Relationship Spotlight: Katy & Shang-Chi (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)

*Spoilers.*

First names only, since as far as I can remember, Katy doesn’t have a last name – she’s not credited with one on IMDb, and I don’t recall Shang-Chi calling her mom “Mrs. Such-and-Such” or anything. Anyway, as much as I love superheroes, I also love the non-superheroes who care about and support them. Katy isn’t a Marvel comics character, but I really enjoy her relationship with Shang-Chi in the film – with everything he has going on, he could use a ride-or-die friend who has his back.

Initially, it might seem like Shang-Chi and Katy aren’t the best influences on one another. The pair spend their days overqualified and underemployed as parking valets, a low-pressure job that leaves plenty of room for fun after hours. Their friends and Katy’s family pressure them about their seeming directionlessness in life, wondering when they’re going to make something of themselves, get married, and/or just grow up. Katy and Shang-Chi, though? Aren’t bothered. They like their lives just fine the way they are, thank you very much, and they express little interest in adulting.

(Side note: as I’ve said before, part of this on Shang-Chi’s end is totally a “Hakuna Matata-era Simba running away from his trauma” coping mechanism, but I also feel like the five years of the Blip don’t get enough credit here. The rhythm of the story suggests that neither Shang-Chi nor Katy were Snapped, and one of their high-achieving friends name-drops the Blip as a reason to seize the day and do something important with their lives. But just as some people would react to that universal upheaval by being more motivated, I can also very easily see it causing others to regard their lives with apathy. If some genocidal alien can show up at any moment and just erase all life on Earth/in the universe, what’s the point of steady jobs or 401Ks?)

But when Shang-Chi’s past comes calling and shit hits the fan, Katy is there to roll with the punches. As flabbergasted as she is to see Shang-Chi attacked by an apparent team of kung fu assassins on the bus (including “a guy with a freaking machete for an arm!”), she also has enough presence of mind to step in when the driver gets knocked out, putting her extreme valet skills to vital use as the bus barrels down the streets of San Francisco with no brakes. And once the immediate danger has passed, she doesn’t give Shang-Chi a pass on the explanations. She hears what he says when he argues that there’s no time, that he has to get to Macau because the Ten Rings will go after his sister next, but she simply pivots to, “You can explain on the plane.”

Her laidback buddy of the last ten years has just unleashed heretofore-unrevealed martial arts badassery in response to an out-of-nowhere deadly attack, and Katy’s response is to follow said buddy halfway around the world. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but she’s not about to let Shang-Chi face it alone. And thank goodness – even apart from all the literal life-and-death stuff, wading back into the intense pain of his traumatic upbringing does a real number on Shang-Chi, and it’s a little less disorienting to see his dad again when Katy is there beside him.

This is true for a few reasons. First of all, Shang-Chi cares about Katy just as much as she cares about him, and watching out for her safety in the midst of all the wild goings-on gives him something to hold onto. After he throws his first punch on the bus, I love that his immediate reaction is to ask Katy if she’s okay, and the fight on the scaffolding in Macau is charged with his determination to keep her safe. Even when they get back to Wenwu’s compound and their lives are in somewhat less-imminent peril, he’s not hit with quite the full force of the head trip that is being back in Wenwu’s presence when part of his energy is devoting to shielding Katy from his dad.

What’s more, Katy proves to be a supportive, nonjudgmental sounding board. Over the years of their friendship, Shang-Chi has never told her about his past, and she hasn’t pushed, but now that the past has come calling, she listens to what he has to say, asking questions but also giving him space to get it all out. In the middle of all the unbelievable things he’s telling her about his dad, I like that she takes time to express sympathy for his mom’s death, and when he amends his earlier claim and admits that he did go through with the first hit Wenwu sent him on, she recognizes the toxic, manipulative situation he’d been in and doesn’t recoil in horror to discover her best friend had been a 14-year-old assassin, even if it was only once.

One scene I really like, one that I think exemplifies their friendship, comes when Shang-Chi tells Katy his real name (in San Francisco, she’s only known him under his assumed name, Shaun.) Once she wraps her head around it, she’s off to the races. “You changed your name from Shang to Shaun?” she asks, giving Shang-Chi crap for not exactly making it difficult for Wenwu to find him in hiding. Having just heard this mindbending revelation, that Shang-Chi ran away to America to escape his immortal war-lord father who trained him to be an assassin, she’s able to joke about it and make it into something ordinary, almost. After her first reaction on the bus, asking, “Who are you?” in an amazed voice, she’s come to terms with it. He’s her best friend, no matter what his name is, no matter how violent/traumatic his past is, no matter what mystical roots his family has. He’s the same guy she goes to late-night karaoke with, and she’s here for him, come hell or high water. I really like that.

Relationship Spotlight: Xu Wenwu & Xu Shang-Chi (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)

*Spoilers.*

Okay, so I only did one Marvelous Wednesday post that was mostly unrelated to Wenwu before sliding right back into it. But hey, baby steps! The relationship between Shang-Chi and his dad is the heart of the film, so it’s only fitting that we talk more about it.

Dads, and daddy issues, have loomed large throughout the MCU. Whether the characters are alive or not, their impact on their adult superhero (or villain) children is strongly felt. We’ve got evil adopted dads like Thanos, distracted/disinterested dads like Howard Stark, and ostensibly well-meaning dads that still screw up their kids like Odin. As for Shang-Chi, he’s got a real doozy of a dad – his first film devotes extensive time to flashbacks depicting his messed-up childhood with Wenwu. It’s weird enough when your dad is a 1000-year-old former war lord who only recently stopped wearing the Ten Rings that grant him lethal power and immortality, but for the first few years of Shang-Chi’s life, his childhood is about as normal as it could possibly be under those circumstances. I remain obsessed with the brief flashback of the Xu family playing Dance Dance Revolution and then cozying up on the couch together as the kids fall asleep. For me, that’s the “Avengers hang around drinking beer and trying to lift Thor’s hammer” scene of The Legend of the Ten Rings, and I love it so much.

