I said I was done with Marvel, but it’s kind of hard to avoid these days. I ended up watching Loki over the summer because my sister asked me too. (Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it. The characters were interesting, but fell flat in the end because the entire final episode was devoted to setting up the second season instead of giving any sort of resolution.) But this isn’t about Loki. It’s about the movie I saw in the theatre yesterday, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Before you get on my case for repeatedly backsliding after swearing off the franchise, let me explain: I didn’t watch it because I wanted to watch Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I watched it because half the students at my school all planned to watch it together, and I wanted to spend time with my friends. Marvel merely served as a tool for the greater good, not as an end in itself. That being said, if you want to watch a movie for its own sake, you could do a lot worse than Shang-Chi. If you’re not a fan of Marvel’s past work (or were a fan until you watched 50 hours of world-saving shenanigans and tired of it) there’s nothing here to change your mind. But if you enjoy the superhero genre, you’ll find Shang-Chi a worthy addition. After a sweeping prologue in which an immortal warlord loses his heart to a maiden from a mystical village, the film cuts to present-day San Francisco. We meet Shaun and Katy, two valets with no greater ambition than to park cars by day and sing karaoke by night. Then Shaun wins an MMA fight on a bus, becomes a viral YouTube sensation, and boards a plane to China with a doggedly insistent Katy by his side. Turns out Shaun is actually Shang-Chi, the son of the warlord from the prologue. His father wants nothing more than to reunite his family— and is willing to kill anyone who gets in his way. Shaun thinks his father’s methods are a bit extreme, so he teams up with his vengeful sister, an ex-terrorist actor, and a faceless furry chicken-pig to stop him. The humor is excellent, and the central conflict between father and son lends the story some emotional weight. Interestingly, there’s no romance— Shaun and Katy remain solid friends throughout, but without a hint of anything more. My favorite character was the one-armed mercenary who looked shockingly similar to my music teacher. I walked out of the theater weaving a backstory to explain how he went from viola virtuoso to machete-wielding militant. Anyway, if you’re looking for an action movie, Shang-Chi is worth your notice. There’s a fair bit of swearing, although nothing that doesn’t reflect that way that most young Americans actually talk. A lot of punching, kicking, and yelling. Zero sexual content. Nothing to worry about if you’re comfortable watching any other Marvel film. If you skimmed this article instead of actually reading it, I made a flow chart to summarize:
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"In truth, by leaving, I was seeking only one thing. A journey."
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