A Few Thoughts on Li (Shang-Chi)

*Li-related spoilers.*

In Shang-Chi, Li has a complicated presence. It’s undeniable that she’s more a function of the plot, and a tropey one at that, than a character in her own right. And when we see a character solely through flashbacks, it can be easy to pigeonhole them as just one thing—in Li’s case, the ethereal, serene dead mom who personified all the goodness in the Xu family. Without her, everything fell apart pretty spectacularly. And yet, I do think the film allows her to be a little more nuanced than that.

For starters, let’s just get this out of the way. Li was absolutely fridged. Her death affects the whole family, but most prominently, her murder shatters any notion of Wenwu leaving his warlord days in the past. After she’s killed, Wenwu falls into a heavy depression, and, blaming himself, he puts the Ten Rings back on and sets out to get revenge on those responsible for her death. She’s killed specifically because of him, by a gang who comes to the house looking to settle an old score with Wenwu, and in the present-day storyline, the Dweller in Darkness manipulates Wenwu with a lie that she’s still alive and in need of rescue, coopting his power for its own escape from Ta Lo. Major plot device.

Meanwhile, Li’s death kicks off Shang-Chi’s origin story, with Wenwu deciding to craft his 7-year-old son into a deadly instrument of vengeance against her killers. The loss of her filled Wenwu with single-minded bitterness and rage, and for Shang-Chi, it was the start of his own road down a dark path at his dad’s bidding. And yet, Shang-Chi also equates his mom with anything good in him. His only happy memories back home are from when she was still alive, not to mention the only times he can remember seeing any goodness in his dad. In flashbacks, she’s airy and light, soft-spoken but radiant with life. On the surface, she appears every inch the saintly dead mom.

But the film, aided greatly by Fala Chen’s gentle but strong performance, resists letting her be just the idyllic memory of a lost parent, just the Fridged Antagonist Motivator. Obviously, I love the opening sequence of the movie, where we see her meet Wenwu and watch a fight between them start shifting to love before our eyes. I like how calm and steady she is in her fight scenes. Even when those men come to kill her, she softly tells Shang-Chi and Xialing to go inside, then faces them with a steady gaze, only a flicker in her eyes to betray her worry. I enjoy the way she tells Shang-Chi stories of Ta Lo like they’re fairy tales, brightly passing on the beauty and pride of her people to her son in a way that a child can take in. And I really appreciate that, even though she’s a nigh-unflappable warrior from a mystical dimension who grew up carrying the magic of a dragon, she’s also just a woman. She lightly teases Wenwu when she corrects his tai chi stances, she laughs when she plays with her kids, and she curls up on the couch with her husband and children at the end of a long day. These are just tiny glimmers of moments, but they do a lot to make Li feel like a person instead of a figure or a saint.