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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Default Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

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    I'd never heard of this property until the Phase 4 movie list was announced. From the Iron Man movies I'd gathered that the Ten Rings was...umm...something something sinister bad guy conspiracy something.

    Without any further idea about the property or the characters, nothing in this trailer really compels me to see the movie. It's sort of Disney Marvel Does Crouching Tiger Meets Mortal Kombat With Buses Crashing Around.

    That doesn't much appeal to me. Maybe the full trailer will show something worth being interested about, but not seeing it here.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

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    Shang-Chi has always been a solid C-lister and occasional B-Lister in the comics. It is exciting to see Marvel dig deeper into their cast of characters and pull out something a bit more obscure!

    I am really liking the implication that Shang-Chi's father is the Mandarin, rather than Fu Manchu (which, interestingly, Marvel does not have the rights to anymore (which is probably for the best)). I feel like Iron Man 3 did a huge disservice to the idea of the Mandarin as a character, so I am excited to see what a modern interpretation of the character will be in the MCU.

    The martial arts seems spot on, which is great (especially after the disaster that was the Iron Fist show (sure it was not a MCU project but it was still awful)).

    If this film is successful, I hope it paves the way for Iron Fist to be redeemed as a property.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Shang-Chi, or to use his editorial name, Master of Kung-Fu, is...

    So, Kung Fu movies and shows were really popular and MArvel wanted to use to a licensed serial about one but wasn't able to get the rights...

    But they were able to get the rights to Fu Manchu.

    So, rather than directly adapt those stories, they just said "those stories happened as is" and used them as backstory and framing work about their own Kung Fu hero, Shang-Chi.

    For the record, after Marvel lost the rights to use Fu Manchu in their comics, they started calling him Zheng Zu and claimed that that was his "real" name and that Fu Manchu was an alias but he's still basically the same character.

    In the comics, Shang-Chi is the son of Fu Manchu and an American woman who Fu Machu chose becuase she had good genes and was trained from birth using traditional methods, alchemical drugs, and device that replace his dreams with VR training among other things so that by the time he was an adult he would be the greatest martial artist in the world. He's refered to as the "Master of Kung Fu" becuase... He is. All of it.

    Between main styles and regional variants, there are over three hundred "styles" of Chinese martial arts. Shang-Chi has mastered them all. He's also known to have mastered at least the main styles of most East and Southeast Asian Martial arts and to have at least dabled in literally every martial art native to earth and some that come from other dimensions or outer space. If it can even remotely be considered or compared to Kung Fu, shang-Chi has mastered it.

    The one exception is The Way of the Spider, which Shang Chi helped create but can't master becuase it requires superhuman levels of agility and flexibility, being created specifically to compliment Spider-Man's power set.

    He's also the third most powerful user of Chi on Earth, behind Fat Cobra and Iron Fist. Under the current canon, in a short fight Iron Fist's greater power would cancel out Shang-Chi's current skill and they'd be more or less even, but in a drawn-out fight, Shang-Chi would win.

    The Ten Rings refer to ten rings composed of Alien Technology that belong to the Mandarin. Each one has a different power.

    If you remember, back in ... I don't remember if it was 2 or 3 that had the Mandarin as the bad guy, it was implied that the character calling themself the Mandarin wasn't the "Real" Mandarin?

    This was a subtle reference to how the Mandarin's character had changed drastically over the years. Originally, in the 60s, he was a poor man's Fu Manchu.

    Now, this was established a while back, honestly, but The "Real" Mandarin is the bad guy in this movie... And based on this trailer, it's probably because they couldn't get the rights to Fu Manchu and didn't think that Zheng Zu would fly.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    I've never encountered Shang-Chi in the comics, but this trailer looks pretty good. Let's hope it's much better than Iron Fist.
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2021-04-19 at 04:09 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    the Iron Man 3's Mandarin was probably the best way of depicting that character in an eurocentric Iron Man movie. The Mandarin has always played in the super racist anti-Asian stereotypes, and actually turning it on its head so it was a character in-universe trying to play up these stereotype was a brilliant move.