But after Shang-Chi’s mom is killed (in retribution against Wenwu for something he did in his war-lord days,) any pretense of normality is forever gone from the family. Wenwu decides to rebuild the Ten Rings army, takes his 7-year-old son to watch him murder some gangsters in revenge, and then trains said 7-year-old son to be an assassin, again in service of revenge. While Shang-Chi eventually runs away from home and tries to start a new life for himself away from his dad’s influence, it’s not until after he takes his first life at the age of 14.

The two don’t see each other for 10 years, and when circumstances/Wenwu bring them back together, it’s a real head trip. First Wenwu sends Shang-Chi a postcard that appears to be from Shang-Chi’s sister Xialing, then he sends some of his men to recover Shang-Chi and Xialing’s Ta Lo pendants by any means necessary (but he’s confident that his men “couldn’t kill [Shang-Chi] if they tried,” so let bygones be bygones, right? Right?) After picking them up in his helicopter and flying them back to his compound, Wenwu has dinner with his kids, drops an unbelievable bombshell on them, and then has them thrown in his dungeon when it looks like they’re going to get in the way of his plans. It’s not a surprise when Shang-Chi comes to the conclusion that, because Wenwu needs to be stopped at all costs, Shang-Chi will have to kill him.

All that is classic hero kid/villain dad dynamics: the manipulation and abuse, the “join me on the Dark Side” invite, the “I’ll never be like you!” defiance. But this isn’t a Luke-Vader situation where the one redeeming moment comes at the eleventh hour. Wenwu is objectively terrible, but he’s also bizarrely, sincerely loving too, and that makes the whole thing even harder for Shang-Chi (and Xialing, but more on her another day) to deal with. As Shang-Chi is telling Katy about his twisted upbringing and his father shaping him into an assassin, he admits, “I would’ve done anything he asked.” And the way he says it, it’s not out of fear. It’s a kind of admiration, a kind of love that Wenwu engendered from his son. Wenwu draws it out of Shang-Chi with the way he kneels down to 7-year-old Shang-Chi’s eye level and earnestly entreats Shang-Chi to help him avenge Li’s murder. With the way he tenderly cleans Shang-Chi’s bloody knuckles after training, with the way he tells Shang-Chi about the family legacy of the Ten Rings with just the slight hint of a fairytale. Wenwu is powerful and imposing, but he’s magnetic too. He knows when to use a light touch, and for many years, that kept Shang-Chi caught in his orbit. A huge part of the reason Wenwu is so compelling, as both a dad and an antagonist, is that all of his menacing scenes are about 10% tender and all his tender scenes are about 10% menacing. It’s love and care and power and possession and rage and grief and vengeance and longing all rolled into one. No wonder he throws Shang-Chi off-kilter.

This is why their big fight scenes in the second half of the film are dramatically engaging as well as being excellent action. You can feel the force of the emotion on both sides. Shang-Chi defiantly insisting he’s not afraid of Wenwu and Wenwu coolly replying, “Yes, you are.” Shang-Chi’s accusation that Wenwu chose the Rings over his family when his children needed him the most and Wenwu hurling back that Shang-Chi should have protected his mom on the night those men came for her. Shang-Chi’s taunt, “Is this what you wanted?” as he faces down Wenwu, preparing to imitate his dad’s own ruthlessness, and then Shang-Chi choosing to be better when he’s positioned to land the killing blow. Shang-Chi trying to get through to Wenwu as he tries to break down the gate in Ta Lo (thinking it will free a still-alive Li when really, it’s the Dweller in Darkness luring him in,) sadly insisting, “She’s not back there, Dad,” Wenwu’s desperation as he avows, “I have to save her!” These fights are charged and personal, and they illuminate Shang-Chi (and Wenwu) for us in ways that the spectacle of the climatic battle with the Dweller in Darkness just don’t.

By the end of the film, Wenwu is gone, having pulled the classic last-second redemption move of putting himself between danger and his son when the Dweller in Darkness escapes the gate, giving Shang-Chi the Ten Rings with his dying breath. And I mean, I get it. 1) Marvel probably didn’t want to bank on getting an actor of Leung’s stature to sign on for more than one movie, and killing Wenwu off is the cleanest way to get him out of the picture. And 2) Wenwu is such a foundational presence in this film and in Shang-Chi’s life, so for Shang-Chi to ultimately be established as his own hero, he needs to get out from under his dad’s shadow, both personally and narratively. But it’s still a damn shame. Even if the MCU is littered with sons and daughters who have complicated relationships with their dads, this was one was done spectacularly well, and I really wish we could’ve seen more of it going forward.

(Quick side note, because I can’t help myself: not to mention, I just kind of wish we could have Wenwu in everything. I would watch the hell out of a movie/Disney+ series/whatever that showed the rise of the Ten Rings, and I saw this fan art of Wenwu facing off against Tony Stark (the Mandarin is primarily an Iron Man villain in the comics) and was blown away by the sheer thought of all that coolness we won’t get. Unless… What If…? Maybe? Leung enjoyed working with you, Marvel – if you play your cards right, you might get him to make more appearances in the universe!)

Favorite Characters: Xu Shang-Chi (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)

*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.