Marvel Studios' Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

[dascoyne]

Nothing's perfect in this World...wait, Death: that's the only Perfection

Not sure I would go with perfect on that
Certain, yes, perfect no.

Maybe your idea of perfection is different than mine

I'm guessing neither of you has had Franklin Barbecue in Austin.

 

[ScourgiousJinx]

Nothing's perfect in this World...wait, Death: that's the only Perfection

I was being sarcastic...some seem to assume that if you criticize something you must hate it, even if you clearly state otherwise. I agree, absolutely nothing is perfect.

 

[Treadwell]

Enjoyed it muchly! The fights, especially the bus, were great.

spoilers

Puzzled by how Captain Marvel and Banner appeared in their holo conference call. The movie seems to have happened during the blip or shortly after Endgame. Shouldn't Danvers have her short haircut? Why is Banner Banner and not Prof Hulk? Why does he look so old?

 

[renaissance_man]

Enjoyed it muchly! The fights, especially the bus, were great.

spoilers

Puzzled by how Captain Marvel and Banner appeared in their holo conference call. The movie seems to have happened during the blip or shortly after Endgame. Shouldn't Danvers have her short haircut? Why is Banner Banner and not Prof Hulk? Why does he look so old?

I trust Marvel to answer those questions soon!

 

[Usagi Pilgrim]

Enjoyed it muchly! The fights, especially the bus, were great.

spoilers

Puzzled by how Captain Marvel and Banner appeared in their holo conference call. The movie seems to have happened during the blip or shortly after Endgame. Shouldn't Danvers have her short haircut? Why is Banner Banner and not Prof Hulk? Why does he look so old?

I personally hadn't thought about the timeline, but you brought up some good questions, so I had to go look it up, & basically...

No one knows. Lol

Some producers have said that they know, but can't say, but I found a couple sites that tried to 'Sherlock' it out. Most seem to agree that with ENDGAME taking place in 2023, this film is a year or so later in 2024.

A couple things noted were the hair that you mentioned, & also, on the streets, there were posters for something called BLIPSYNC, which could be a dating service for those that reappeared. Either way, the posters seem to be extremely worn & faded, which would suggest a fair amount of time since Hulk snapped everyone back.

The arm being still in the sling could just speak to the amount of damage that had been done, & the change in appearance will supposedly be addressed in the SHE-HULK series on Disney+.

 

[sbaxter]

The arm being still in the sling could just speak to the amount of damage that had been done, & the change in appearance will supposedly be addressed in the SHE-HULK series on Disney+.

The idea I've heard floated is that if Banner has a large role in She-Hulk, they can't afford to have him spend the entirety of his screen time as Hulk on the TV budget, and so will have to come up with a story reason why he no longer spends all his time that way. Another idea, at least for me, is that I have wondered ever since Endgame where they would go with the Hulk as a character moving forward. I enjoyed seeing the character as Professor Hulk in that film, but I don't think he's as appealing long-term without being a "rage monster" at least some of the time. The way he was used in the films between Avengers and Thor: Ragnarok was one I really liked, where it seemed that if Banner brought him out willingly, he was able to do more strategically-targeted smashing as opposed to the more indiscriminate wanton destruction that seemed to result when Banner changed against his will. And really, who among us hasn't been able to sympathize with Banner wanting a normal life, while also secretly wishing we had the Hulk at our disposal at times? That's what makes him such a beloved wish-fulfillment character for kids, who have so little power. But the half-hearted smashing we saw in the return to the Battle of New York in Endgame was not something I really want to revisit so much, at least not without exploring the idea of what it would take to drive that version of the character to "Hulk smash!" mode.* They had been making Hulk a bit smarter in each appearance, with him being a relative motor-mouth in Thor: Ragnarok as compared to his earlier appearances. I like that. I'd just like to see him continue to have to struggle to maintain control to some degree.

Some have also suggested that what we're seeing may be laying the underpinning, long-term, for the "Maestro" character from the Planet Hulk storyline, while Phase 4 may be building to some sort of adaptation of Secret Wars.

