Turns out, he’s Wenwu’s son, and he’s hiding from his destiny thanks to some daddy issues.
#Shang chi faceless creature movie
Again, the movie has issues when it comes to fitting staging on top of composition.īeing pretty shocked and shaken by this newfound barrage of information about her bestie, Katy (who snaps into Sandra Bullock “Speed” mode without effort) makes Shaun tell her the truth about who he is. At one point, it features a side-scrolling video game track, complete with Liu-Kang flying sidekick, and its depth of field looks flatter than some Arkham City bonus levels. The bus sequence is, overall, very impressive, and I threw my hands up a few times, although it reveals some needless miscalculations of staging excess and an over-reliance on throwing pseudo-shot transitions to the animation department. Minutes later, they are being attacked on the trolley-“Shaun” startling Katy by unleashing his epic hand-to-hand combat prowess on the assailants, which includes the lackey Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu) a character the movie somehow half-takes seriously when the mockery of Taserface is already an established thing. We also meet his best friend and soon-to-be plucky sidekick, Katy (played by Awkwafina more on her name later). But, considering how many eyes are on “Shang-Chi” perhaps we should be thanking the gods of cinema for introducing a new audience to one of the finest actors on the planet, at least.įollowing the world-building info-dump however, we cut to modern day San Francisco, where we are introduced to “Shaun” (at least that’s what it reads on his valet tag), whom Marvel’s origin story format has already primed us to know will be the hero of our story (if in name and idea only). Much of the martial arts action will take your breath away, thanks to Leung’s ripely fierce presence and an aesthetic owed to Chinese masters of the genre, yet it all feels so unearned, entirely empty.
The background details and composition work are distractingly flat though, and there’s an obvious disconnect between the choreography on screen and the painted animation being thrown on top of it in post-production.
You can’t take your eyes off him as he charges into battle, creating a mystical barrier as an energy force-field, allowing him to take on an army of archers on his own. Leung eats up the screen with little more than a look.
His name is Wenwu, and he’s played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, whom, I’ve recently learned, is sadly best known, or not known at all-by casual film buffs at least-for his roles in the aforementioned Jet Li flick, and “ Infernal Affairs,” the movie on which Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” is based (he plays Leo’s character). The extended prologue to “ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” personifies the best and worst of both worlds for Marvel Studios’-revealing the ultimate woes of the now-homogenized conveyor belt approach to copy-pasting genre spice on top of a formulaic recipe.Ī grandiose throwback to large-scale, period wuxia films a la Zhang Yimou’s “ Hero,” easily the most carefully composed and well-rounded character this side of “ Black Panther,” takes center stage, and the storytelling reigns.