Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings Spoiler/Rating Thread!!!

[Caretaker]

Finally got to see the film (I was delayed from seeing it due to family things the past week or so). I enjoyed the film (although the final battle went on a little long for my taste, especially when everything got cloudy and darker). Glad they tied it into Iron Man 3 and All Hail the King and was surprised we got as much of Sir Ben Kingsley as we did. The whole film looked gorgeous in (pseudo-)IMAX. And the scenes of Xu Wenwu and Ying Li battling at the beginning - like a beautiful, choreographed dance.

I would have liked to see some mention of K'un L'un, Colleen Wing and/or the Iron First ability.

And is Awkwafina ever not good at a role (seriously, if you haven't seen The Farewell, do so)? And was pleasantly surprised at the cameos in the mid-credit sequence. I am assuming it was a tie-in to Eternals.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Glad they tied it into Iron Man 3 and All Hail the King and was surprised we got as much of Sir Ben Kingsley as we did.

Yup, even though I knew he was going to appear in the film in some form (spoiled by the man himself during the world premiere), I was still surprised by how much we got and I loved every second of it! And then he didn't die at the end like I thought he would! So...maybe more in the future? Anything is possible!

I would have liked to see some mention of K'un L'un, Colleen Wing and/or the Iron First ability.

Yeah, I would've liked that, at least a K'un L'un name drop, but I wasn't expecting it to happen.

I still hope and ream for a Daughters of the Dragon series some day.

And is Awkwafina ever not good at a role (seriously, if you haven't seen The Farewell, do so)?

No, she's not. I've loved, loved everything I've seen her do including, yes, The Farewell.

Seriously, everyone needs to watch that film.

And was pleasantly surprised at the cameos in the mid-credit sequence. I am assuming it was a tie-in to Eternals.

Oh, that's interesting. I didn't think of it as some kind of connection to Eternals. I just figured it was part of the set-up for phase 4, 5, and 6 in general.

That said, Ajax said in the trailer that the impeding Convergence was initiated by Banner's snap and that their timeline to act was limited, so perhaps not. Shang-Chi seems to have taken some significant time after Endgame, like a few months (but that's just an impression, I don't remember anything specific).

 

[dupersuper]

The Hand have been established for MCU purposes via Daredevil and Defenders, yes?

Yes.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Watched it yesterday.
Immensely enjoyed it.
I appreciate the background details like the Blip Anxiety poster.

When the water dragon showed up, I was expecting a comment by Awkwafina about that. Not sure if they deliberately resisted that temptation or missed the opportunity.
Having her ride the dragon and giving that to the sister was probabl the right call.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I appreciate the background details like the Blip Anxiety poster.

Oh, I missed that! Nice touch indeed. I'm sure I'll catch next time around but where did you see that?

When the water dragon showed up, I was expecting a comment by Awkwafina about that. Not sure if they deliberately resisted that temptation or missed the opportunity.

Having her ride the dragon and giving that to the sister was probably the right call.

Yeah, I was definitely expecting that, too. I guess they figured that would've been a little too obvious especially since Raya and the Last Dragon just came out this year.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Oh, I missed that! Nice touch indeed. I'm sure I'll catch next time around but where did you see .

One of the very first scenes after the exposition intro.
Might have been the camera sweep before the fancy car they were fighting over to park rolls into view.
Or later after the bar scene. Don’t remember exactly

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Yeah, I was definitely expecting that, too. I guess they figured that would've been a little too obvious especially since Raya and the Last Dragon just came out this year.

Having not seen Raya when I first read that I was wondering if it was about Awkwafina making a comment about the water dragon.

 

[Mage]

Yeah, that was highly entertaining. I felt it dragged a bit during the third act, but all in all this was just a great origin movie, well paced, it looked amazing, had solid performances. Can't wait for more.

 

[FPAlpha]

Just came back and i really liked it.