    Now, nothing says that there can't be a *real* Mandarin or whatnot that the guy from IM3 heard about and just decided to steal the name.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    I've never encountered Shang-Chi in the comics, but this trailer looks pretty good. Let's hope it's much better than Iron Fist.
    I think part of the reason for them doing Shang-Chi, who in the comics is a decent C-List character, is because the netflix take on Iron Fist flopped so hard. Shang-Chi is a bit of an apology, the Martial Arts Epic that Iron Fist should have been, with a character who is less inherently problematic.
    Last edited by BRC; 2021-04-19 at 04:13 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

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    • I am irrationally pleased that I recognized Razor Fist, and I see they let him keep a hand in this incarnation.
    • I’m going to take a stab at a guess and say the blue bracelets are the Ten Rings - though as I’m not familiar with the character I don’t know what else they could be.
    • Is the looks-like-she’s-supposed-to-be-the-designated-love-interest lady played by the same person that played Sisu in Raya? She sounds very similar.
    • Is it just me or did that big battle with the giant cat(?) look really CGI?




    I will probably see this at some point but right now I’m more excited for Venom 2.

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    I feel like Iron Man 3 did a huge disservice to the idea of the Mandarin as a character, so I am excited to see what a modern interpretation of the character will be in the MCU.

    The martial arts seems spot on, which is great (especially after the disaster that was the Iron Fist show (sure it was not a MCU project but it was still awful)).

    I’m going to half-disagree on both these points.

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    Killian was a boring bad guy but Trevor as a front was a nice twist.

    And I maintain that season 2 Iron Fist wasn’t bad.


    Side note, I wonder if Trevor is going to show up in a cameo?

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    One of the little shorts had a minion of the real Mandarin kidnap him out of prison.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by BRC View Post
    I think part of the reason for them doing Shang-Chi, who in the comics is a decent C-List character, is because the netflix take on Iron Fist flopped so hard. Shang-Chi is a bit of an apology, the Martial Arts Epic that Iron Fist should have been, with a character who is less inherently problematic.
    Iron Fist isn't exactly problematic.

    I know, people look at him and see "Rich White guy martial artist" but his entire deal is that he grew up in a place where everyone decided he didn't belong based on his appearance and he had to bust his hump for everything despite nominally having an advantage, and then even after earning the highest honor there is he still wasn't accepted and was still treated like crap by the majority of those people becuase he looked different from them and therefore was always going to be an outsider.

    (Seriously, he was denied information that the Iron Fist is entitled to and that he honestly really needed.)

    Then he comes back to Earth, hey, turns out he's rich.

    There's a reason why Danny's best friend is a working-class black man who was sent to prison on flimsy evidence after being framed for possession of hard drugs and then the victim of attempted murder by the openly racist warden of the prison he ended up in. Danny's life experiences in Kun Lun are more similar to Luke Cage's experiences than Tony Stark's.

    Calling Iron Fist problematic is basically saying that only people of certain ethnicities can belong to certain cultures or can be victims of prejudice. It's not a Last Samurai situation where the White Guy shows up and just takes over and is inexplicably good at being Asian.

    Like, you can't just look at the white guy doing Kung Fu and shout "cultural appropriation," the character is from that culture. Spent most of his life living in that culture, trying to earn a place in that culture while being treated like trash by people who wanted to make him feel as if he'd never properly belonged.

    This is why all of the people who wanted an Asian Danny when they were first casting, to my perception, clearly had no familiarity with the character. You cast a Chinese guy as Iron Fist and his story falls flat. The fact that he obviously isn't ethnically Kun'Lunian s a vital part of his backstory.

    Granted, from what I've heard Netflix Iron Fist was bad so it's entirely possible that none of this was ever made clear in the Netflix series.
    Last edited by Rater202; 2021-04-19 at 04:32 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    Granted, from what I've heard Netflix Iron Fist was bad so it's entirely possible that none of this was ever made clear in the Netflix series.
    It wasn’t.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Let's just agree that Iron Fist was a bad show, and any debates around whether or not its problematic elements — legitimate or not — are moot.

