"A blood debt has to be paid by blood."
Hello everyone!
And thus far, it hasn't disappointed me yet.
After a rough start with Far From Home, Black Widow helped us rise out of the abyss, but it's tonight's movie that REALLY gets the ball rolling, and us soaring! Rhyme unintended, but I mean, we work with what we've got here.
I'll admit I went into the movie more-or-less blind, as I've only seen the teaser trailer way back when, then nothing whatsoever, and ended up watching the movie late as well.
It paid off, though.
It SO paid off.
Without further ado, let's open the scroll of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, shall we?
Links to previous Marvel-related blog posts can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual.
Shang-Chi was the movie I didn't see coming, though I will admit to being tentatively hopeful after reviews I'd gotten from friends saying it was a good one. However, Marvel can sometimes struggle with origin stories for characters that are maybe not AS well known as Iron Man or Captain America, for example, so I wasn't sure if I wanted another one of a guy just learning the ropes, again.
Then the bus scene happens in this movie and you literally go: ... oh. Okay. It's THAT kind of story!
But, to begin: the movie opens with a prologue telling us about a man who found Ten Rings, powerful artifacts that gave him the abilities of a god and enabled him to both conquer the world AND live pretty much forever as long as he wore them.
Then he went to conquer a mythical village called Ta Lo, and got his ass handed to him by a beautiful woman who then disappeared right afterwards, which obviously changed everything.
I will say that the fight sequences as a whole in this movie look more like dance choreography and I LOVE THEM. This first one we see between Wenwu (Tony Leung) and Li (Fala Chen) is an absolute masterpiece, and you can easily interpret it as an actual dance rather than fighting, which makes sense when you consider these two fall in love afterwards.
This is where we switch to our protagonist, Shaun (Simu Liu), who works as a valet with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) and to his friends seems to be afraid of growing up, preferring a low-paying job and partying all night long. This is put to a hard test on the bus the next day when they're attacked by goons wanting the necklace Shaun's mother gave him when he was little, and what follows is Speed, but on steroids, as Shaun kicks ass and saves everyone.
This obviously demands an explanation, so he tells Katy that, after their mother died, his sister and he were left with an emotionless, closed-off father, who trained Shaun (real name Shang-Chi) to be an assassin, like his Ten Rings organization. And it looks as though Wenwu is now headed after Xialing, Shang's sister (and her amulet), next.
Ergo, he and Katy show up in Macao, where Xialing runs her own fighting arena, and ends up handing Shang his butt right before the Ten Rings make their spectacular appearance, after having been led there by Shang who thought his sister was the one to send him a postcard with her address (spoiler alert, she didn't).
A lot of fighting, breaking, falling off tall buildings later, Wenwu himself appears, greets his children like a decade hasn't passed since he's seen them last, and takes them (and Katy) back to the family compound where he reveals that, surprise! Li is trapped in her home village, and begging him to save her from behind a rock door that they've shut her into.
Xialing, Shang and Katy: *cricket sounds*
Yeah, you and everybody else, too.
The guy is CLEARLY coocoo for cocoa puffs BUT, the two necklaces Li left her children do in fact point the way "home" as she mentioned, only they form a map of the maze that leads to Ta Lo; now Wenwu has all he needs, and if the Elders in Ta Lo won't let him get to his wife, well, he'll just burn the village to the ground.
Naturally opposing this, Shang and Xialing get tossed into prison, where they meet none other than Trevor Slattery, the actor who, WAAAY back in Iron Man 3, impersonated The Mandarin, a terrorist supposedly out to destroy the world, in some sort of mimicry of Wenwu, really.
Now he's Wenwu's prisoner-slash-jester, but luckily for them all he has this weird animal-thing friend Morris, who happens to be a creature from Ta Lo, and who offers to guide our lot to the village BEFORE the maze opens, so they can warn the Elders. With Xialing busting them all out (because after her brother was sent to assassinate the leader of the gang who killed their mother - spoiler alert, Wenwu's past came back to haunt him and he was away while the gang attacked their home, killing Li - she escaped through tunnels running under the entire compound), they hijack a car and head to the maze.
Ta Lo is basically in a different dimension, and its inhabitants, as explained by their aunt Nan (the brilliant Michelle Yeoh) who ends up welcoming them, protect the gate behind which their ancestors locked up the Dweller-in-Darkness. Basically, this is some sort of weird creature that sucks the souls of every living thing it encounters, and they only managed to defeat him with the help of the Great Protector (a dragon, natch).
With Xialing being given her preferred weapon to fight (unlike under her father who has no female recruits in his army), Katy undergoing archery lessons, and Shang learning some hard truths and realities, they all prepare for Wenwu's arrival.
Nan explains he isn't the first, and that the rings are at this point a liability, not a help: they are the only thing strong enough to break the Dweller out. So naturally they put up a fight, but Shang ends up losing the duel to his father, who goes to start breaking the door down, which releases some of the Dweller's minions. These descend onto the battlefield to suck up some unwilling souls, and while Xialing and Nan tell the Ten Rings commander they need to fight together, he's like nah fam, I ain't falling for THAT!
Then he nearly dies because his weapons are useless, and quickly changes his tune to LET'S FIGHT THIS SIDE-BY-SIDE!
Meanwhile, the Great Protector revives Shang and enters the battle, while Shang goes to repeat the duel with his father; only this time, he embraces both the light and the dark within him, finally understanding the lesson his mother gave him as a child, to take what they gave him and make it his own, and ends up beating Wenwu.
JUST in time for the Dweller to stage a prison break, and Wenwu to sacrifice himself for his son, finally understanding what he's been trying to tell him (that he abandoned his children when they needed him most, in favour of the rings and power instead). Just before he dies, he passes the rings on to Shang, and with some help from Xialing, a timely arrow from Katy (Bard the Bowman ain't got nothing on her!) and the Great Protector, they manage to effectively kill Dweller-in-Darkness, for good.
Together, they then pay their respects to the dead and set them free, before Shang and Katy return home, where they tell their story to their disbelieving friends ... who only start believing when Wong shows up through a portal (after first making a random appearance in the fighting ring) and summons Shang like he's the matchmaker from Mulan.
Present!
Shang and Katy step through to Kamar-Taj, where we later see that the rings are actually a source of interest and apprehension for Earth's mightiest heroes, as explained by Captain Marvel and Bruce Banner themselves - because they're emitting some sort of signal, and Shang using them could be felt all the way to Kamar-Taj.
In the meantime, Xialing takes over Wenwu's operations instead of dismantling them, like she promised her brother, so we'll probably be seeing HER again in the future, as well, but for good or evil remains to be seen (she also introduces female fighters, because, equality).
In the immortal words of the Hulk: welcome to the circus!
And what a welcome it's been. This movie fired on all fronts with full steam ahead and I FREAKING LOVED IT. I loved the casting choices, I love the fighting choreography, I loved the story (it's always the mom's death, let's be real, going right back to Snow-White and Bambi!), and most of all I just loved the thing as a whole.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings packs a powerful punch, and I can't WAIT to see more of these heroes on screen ... but please, no more Eagles karaoke. PLEASE.
But given their location, as well as the official trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness just dropping, well, we can probably safely say we'll see them sooner rather than later. I am totally okay with that!
11/10 recommend!
xx
*images and video not mine
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