Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021)

[ecarden]

Okay, I generally really enjoyed it, a few nitpicks below, but my favorite piece only fell into place in the final post-credits scene:

Spoiler: Ten Rings

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So, the diversion to pick up Shang's sister and her little empire seemed very weak to me, as did Katy's little 'girl power' moment to her for building an illegal underground fighting 'empire' which the 10 Rings disassemble in like 30 seconds at the heart of her power, causing her to instantly flee (only to come back, alone). And after she's captured, her entire 'empire' just vanishes like it never existed.

But, with the final reveal, it became actually incredibly strong. Of course no one in her empire fought the 10 rings, her goal all along was to take them over. Every person lost on either side would be pure loss for her. I may be reading too much into it, but my read was that as soon as she knew they'd gone after Shang she knew they'd come for her. The only person with a chance to get the rings from her father is Shang, who doesn't want to be in charge, so all that needs to happen is...that. Her father wants to pass over the rings (sort of).

Now, she obviously couldn't predict the magical soul eaters and such, but otherwise it worked out. In my view she had less a plan than a goal (take over the 10 rings and preserve her own power base) and succeeded. That worked real well for me and the foreshadowed it very well with stuff like 'if he wouldn't give me a place in his empire, I'd build my own,' while Shang just ran off to be a valet. I really thought that was just going to be dropped like it was nothing when she came back for him, but instead she got exactly what she wanted in the end. In my view, she was by far the strongest character in the movie and I really enjoyed it.

Spoiler: Other stuff which really worked.

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The faux-Mandarin worked well (though they REALLY oversell how dangerous/effective the faux-10 rings were) as a comedy character and the magical creatures were real impressive to me.

Wong was great, though the Abomination knocking himself out in one punch seemed ridiculous. Also, why is Wong in an underground fight club? It sounded like it was training/therapy for the Abomination? I'd really like that to be true, seems fun.

I really liked that Shang actually did go through with his vengeance against the folks who murdered his mother. I wasn't entirely clear on why he ran off afterwards instead of going home, but I liked that he did it and he came clean with Katy rather than it being revealed by someone else.

Speaking of which, the Katy-Shang relationship did work for me. Less romantic than friendship, but it felt pretty lived in. The only bits I actually laughed at involved that relationship.

I really enjoyed the father's death scene and his last act was to save his son. I do wish Shang had pointed out to him the monsters that were coming out of the gate as he punched it. I mean, that's pretty good confirmation that this was bull**** and he was being played, but he never even mentions it.

The mid-credits scene mostly worked for me (though I agree the Chitauri suggestion is silly, though I guess they're working from what samples they've got, which is basically Chitauri and maybe what Tony brought back from Infinity Wars? All of new-Thanos's stuff was dusted) as 'we don't know what this is, but it's new'.

On the other hand:

Spoiler: Katy

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This was...okay. I don't really like the powerless sidekick in general and I really, really wish they'd resisted the urge to have the person with like a day of training be the one to make the shot on the demon-monster thing (though to be fair, I had to step out to the restroom as she was going to the archery range, so I may have missed her having actual archery skills). She did help ground things, but I'm not real sure the ninjas vs. monks vs. dragon vs. demons wanted to be that grounded.

Spoiler: Hidden Villages

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I don't love the hidden village thing and adding another ancient society (4000 years!) which has somehow remained the size of a village despite people living in it aging at human rates? Seriously? There ought to be basically a major country's worth of people through there, at least. And there's been no technological advancement in that time either? Why do this?

Also, their knowledge of the outside world seemed...unlikely given that it sounds like only one of them ever left and she didn't return? How'd they know what cars were? Or that their ancient cities were so much better than our current cities?

Spoiler: Growing the Universe

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So, I do like it when the universe grows, but it always raises question of...where were these people during the previous events? Now, for the most part, this isn't too bad as the 10 rings are a criminal syndicate. You don't expect them to run around helping the Avengers fight off Chitauri or something. But I really wasn't clear on how powerful they were supposed to be. The first part makes it seem like they're this world-spanning organization with unlimited numbers/power/resources, but then they barely outnumber the village mooks? Maybe it's just that regrowing them has been hard after he shut them down, but that raises the question of HYDRA and them and/or SHIELD and them. Did neither group know about them? If so, everyone's even more incompetent than we thought, if not then a lot of other stuff starts to come apart.

Similarly, it seems weird that he's been running around with these powerful magical artifacts in a VERY obvious way for centuries and the sorcerers just...never noticed? I mean, there's no mention of the rings in the archives...that seems pretty incompetent given how obvious we see him being with them.

Spoiler: Final Battle

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I've already complained about Katy getting the shot with the bow, but I really dislike 'this thing destroyed an entire other civilization that has been claimed to be stronger/better than ours, and the best they could do was save our universe by walling it off, but now we can totally destroy it in a battle we were totally unprepared for and with out forces depleted. Also, the power-up it got from souls was way too much. It's in trouble against the dragon, it gets like 10 souls and instantly starts to win. If that's the case, then with the souls of multiple cities, how the hell did the dragon stop it in the first place? That's a broader problem of varying power scene by scene, but that's classic fiction, so I'll stop whining about that in particular.

However, don't even get me started on the band of assassins who we KNOW use guns deciding that the right weapon against a bunch of villagers who they know have kung-fu powers are electronic crossbows that nonlethally incapacitate people and electronic melee weapons that nonlethally incapacitate people.

I mean that almost made sense against the kids as despite everything, their leader doesn't want them dead, but the whole thing about the village is that he wants them all dead and the place burned down, but the machine guns on their vehicles (which we can see) never get fired...

Then, even gimping themselves severely, the mooks who have barely managed to touch our heroes (who ought to be weaker than these monks, right? Given that they're trained in the same fashion as Shang's mom, who tossed his father around fairly easily?) do manage to basically win the fight with the monks, only releasing them to fight the demons?

That whole fight is a mess and by far the weakest part of the movie.

Generally worth the time and the movie ticket, even if you're unlucky enough to spill half your popcorn when you first sit down, as I did.