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

[ecarden]

There are countless small villages across Asia, Africa and South America where despite having contact with the modern world, the people for the most part live lives not all that different from there ancestors from centuries gone by. Heck, even in the United States, that is pretty much what the Amish do. As for their not being more people, perhaps each generation loses some their young to outward immigration. It could be that not all chose to stay, but they generally respect the village not talk about where they came from.

There are countless small villages where life has not changed since the bronze age (which is what 4000 years ago gets us to)? I really don't think that's true. And to the extent it is, they aren't a bunch of people from a 'superior' society whose fall was caused entirely by external invasion. It's not even the bull**** 'we grew decadent and dug into things man was not meant to know, so we must stay primitive and not advance' they were just attacked, right? Am I misremembering? Why wouldn't they want to rebuild what was lost, which they (and their dragon buddy) ought to remember?

Emigration, as I said, is certainly possible, as is some sort of artificial limit on population. But the estimate I found for world population in 2000 BC are 27 million, which grew to 7.78 billion as of the present, that's a lot of growth, even hampered by fairly minimal tech for much of it and no magic. Sort of seems like the village might have grown quite a bit over the same period. Also, even if their population was limited, given that half of it was snapped out, they'd probably have been desperately trying to repopulate, then they'd have come back. There ought to be a lot of little kids running around.

But the more I think about this, the weirder it seems, given that they're theoretically protecting the planet, maybe they should put some time into improving their defenses? They've got a village, a big moat and then the gate itself. They had four thousand years and couldn't maybe throw up a wall? Or remove the outcropping by the gate so there's not a nice landing platform for anyone who wants to open it? Or have some sort of warning system to wake up the dragon that isn't someone randomly getting knocked directly into her underwater lair? I mean, if you can wake her up when Wenwu walks away from the battle, it seems sort of unlikely he makes it to the gate at all (though relative power levels are real hard to tell in this movie). Or for that matter, don't place your village right in the path to the gate, but have only the monastery there to ensure access control and have the plan be to retreat in the face of overwhelming odds to defend the gate, with the dragon?

The big problem here is 4000 years is longer than recorded history (ETA: nope, I was misremembering, recorded history began a bit earlier than this). Every language, every culture, every people you see around you was basically created over that time, or massively changed. But they just...didn't and that makes the world feel fake to me. ETA: Now, to be fair, you could go a different route and say that the art we see when the past is being described has been done in a Ta-Lo modern style, as they don't really know what happened 4000 years ago, because no one does (though they've got an eyewitness in the form of an immortal dragon and prove to be 100% correct in everything they predict). And there's no evidence of grander cities or anything, let alone how the Dweller came to attack them. There's lots of ways a society like this could come into existence and remain at this tech level/size, but most of them require significant outside involvement (which, hey, exists in the form of would-be invaders and the dragon). So, I can come up with a head-canon which explains it, but it doesn't cast the Great Protector in a great light to be honest.

Also, I really assume you can't just fly over the moving forest and get into Ta-Lo by landing in the permanent clearing and going through the waterfall? Given the Dweller and its minions all fly, I assume that doesn't work. But again, if the goal is defense, why even have a way in and out?

Alternatively, as they recognize a car and must have some outside contact, a few guns and dragon-scale bullets would be pretty effective. Given what we saw one arrow do to the Dweller, a bit of modernization and they don't need the 10 rings to kill him. Just shoot him. A lot.