I'm a fan of Kung Fu movies and in that regard the fights were awesome. I absolutely adored the fight between Wen Wu and his future wife, that started out in a gorgeous backdrop ( reminded me of another martial arts movie called Hero) as a real fight but then turned into so much more.. beautiful cinematography.

Another good part is that they didn't shoehorn a romantic side plot into the movie between Shang Chi and Katy, sometimes man and woman are really just best friends and click completely without getting romantically involved. Speaking of Katy/Awkwafina - she was hilarious at just the right moment and delightfully goofy ( nearly fell out of my seat when she starts to sing Hotel California to distract the Ninja in the middle of a fight ).

Shang Chi / Simu Liu was very good in his role, you can see he had martial arts training before because even with wires some of the moves were not easy to pull off.

The movie itself was very good too, a worthy addition to the MCU and tons of story threads to be explored later and i also loved the crazy switch to Fantasy in the second half, reminded me of a Hayao Miyazaki anime movie And the villain had also a proper motivation this time and was not evil for evil's sake.

As always the end credits opened up more questions than they would answer so i'm greatly looking forward to where they lead with this. It's good to know the movie is also a financial success so a 2nd movie is guaranteed.

 

[CaptainWacky]

I saw it today, it's good! Definitely better than Black Widow (which wasn't bad!) Some real fun fight scenes throughout especially the bus and scaffolding setpieces in the first half. Tony Leung is great as Wenwu, equally convincing as an immortal warlord and as a widowed husband driven mad by grief (and mystical alien rings, yes.) It's hard to even class him as a "villain." I've never seen Awkwafina in anything before and was worried early on that she was going to be annoying (there's a bit of shouting) but she was actually good and didn't undercut the dramatic stuff with comedy like I feared. Probably liked Katy more than Shang-Chi himself, really, but he was a perfectly fine lead. Great to see Ben Kingsley again too (Iron Man 3 is good, OKAY) and actually thought it was nice that he was somewhat redeemed from his (unwittingy) previous villain role. Xialing was cool.

I did think it had some story issues in the middle, like how easy it was for them to escape Wenwu's lair (wouldn't he at least lock them in a room and have it guarded?) and how convenient it was that Morris could lead them to the hidden village. Shang-Chi kind of becomes a passenger for a while around that point, but has good stuff with his father in the end.

The big fight and the stuff when the soul-suckers first attacked was a bit weak too and I wish they'd used like big hairy puppets for the mystical lion things (I like big hairy puppets.) The final fight between Shang and his father was good though and I liked when it devolved into a full on dragon battle in the end. Dragons are cool.

So yeah it's a fun time I liked it!

 

[Turtletrekker]

Disney Plus on November 12th...

https://deadline-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/deadline.com/2021/09/shang-chi-disney-day-bob-chapek-theatrical-exhibition-1234841512/amp/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a6&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM=#amp_tf=From %1$s&aoh=16322673901098&csi=0&referrer=https://www.google.com&ampshare=https://deadline.com/2021/09/shang-chi-disney-day-bob-chapek-theatrical-exhibition-1234841512/amp/#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16322673901098&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadline.com%2F2021%2F09%2Fshang-chi-disney-day-bob-chapek-theatrical-exhibition-1234841512%2F

 

[Noname Given]

Disney Plus on October 12th...

https://deadline-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/deadline.com/2021/09/shang-chi-disney-day-bob-chapek-theatrical-exhibition-1234841512/amp/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a6&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASCAAgM=#amp_tf=From %1$s&aoh=16322673901098&csi=0&referrer=https://www.google.com&ampshare=https://deadline.com/2021/09/shang-chi-disney-day-bob-chapek-theatrical-exhibition-1234841512/amp/#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16322673901098&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadline.com%2F2021%2F09%2Fshang-chi-disney-day-bob-chapek-theatrical-exhibition-1234841512%2F

I think you mean November 12th not October.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I think you mean November 12th not October.

No fun getting old. Fixed.

 

[StCoop]

And it's now the highest grossing movie of the year at the US box office and the third highest worldwide.* Not bad for a film with a character few people had heard of and a cast largely composed of lesser known actors.

