We’re skipping a couple of Christopher Eccleston-less episodes and picking up again here. This is a detour episode, like some of the ones we had earlier this season, doubling back to catch up with characters who’ve been away from the main action. In this case, we’re circling back around to Meg and the G.R.
After the events of last season’s finale, the G.R. is in need of new leadership, and Meg is ready to step up. She has ideas that are outside of their usual practices, some of which make the old guard nervous. Her biggest plan involves Miracle, and we get ready to head into the season finale with the promise of a major clash.
I was interested in Meg last season, but I’ll be honest: until she popped back up here, I’d completely forgotten that we’d barely seen her at all this season. But now that she’s in the forefront in this episode, Liv Tyler steps up and reminds me what I liked about the character in the first place. She has this unassuming softness about her, but there’s a steeliness underneath that you’ll run into if you try to eff with her. She’s always related to the G.R. in a somewhat different way than their other members, and here, she’s really making waves, taking charge and trying to create something new.
I like how her story ties in with Miracle, both in the past and the present. It’s nice to get some of Meg’s backstory, exploring why she was targeted as a potential G.R. recruit in the first place, and the Miracle connection fits with what they establish for her. Her present-day plans for the town seem really messed up but are also in line with her state of mind. While characters like Nora and Matt are desperate for whatever promise Miracle seems to hold for them, Meg resents the town and its people. Where others see a blessing that they want a piece of, Meg sees an unfairness that demands restitution; she wants them to feel what the rest of the world has been forced to feel these last four years (It’s now been about a year since the series premiere, with another anniversary of the departures fast approaching.)
It’s another episode with just a short appearance from Christopher Eccleston. As with “Lens,” Matt is only in one scene with the major focal point character of the episode. He bumps into Meg while she’s setting up her plans for Miracle, and over the course of one small scene, Eccleston navigates Matt’s surprise and delight at seeing her, turning into suspicion and foreboding as it starts to sink in that she’s there for a very different reason than he is. I like how the tension slowly builds here.
* * *
Days before Shang-Chi’s opening, GQ is providing us with a mini-treasure-trove of Tony Leung Chiu-wai press. My jaw honestly dropped a little when I opened up YouTube and saw that he’d done one of their “__________ Breaks Down Their Most Iconic Characters” videos, which are always cool to watch. I like what he says about Shang-Chi, I’m thrilled that the video included Hard Boiled and Hero, and I enjoy his remarks on the other highlighted films, especially Happy Together and Lust, Caution.
I then realized the video was a companion to a nice profile/interview in the magazine. As with the Elle Men Singapore piece, it’s less of a Shang-Chi interview than a Tony Leung Chiu-wai interview that includes talk about Shang-Chi, which is fine.
Some great tidbits in here. Here’s Destin Daniel Cretton on realizing the work he’d have to do to woo Leung for the role:
Cretton, the first Asian-American filmmaker to direct a Marvel movie, brought a different approach. “If we are going after an actor like that,” he says, “the character needs to be worthy of that ask. So using Tony as our guiding light, before he even said yes, lit a fire under us to create a character that’s worthy of him entertaining the idea.”
Leung talking about how he tapped into the character of Wenwu:
“Frankly, I couldn’t imagine someone in the real world with superpowers,” he says over Zoom one recent evening from his home in Hong Kong. “But I can imagine someone like him who is an underdog, who is a failure of a father.” At ease in a white T-shirt, a slender golden chain visible underneath, he has the ready and easy smile of a boy, a collection of elegant porcelain urns and vases arranged on a shelf behind him. He says he understood that Wenwu was ultimately driven not by evil but by a love for his children, which lent him a touch of humanity. “On the one hand,” Leung says, “he’s a bad father, but on the other, I just see him as someone who loves his family deeply.” And, he adds, “I don’t think he knows how to love himself.”
Oh man, I love everything about this story, about Leung’s first day on set:
On Leung’s first day on the set of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, in Sydney, he emerged from his trailer, dressed and ready, and asked to have his chair put near the camera. Every day he repeated this process. “He would never be on his phone,” says Cretton. “He would just come and sit all day, watching everything that we’re doing—what shot we’re setting up, what we’re doing with the stand-ins. And by the time it was ready to go, I’d literally have nothing to tell him. Initially, I’d be like, ‘Okay, here’s what we’re thinking,’ and he’d say, ‘Oh,’ very politely, ‘yeah, I know. I’ve been watching this whole time.’ ”
When it came time for Leung to shoot a scene (which has since been cut), Cretton says a reverent quiet descended across the set. It was a hot day, and for Leung it was even hotter; he was attired in the long robes and wig required to play Wenwu as a young thief, stealing cattle, in what becomes a massive battle scene. Immediately after the first cut, Cretton looked to Schwartz, the producer, and said, “I don’t even know what to go tell him, because we don’t have to do another take. There’s really no reason to.”
This bit from Simu Liu made me smile – I’ve seen enough of Leung’s old wuxia/action stuff to find this utterly believable:
In between takes, Liu would listen as Leung shared stories of his formative TVB days, pointing out the differences between the elaborate pains with stunt safety Marvel took with harnesses and special effects and his old days in Hong Kong action films, doing stunts on wires so thin they seemed they might snap.
I was morbidly curious about what Leung doing press for Shang-Chi would look like, and honestly, what we’re getting is so much better than a slew of press-junket videos and red-carpet interviews. Just a few carefully-chosen, in-depth piece that focus on the film, celebrate his entry into American movies, and introduce him to Western audiences who might not be familiar with his work.
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