-Chi’s long estranged sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) who runs a cage-fighting syndicate in Macau, and also Shang-Chi’s aunt Jiang Nan, played by Michelle Yeoh, who is the effective matriarch of the family’s home village in China. In this retconned universe, Shang-Chi is the son of someone called Mandarin, played with steely coolness and charisma by Tony Leung, and it is Mandarin who has his eyes on the pendant. In the original comic book series, Shang-Chi’s dad was in fact Dr Fu Manchu, the now justly discredited racist yellowface figure famously (or infamously) portrayed on screen by Peter Sellers at a low career point. It also leads to a revelation: Shang-Chi’s father is in fact a legendary immortal in possession of 10 occult rings of huge power. A scary and mysterious crew of tough guys corners Shaun and Katy on a city bus, demanding the pendant that Shaun always wears around his neck this leads to an enjoyable, rip-roaring close-quarter punch-up, as the vehicle careers downhill out of control.
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