*Spider-Man will beat it no doubt and maybe The Eternals but still damn good.

 

[Noname Given]

And it's now the highest grossing movie of the year at the US box office and the third highest worldwide.* Not bad for a film with a character few people had heard of and a cast largely composed of lesser known actors.

*Spider-Man will beat it no doubt and maybe The Eternals but still damn good.

I'm sure this film and Black Widow would have done much better in pre-pandemic times. But yeah overall the box office for everything is way way down over what it would be pre-pandemic.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I finally got to see this this morning and I have to say this may be my favorite solo Superhero film of all time. My prior record holder is Spider-man Homecoming which is just so damn fun - and I'll need to see both of them again before I'm entirely sure that Shang-Chi overtook it - but this was one hell of a fun movie.

Simu Liu and Awkwafina are a fantastic duo in every type of scene. I've always liked Awkwafina in everything I've seen her in - even Crazy Rich Asians which I didn't like as much as a film overall, but I've never seen her play so strong off someone else before.

The fight scenes are incredible, though I would say the martial arts itself was strongest at the beginning of the film - the scene where Shang-Chi's parent's first meet and the bus fight were by far the coolest fight choreographies. But while the third act fight was more CGI than martial arts I would still count it as one of the most fun and gorgeous finales in the entire genre, and an absolute perfect example of why a cgi third act is not automatically a bad thing. In fact I loved everything about the magical world of Ta Lo from the angry bamboo maze to the funny magical creatures and most especially that gorgeous dragon and the almost lovecraftian evil 'soulsuckers'.

I loved the music, I loved the secondary characters (almost all of them), loved Wenwu and the appearances of Wong and Abomination.

The only criticisms I could even think of right now is that it was kind of weird how there were suddenly a bunch of Ta Lo fighters being held prisoner by the Ten Rings fighters when the truce happened and razorfist had to order his men to let them go instead of everyone just agreeing not to fight each other anymore. And secondly I rather would have preferred Ben Kingsley stay confined to a smaller cameo than have such a big role. Not that I hated him, but I've also never really liked his character that much and he really doesn't have much good reason to be in the movie nor does he fit in it very well. He reminds in a lot of ways of Everett Ross in Black Panther who was also kind of out of place but at least in Black Panther you pretty much have to have someone there who is out of place because it would make no sense to have a bunch of Wakandans explaining Wakanda to each other the whole movie. In Shang-chi you don't need any extraneous character for that because all of the main characters are outsiders to Ta Lo, which is probably a big part of why Trevor is just kind of there for the entire film after passing through the gate. But neither of these are at all really bad issues for me.

Overall it is absolutely A+ material and I can't wait to see it again (and share it with my wife who, as a huge fan of Harry Potter and magical creatures, will probably adore Ta Lo, too, I think).

 

[DigificWriter]

I really liked this film, and it's currently tied with Thor and Doctor Strange as the best origin story film in the MCU.

Tying in both Iron Man 3 and Hail to the King (neither of which I've actually seen) could've backfired, but instead gave the film some subtle levity that felt perfectly organic.

The only thing I wanted to know that the film didn't tell us was the reasoning behind Wong fighting Abomination in Xialing's fight club, but that's really neither here nor there.

The MCU films I enjoy are the ones that push the envelope narratively and conceptually and expand the scope and lore of the franchise, and Shang-Chi did both of those things, putting it on par with Doctor Strange and the Thor Trilogy in terms of enjoyment factor and left me super-excited to see more of its cast of characters.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

The only thing I wanted to know that the film didn't tell us was the reasoning behind Wong fighting Abomination in Xialing's fight club, but that's really neither here nor there.

Anger management?

 

[StCoop]

Anger management?

It will be explained in "She-Hulk" as will Banner being back in human form.

 

[DigificWriter]

It will be explained in "She-Hulk" as will Banner being back in human form.

Which is a mistake, IMO. If you're going to explain stuff like this, do it in a movie, not in a TV show that not everyone may see.