Note: This article contains spoilers for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Superhero movies have been all the rage for years now. By the end of 2021 we’ll have had eight of them this year alone – and regardless of their quality (which has been mixed this year, to say the least), they need to do something different to stand out from the pack. My two favourite comic book flicks this year have been The Suicide Squad and Zack Snyder’s Justice League for precisely that reason: because they dared to be different.
Much criticism aimed at the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the years has been that they’re all the same, or at least very similar – and as much as I enjoy that series, I can’t really argue with that assessment. But with Phase IV well underway, Marvel seems to be trying to do something different, and the company’s latest effort, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, should have been a perfect example of this – but even the Master of Martial Arts can’t escape the Marvel formula, and that’s something that ends up being to the detriment of the entire movie.
First, allow me to make something very clear: on the whole, I loved Shang-Chi. It’s a beautifully written, perfectly acted superhero movie that features some of the best action to have ever come out of Hollywood. Its lead performances (particularly those of Simu Liu and Tony Leung as Shang-Chi and his father Wenwu respectively) are incredible, and the characters are so well-written that I honestly lost count of how many times the film brought me to tears with Shang-Chi and Wenwu’s relationship. Up until the last half-hour, Shang-Chi is as near perfect a superhero movie as I could ever have imagined. But when that last half-hour rolls around, all the excellent work done by the movie up to that point is at risk of being undone thanks to one of the worst-looking finales I’ve ever seen in a superhero film.
Let’s set the scene: Shang-Chi has made it to his mother’s alternate-dimension-village Ta Lo, and is preparing for an all-out war against Wenwu, who believes he is hearing his deceased wife call to him from beyond the grave. What he’s actually hearing is the Dweller-of-Darkness, a dragon-like creature that eats souls and has been imprisoned in Ta Lo for centuries. We know this because we’re told it in an exposition scene that grinds the entire movie to a halt.
Wenwu’s assault on the village begins, and we’re told that he must not be allowed to break a big gate in the side of a mountain, because he’ll release the Dweller if he does. Okay, sure. The two armies fight, Shang-Chi and Wenwu face off, and Shang-Chi loses the initial conflict as Wenwu begins to break the big gate, releasing some of the Dweller’s minions in the process. Shang-Chi is revived by the Great Protector, a dragon that protects Ta Lo, and gains the upper hand against Wenwu as he uses his mother’s fighting techniques and Wenwu’s own Ten Rings of Power against him. Despite promising to kill him earlier in the film, Shang-Chi decides to spare his father’s life – and this is the exact moment the film goes off the rails.
The Dweller (a big, ugly, grey dragon-type-thing) breaks out of the big gate, kills Wenwu, and begins its rampage on Ta Lo. The Great Protector joins the fight and we have a big battle where two darkly-coloured dragon things crash into each other for a bit before the Dweller gets shot with a special arrow and blown up by the Ten Rings. To be honest, I was struggling to pay attention at this point. The day is saved, and the film ends with Shang-Chi and his friend Katy returning to San Francisco and potentially joining the Avengers. Yay?
My issue with this resolution is that … it’s boring. I don’t care in the slightest about two dragon things smashing the shit out of each other – I care about Shang-Chi and Wenwu. You know, the father and son the film has spent its entire runtime developing, showing us their history and morals, how they clash despite the love they have for each other, and how they may never actually be able to be at peace with one another?
More so than most Marvel movies, Shang-Chi didn’t need a big grey CGI fight at the end. What it needed was something smaller – more emotional, more considered, more… engaging. I loved the relationship between Shang-Chi and Wenwu in the film, but I didn’t care about the dragons it spent most of its finale focused on. Because of that, I kind of checked out a little bit. It didn’t help that the dragons look really similar, and the whole finale is set against a very boring grey background that’s both unpleasant and unengaging to look at. I haven't edited this next image at all: it's a genuine still from the film. D'you see what I mean?
Other Marvel movies have been guilty of this, of course, but I think it hit me harder in Shang-Chi because I was enjoying the rest of the film so much. Up until this point it was looking to be one of my favourite superhero movies of all time, but this finale felt so disconnected from the rest of the film I couldn’t help but be disappointed by it. It doesn’t undo everything the film does right, obviously, but it’s a damn shame.
It’s especially a shame because the entire finale could be fixed with just a few tweaks – and to be completely honest, I get the feeling that director Destin Daniel Cretton’s original finale was something much smaller (check out his film Short Term 12 for a perfect example of how good Cretton is at creating character-based conflicts), but was vetoed by the Marvel higher-ups for the sake of the big grey CGI fight (for legal reasons I have nothing to back up these claims and I'm not saying that this is what happened - it's just a feeling I have). Those few tweaks are:
Scrap the big dragon fight completely, and have the Great Protector stay out of the conflict after he revives Shang-Chi (maybe save him for the sequel? A little tease never goes amiss)
Set Shang-Chi and Wenwu’s final conflict somewhere more visually interesting: the mountain is really dull, especially in comparison to the film’s other, gorgeous locations, and a good splash of colour would really liven things up
Push Wenwu further to the dark side and have him nearly kill his son, before he realises what he’s done and that he’s been tricked, and sacrifices himself to keep the gate sealed and the world safe from the Dweller
Have Shang-Chi then find the Ten Rings at the base of the gate and decide to keep them and use them for good, as his father could have
I’m obviously not a screenwriter, but these tweaks achieve the same thing as the finished film but without the ugly CGI dragon fight. Instead, the crux of the conflict is the bond between Shang-Chi and Wenwu, and a father’s ultimate love for his son as he sacrifices himself to save the world and finally be with his wife in death. Is that not at least a little better than his soul being eaten by a dragon we have no emotional connection to?
The thing is, Shang-Chi deserves a better ending. Not only is it mostly a hugely refreshing superhero movie, it’s an incredibly important one. It’s the first MCU film from an Asian director, with a predominantly Asian cast, and which actively explores Asian culture. For a lot of people across the world, this is the first time they’re seeing themselves properly represented in a Hollywood blockbuster – and that’s awesome! Us white folk (particularly us men) have never had an issue with representation, but millions of people have, and it’s so great that that’s starting to change.
Not only that, but Shang-Chi is just a well-made, well-written, well-choreographed superhero movie that happens to have an abysmal final act. As it stands, it’s still a pretty great film – but with a better finale, it could have been one of the greatest superhero movies of all time. Fingers crossed the inevitable sequel doesn’t do itself quite so dirty by the ending.
Well ... hello again! It's been a hot minute, hasn't it? Apologies for that - I've had a lot going on! I moved house (from Cardiff back to Manchester with my fam), finished my masters project, went back to a full-time bar job, and I'm trying to get a steady writing gig, as well as having some sort of social life. I'm pretty busy at the moment.
Anyway, it's lovely to be back on Feels For Reels, and I hope you enjoyed this piece! If you haven't, please do go and see Shang-Chi - I know I moaned about it a lot here, but it's well worth seeing on the whole.
As for the future of Feels For Reels, things are going to be changing a little bit! As some of you may know, I started the site as a project for my masters course ... which is now finished. But, I had some lovely comments from quite a few people who enjoyed reading the stuff I was posting, so I think I'm going to keep writing and publishing here as and when the inspo strikes!
But in any case, thanks again for reading - hopefully I won't leave four months between posts this time! As ever, take care of yourselves out there: get vaccinated, wear a mask, etc, etc. Speak soon!
Images courtesy of Marvel Studios. All rights reserved.