*And they did sort of hint in that direction in Endgame a couple of times -- first, his reaction when Thor grabbed him early on, and later when he hurled the bench across the lake in frustration.

SSB

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

I just saw it and I need to see it again to see how much I might have not caught versus what simply wasn't conveyed. This is definitely a while post-Unsnappening (I refuse to call it the Blip). Overall, that has been addressed... I don't want to say sloppily, but definitely not completely coherently. Black Widow and Loki stand outside the present continuity, so they aren't factored in here.

Spider-Man: Far From Home and WandaVision both seem to start a few days after the end of Endgame (by this, I mean Wanda stomps into S.W.O.R.D. looking for Vision's body pretty much as soon as she found out they had it, then drove out to Westview right after). Falcon & Winter Soldier feels like it's a little further out than that -- there's been time for people displaced by the Returned to be angry in refugee camps and organizing into groups opposed to what the world governments are doing. By Legend of the Ten Rings, things seem to have returned to something that feels more normal to everyone. What is less clear in this film is who got Snapped and who didn't. Trevor didn't. Pretty sure "Real Mandarin" didn't. Pretty sure his sister didn't. A five year disruption in their enterprises would have seen them either collapse or someone else would have set themselves up as leader and the power struggle upon their return would have been messy.

I need to see the scene where Shaun and Katy are out with their friends again, and also at Katy's home. Need to listen harder to the dialogue. I can't tell if they were both Snapped, or both not, but it feels like it wasn't a case where one went and the other didn't. I get the feeling neither of them was Snapped, because he says nothing about those five years factoring into his time hiding from his dad. For something as major as it was, I'm surprised there wasn't more mention about the impact of half the Earth's population disappearing on the Ten Rings' operations. Or just more nuance in general about how different people reacted differently to the disappearances and reappearances. In Endgame, after five years everything looked hella bleak. After five years, everyone was still dazed, in shock, and picking up the pieces. Even if Legend of the Ten Rings is a good year or so after Endgame, that's a seriously rapid recovery compared to how things were dragging on after everyone was gone.

Mostly it for my criticisms. There were a few things throughout that I felt were rushed, but I'd be hard-pressed to say where this would need to be split into two films to give them room to play out more organically. I really liked the dynamic between Shang-Chi and Katy. I have previously not been terribly impressed with Awkwafina, and I was skeptical when she was cast, but -- like everyone else in the MCU so far -- this seems to be the part she was born to play. I like that she's sort of the Bucky for this setting. Shang-Chi starts at a pretty high level (despite hiding it under a bushel for the first bit), gets some training and a serious power-up, deals with his mental hangups... but she has more of the Hero's Journey growth arc. I'm almost sad now that we have Kate Bishop coming in in the Hawkeye series to take over the mantle, because I'd be happy with Feige & Co. throwing us a curve and making Katy the new Hawkeye.

Another thing that occurred to me is the dimensional nexuses in the Marvel universe. There's a big one in the Himalayas, with Kamar-Taj up there in Kathmandu, the portal to K'un-Lun, and now access to Tan Lo. England is one, too, with the London Sanctum, the convergence zone around Southern England from Dark World, and Excalibur's lighthouse (which I dearly, dearly hope shows up in the MCU) in that same general vicinity. I'm guessing New York and Hong Kong are near dimensional nexuses, too. But I feel like that really doesn't provide even coverage of the planet. There's been profoundly little of Western North America, South America, or the Pacific. Something involving meso-American lore seems fitting -- Quetzalcoatl bears a striking similarity to Chinese lung dragons, after all. And Polynesian lore holds similar beliefs about their great volcanos to the Himalayas and the British Isles. And this movie also opens a door for Fin Fang Foom. I wonder if we're going to see more of Tan Lo than the village guarding the Dragon Seal (that is now no longer needed, with the seal and the Souleater destroyed).

 

[Sundowner]

I Thoroughly enjoyed this film and it’s so different from other movies in the MCU. One thing that I’ve been thinking over is how Death Dealer was like Boba Fett. Quiet badass assassin that meets their end rather abruptly without really getting any background on him/her in the film.