*Spoilers.*
Before Shang-Chi came out, I admitted that I felt a little bad because I was so excited for Tony Leung Chiu-wai that I wasn’t paying attention to much of anything else about the movie, including the main character. Obviously, the MCU’s first headlining Asian hero is reason to celebrate on its own, and I really enjoy Shang-Chi’s appearances in the Asian/Asian American team-up comics from The Totally Awesome Hulk and Agents of Atlas (even though he’s definitely much older in those comics – I can’t see the MCU Shang-Chi getting into an epic uncle fight with Jimmy Woo over the check!) I like Simu Liu, Awkwafina, and Ronny Chieng, Michelle Yeoh is always amazing, and I loved Destin Daniel Cretton’s work in Just Mercy. Lots of stuff about the trailers looked objectively awesome. There was so much to love in the run-up to this movie. But no matter how cool everything seemed, my brain was firmly entrenched in Tony Leung Chiu-wai Land, and I wasn’t ready to think about anything else.
But now that I’ve gotten a fraction of my initial Wenwu thoughts out of my system, it’s time to look at other aspects of the film, including, oh you know, the title character. In addition to liking my first look at comics Shang-Chi, I also remember being under the mistaken impression that he was going to appear in Iron Fist and being disappointed when he didn’t. By now, it’s clear that this is much better. Aside from the whole Iron Fist of it all and the added heft of making his debut on the big screen, Shang-Chi as he’s portrayed here doesn’t really belong in Iron Fist’s world. He belongs here, heading his own film with his own story.
Plenty of MCU heroes have heavy/tortured origin stories, but Shang-Chi’s backstory packs quite the punch before you even work your way up to his origin. As a child, his dad, a barely-reformed immortal war lord who leads an army backed by the power of the Ten Rings, responded to the traumatic event of his wife’s murder by deciding to train his then-7-year-old son to become an assassin and avenge her death. Dads, am I right? Shang-Chi spends years training day and night until, after receiving his first kill order from his dad, he runs away to San Francisco, where he reinvents himself as “Shaun.”
In San Francisco, Shang-Chi isn’t the heir to a twisted, centuries-old legacy fueled by the Ten Rings. He isn’t an adolescent assassin. He’s probably not even the guy who saw his mom get killed right in front of him when he was a kid. He’s just a dude, just a somewhat-aimless 20-something parking cars and living below his potential (his potential as a deadly martial artist, sure, but also just his potential at regular old adulting.) He’s tried to shake off the trauma of his past and bury the regimented rigor of his training beneath a mound of days spent goofing off at work and nights spent staying out too late at karaoke.
But all that’s in him is still there. When his dad reinitiates contact by sending several of his men after Shang-Chi (you know, as you do,) Shang-Chi doesn’t miss a beat. He instantly displays his master martial-arts skills, incapacitating the Ten Rings members while keeping Katy and the other bystanders safe, all while on a moving bus. Clearly, he hasn’t gone to seed or let his skills wane. He’s able to pull it out immediately, and once the run-in on the bus is dealt with, he realizes he can’t be Shaun anymore. It takes him more time to fully face up to his past, and his dad has to force the issue, but he knows he at least has to protect/warn his sister Xialing, and he’s quickly off to Macao to see her again for the first time in 10 years.
These two sides of Shang-Chi put together, the damaged young man trained as an assassin from childhood and the kind but unambitious everyman/slacker, make for an interesting character. He knows some of what he’s getting himself into when he wades back into his dad’s world, but he also approaches it with a very relatable “are you kidding me with this right now?” air. He’s an absolute boss in a fight, but he also takes time out in the midst of them to check out a cute woman on the bus, make sure Katy’s okay, or bicker with Xialing. He’s not remotely the archetype of the stoic/silent unstoppable martial artist – while he has the skills, he’s also just a guy who’s trying to get a handle on what he’s gotten himself dragged back into, all in real time. Conversely, his affability and joking only go so far to disguise the trauma in his past, and he reaches a point where he has to get real. Where he has to admit what he’s been through, where he has to grapple with some of his darker instincts, and where he has to examine the extent to which he’s been shaped by both of his parents.
At this point, it’s a little hard for me to imagine what Shang-Chi is going to look like in an Avengers film or another team-up movie, because this movie is so specific to his own life and background, but I’m curious to see what the franchise at large is going to do with him. I’m excited for more Shang-Chi movies (I absolutely need more Xialing in my life,) and I’m equally excited to see what he’ll be like when he’s working alongside, say, Carol, Doctor Strange, or Wanda.
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