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

Not really. The fact that the tv shows exist means by default there will be some piece of information there that isn't in the movies. The only point when that could ever become a problem is if that information is genuinely necessary to understand something else and isn't explained/clearly referenced in that something else.

There's no actual *need* for us to know why Bruce looks that way in this simple scene. If he shows up in another film and it does become something we need to know, the explanation will probably be referenced in that film, most likely just enough for everyone to understand without those who watched She-hulk feeling like they're watching a previously on the MCU segment.

 

If that's Marvel Studios' attitude, I think it's a shortsighted and foolish one.

 

Dr Strange II is a sequel to two (possibly three depending on how "What If..." ends) TV series and a movie released by another studio.

That ship has sailed.

 

It's literally inevitable. The tv shows cannot exist without including *some* piece of information that isn't in the movies. Sylvie and the TVA haven't been explained in a movie. The Flag Smashers movement was never explained in a movie. The Westview incident hasn't been explained in a movie.

Those explanations don't matter until those things actually matter to a movie. The Westview incident will likely be briefly recapped in Dr. Strange 2 because understanding it will be important for that film. If Captain America 4 really happens, it may recap some of the Flag Smasher stuff (and Sharon as the Power broker) because those would be important to that movie. The TVA doesn't seem like the kind of thing likely to be used in a movie so may never be explained outside of Loki.

Bruce's physical appearance does not matter to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It's just a cameo. If you're dying to understand it, watch She-Hulk. If not, you haven't lost anything important to this movie by not understanding it.

 

^ I don't want or need an explanation for Bruce being human again.

What I want(ed) is an explanation for why Wong and Abomination were fighting, and I shouldn't have to watch a TV show to get said explanation.

 

A) It was pretty obvious they were sparring (and possibly getting paid while doing it) and Wong was teaching him better control.

B) Understanding that also has nothing whatsoever to do with this movie. It's no more important to Shang-Chi than Bruce's skin color. So just like the Bruce thing, if you want to know more watch whatever else Wong and/or Abomination appear in. And if you don't do that, you still haven't lost anything important to this movie by not understanding it.

 

Yeah, the answer to why Wong and Abomination were fighting was right there in the movie, you just needed to be paying attention.

 

I guess we don't necessarily know how they came to that point but we are told why.

 

^ The film shows us that they were sparring, but doesn't tell us why they were sparring, and I felt the film was lacking the 'why'.

 

The dialogue between the two characters tells us why they were sparring.

 

Not really. The film gives us a goal for what their sparring was meant to accomplish; it doesn't tell us the purpose behind their sparring, which is what I felt was missing.

 

Not every one sees all the movies either...

 

If you remember from Infinity War Stephen Strange was going out to get a sandwich and Wong wanted a sandwich too but had no money.

Maybe Doctor Strange got tired of supporting long and told him to get a job; so you found a way to make good money fighting in that Chinese fight club - and with the sling ring it's as easy as walking through a portal.

As for how the Abomination got there: It explains why no one has seen the abomination since the original The incredible Hulk feature film. He found a way to survive as well.

 

I actually watched this movie a few weeks ago, but I haven't sat down to articulate my thoughts on it since then.

As standalone MCU movies go, I didn't quite consider it to be Black Panther-level good, but it was still decent enough.

There were a few moments that stood out to me, though. In non-sequential order those were:

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I felt that the reference to Mandarin oranges did not quite land properly for me.

While there are certainly issues to unpack regarding the fake "Mandarin" persona, it might have been better to refer to the old Western perceptions of the "mandarins" of Qing Dynasty China that manifested in caricatures like Fu Manchu in the first instance. (For example, the concept of referring to "Mandarin Chinese" is based on the version of Chinese spoken by the Qing aristocracy, as opposed to the likes of Hokkien or Cantonese.)

Actually, the concept of treating Mandarin as being more "correct" than other varieties of Chinese is an ongoing issue in different parts of the Chinese-speaking world. In the PRC mainland, there is a strong assimilationist effort to promote Mandarin over regional languages and dialects. In Singapore, the government has pursued a "speak Mandarin" policy, though most of the "old" Chinese communities there are from the south-eastern maritime provinces (as opposed to the northern provinces where Mandarin is more likely to be spoken natively, and from where many of the "new" Chinese in South-East Asia have migrated). In contrast, Taiwan in the era of democratization has attempted to raise the official profiles of Hokkien and Hakka, as well as the various Austronesian languages spoken by the various Taiwanese aboriginal peoples.

For that matter, there is the broader issue of who gets to be the gatekeepers of "Chineseness". During Han Chinese dynasties such as the Ming, there was a stronger sense of official Han chauvinism: the viewpoint that the Han were the only "proper" Chinese, and that China's non-Han peoples were various types of barbarians. (One ongoing debate was whether or not said barbarians were to be set permanently apart from "huaxia" culture, or if they could be successfully absorbed into Han Chinese society.) In contrast, "conquest" dynasties like the Qing supported a broader view, in that there were a variety of "Chinese peoples" (to include the Han, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, and others). Although, in enforcing the queue on its Han subjects, one could argue that the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty were undercutting their own argument - but then, for good or ill, they saw the queue as a matter of loyalty rather than of ethnicity.

Which is more than I would have expected to be unpacked in the movie itself. But in the sense of how Wenwu treated Katy during the dinner table conversation, there could have been a little more to it than simply disdaining her as a Chinese-American as opposed to what he sees as a "proper" Chinese person.

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Also, I noticed that one of the mythological creatures shown in Ta Lo was a huli jing, or nine-tailed fox.

The Korean name for such a creature is a kumiho - and it so happens that over on Earth-616, one of Shang-Chi's colleagues in the (new) Agents of ATLAS, Ami Han (or White Fox), is such a being. Well, technically she's a half-kumiho on her mother's side, but still.

So, I wonder if there might be a way to leverage the existence of the huli jing in the MCU as a way of introducing White Fox as a character at some later point - say, by having had one group of this species migrate to the Korean peninsula in the distant past - and thus adding to the number of characters who could one day team up as Earth-199999's (new) Agents of ATLAS.

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Speaking of the (new) Agents of ATLAS, perhaps another member of the Earth-616 team could have been name-dropped during one of the various karaoke sessions...

 

Given what Wong said about Blonsky needing to work on control, and that he was sling-ringing back to one of those fancy glass cells that were all the rage in the early 2010s, it seemed fairly apparent Wong was doing some sort of volunteer work helping with rehabilitation of imprisoned supervillians. I don't think we needed anything more than the sketch we got to explain it (and my initial impression, that Wong just had a secret dark side and was a Fight Club guy, also would've been fine, if amusingly weird).

 

I haven't seen Infinity War.

 

See?

 

Thank you for that in-depth and insightful post. I agree that we couldn't expect the movie to go into that level of detail but that there should've been more nuance to that exchange between Wenwu and Katy. Even as white American who is largely ignorant of such things, I thought that scene didn't quite work partially because I knew there was more to the term "Mandarian" (even on a surface level) than what Wenwu seemed to suggest.

 

Cool - I didn't catch that. Thanks! I just figured it was a bit of fun.

What I've read online from Americans of Chinese descent is that the movie got it *very* right. Not just that scene, but all of the little cultural touches.

 

Yup, I've gotten that same sense and not just from the articles I posted a couple of pages ago.