Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - Can we get a do-over on The Mandarin?

Pretty sure Danny wasn’t the Iron Fist anymore and Stick wasn’t alive anymore by the end of the Netflix stuff. I’m all for repairing the damage done by that series and establishing the Iron Fist in the MCU as something closer to the awesome Fraction/Brubaker run, but I doubt Disney is rushing to revive the franchise with or without ties to the Netflix version.

I totally would’ve watched the third season they were setting up, but I don’t blame Disney at all if we never see the Iron Fist again after how awful the show was up to that point.

I thought the trailer looked decent, although somewhat generic Jackie Chan/Tony Jaa vibe, with a less talented martial artist.

My biggest concern with this character is he’s really a product of the Kung fu grindhouse movie phase of 1970s. Just like it would be difficult to do a movie on Werewolf by Night or the Zombie, or Living Mummy, from that era – they were cool additions to comics because it was fun to see them interact with the established Marvel universe of gods, mutants, aliens, heros, etc., but in a movie format they inevitably feel like shadows of similar film characters.

Plus kung fu is just kinda lame these days, compared to other forms of fighting, and feels very dated and artificial, now that we have a better understanding of practical fighting techniques.

Obviously this character was going to get a theatrical release because of the huge Chinese box office, but he seems to better fit on the smaller screen, like Iron Fist. I really wonder if Marvel is straying too far from core characters (parking the Avengers for years, other than Thor), as characters like the Eternals and Shang-Chi don’t offer much opportunity for larger world building. Although I would like to see a set of more “street level” connected movies, which could include the characters who were in the netflix shows, shang-chi, Blade, etc.

Holy shit, Jung from Kim’s Convenience is going to be in a Marvel movie.

Given how well Marvel has managed to connect it’s properties so far, I don’t see any reason why this would stop now. I absolutely get the sentiment (though personally the movie that makes me go WTH is Blade… I just don’t see how he fits into the MCU at all in any sensible manner), but they’ve managed to tie these things together amazingly well over 20+ movies now-

Personally, the multiverse talk that gets so many fans excited worries me, because once you start doing multiverses or constantly changing timelines and retconning, they are basically admitting that anything goes (which means nothing really matters anymore - can always reset things with a new timeline or a different multiverse or whatever), but until they fully jump down that rabbit-hole like the DCEU and X-Men did, I’ll continue being optimistic about their future films.

The other reason for optimism is that although the action tends to be top-notch, Marvel also understands that even action films need to have relatable and interesting characters. I’m not particularly worried that this film will break their streak.

Spoiler-Man: Into the Spoiler-Averse

Yeah, I really can’t think of any Disney movies with a primarily Asian cast. Plus, Disney is clearly playing it safe by making a movie about kung fu in a superhero universe, just like every other superhero movie.

DC: Maybe this new Batman will be as good as the other Batmans!
Marvel: We’re going to make our next superhero movie about martial arts.

I feel like you kind of answered your own question there. I’m glad that Marvel is doing the risky thing by focusing on more world-building and introducing new characters, instead of just leaning into Thor 4 and Ant-Man 3 and Black Widow 2 and Hawkeye 1.

The Mulan remake?

Sorry, I should have /s tagged my comment. I don’t think that Marvel considers a mostly-Asian cast to be a big risk, and I certainly don’t think that having an Asian-led movie means they’re not going to take risks otherwise.

Ah gotcha. Yeah, I agree that at this point, Disney is good with a mostly/primary Asian cast.

I think the bigger “risk” here is that the biggest name in the movie to general audiences is Awkwafina.

Michelle Yeoh is in it as well… weirdly, as I thought she was a Ravager.

Also, Thor was a C-list superhero and the film had nobody known in it (ok Anthony Hopkins and Idris Elba in supporting roles). Captain America had a has-been superhero and also had relative unknowns.

And Iron Man had a washed-up actor with a known history of drug abuse, and it was directed by the guy who did Elf.

At this point, I think the biggest name in any Marvel movie is going to be Marvel.

Chadwick Boseman had done 42 and Get On Up before appearing in Civil War, but he was absolutely not known by name to most people until he became the Black Panther.

It’s silly to think there is “risk” in Awkwafina being the best known name in Shang-Chi.

At this point I think there’s very little commercial risk for any Marvel movie. They’ve built up so much good will that they would need to have several stinkers in a row to create any issues.

The question now is only if any movie will “only” gross $600 million or over $1 billion.

Edit: well, in a non-COVID world. I think Black Widow will come in under $600 million, but it would have hit that mark if COVID weren’t a thing.

I think Marvel movies will be fine, as long as they don’t recast a Harrison Ford role.

Was Yeoh even in the trailer? Did I miss her?

As for Thor and Captain America, I don’t what tier of celebrity the characters were but “C-list” seems a stretch. I’ll give you that both had relatively little known stars in the title roles.

An argument can be made that Iron Man was the biggest risk of all the MCU movies so far. To start, they didn’t have Disney backing them when they made it. The movie’s box office was basically going to make or break Marvel.

Oh yeah, they literally staked their characters on the success of that movie. If the movie tanked, then the backers would get the film rights to something like 50 Marvel characters. That’s what they used as collateral to get the loan.

As far as I can tell the Mulan remake is considered a pretty big failure. So I would presume Disney would be looking at it as example of things not to do.

Personally I hope one of their take away messages is don’t kiss up to regimes carrying out slow-motion genocide and don’t thank propaganda departments in states carrying out genocide for helping with their filming. But I’m not sure how much that had any impact on Mulan’s bottom line.

While it didn’t do as well in China as Disney had hoped, Mulan was clearly targeted at Asia in a way that mainline Marvel movies aren’t.

I feel like Andy is arguing against points that I didn’t make. Like, saying that they’re taking a risk with using unknown characters isnt really relevant because its baked into the premise of the movie. I’m just saying that I expect Shang Chi to be a lot more like, I dunno, Iron Man 2 than Guardians of the Galaxy. I don’t expect them to take big risks with the format or storytelling. Maybe Doctor Strange is the best example for my expectations? I thought it was fine, but could have leaned harder into the mystic world. All the risk is front loaded with the character and setting. Maybe they’ll really lean into it, but I don’t really have an expectation that they will.

I read the title as “Can we get a do-over in Mandarin?”

I find it somewhat strange to hear Chinese speak English, especially in situations where no English would have been expected. It’s like I prefer my Japanese anime subtitled and not dubbed I guess. I’ll have to think this one over and whether this dissonance will be overbearing throughout the movie.

Yeah, I honestly have no idea how much they’ll lean into the weirdness of the story, or if that’s even in the source material in the first place. I just don’t think that the existence of an Asian cast means that they would suddenly play it safe in other areas. Guardians of the Galaxy is a great example of where they took unknown characters and still went full-throttle on the weird space-opera side of the story.

Exactly. If they can succeed with a talking raccoon riding a barely literate walking tree, I really don’t see kung fu mysticism as much of a gamble. I am hoping for more “Big Trouble in Little China” than “Way of the Dragon”.