    I only brought it up for the purpose of casting Shang-chi in a positive light.
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2021-04-19 at 04:37 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Season 2 of Iron Fist wasn't terrible, but it was far from good. In terms of Iron Fist stuff I've read or watched (which is...most of it), it falls somewhere above Living Weapon (the absolute bottom of the barrel) but below his appearance as a supporting character in Ultimate Spider-man (a thoroughly mediocre show, but entertaining enough).

    Shang-Chi is a character I've only been exposed to as a sometime supporting Iron Fist character, though I really should delve deeper into his stuff. I've been relatively excited for this movie since it was announced, and that hasn't changed. Love martial arts films, and like others have said, hopefully this paves the way for a good Iron Fist movie or tv series; a loose adaptation of The Immortal Iron Fist would be awesome. Seeing a Bride of Nine Spiders who isn't completely ****ing bastardized (like season 2 of the Netflix show did) would be great. They did the same thing to Zhou Cheng too (who I didn't even realize until well after the fact that the random drunk ******* was supposed to be the "death of Iron Fists" dragon eater dude) but I don't really care as much because I always found his concept kinda dumb in the first place.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    Iron Fist isn't exactly problematic.

    I know, people look at him and see "Rich White guy martial artist" but his entire deal is that he grew up in a place where everyone decided he didn't belong based on his appearance and he had to bust his hump for everything despite nominally having an advantage, and then even after earning the highest honor there is he still wasn't accepted and was still treated like crap by the majority of those people becuase he looked different from them and therefore was always going to be an outsider.

    (Seriously, he was denied information that the Iron Fist is entitled to and that he honestly really needed.)

    Then he comes back to Earth, hey, turns out he's rich.

    There's a reason why Danny's best friend is a working-class black man who was sent to prison on flimsy evidence after being framed for possession of hard drugs and then the victim of attempted murder by the openly racist warden of the prison he ended up in. Danny's life experiences in Kun Lun are more similar to Luke Cage's experiences than Tony Stark's.

    Calling Iron Fist problematic is basically saying that only people of certain ethnicities can belong to certain cultures or can be victims of prejudice. It's not a Last Samurai situation where the White Guy shows up and just takes over and is inexplicably good at being Asian.

    Like, you can't just look at the white guy doing Kung Fu and shout "cultural appropriation," the character is from that culture. Spent most of his life living in that culture, trying to earn a place in that culture while being treated like trash by people who wanted to make him feel as if he'd never properly belonged.

    This is why all of the people who wanted an Asian Danny when they were first casting, to my perception, clearly had no familiarity with the character. You cast a Chinese guy as Iron Fist and his story falls flat. The fact that he obviously isn't ethnically Kun'Lunian s a vital part of his backstory.
    This. As well, Danny being a white guy who is repeatedly made aware of his inherent privilege (despite his life experiences) has always been a key part of his story, and it's why his friendship with Luke Cage works so well.
    Last edited by Rynjin; 2021-04-19 at 04:39 PM.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Was Living Weapon the one about the cyborg dad and Danny turning a skyscraper into a giant mecha ...?
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2021-04-19 at 04:43 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    Was Living Weapon the one about the cyborg dad and Danny turning a skyscraper into a giant mecha ...?
    That's the one. Ugh.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    Iron Fist isn't exactly problematic.
    I disagree strongly with this.

    The very core conceit that created Iron Fist is where the problematic elements start. in the late 70s, martial arts movies and shows were popular, starring Asian leads. So America decides to get on this by coopting the language of these movies but putting white guys in instead. (See Kung-Fu)

    Marvel created Iron Fist as a white blonde man who gets thrown into the Asian centric world of K'un L'un and becomes the great white savior, beating out all his Asian competitors, turning them into bad guys. Why? Because Danny Rand (our white blonde hero) is special.

    that's the core one of the problem.

    Core two has to do with the idea that readers wouldn't buy the title unless the lead was a white blond guy. That was the actual belief at the time. So you get a blonde white lead to be our point of view character to explore this Asian mystical rip-off world.

    Because only white guys can be special. Because only white guys can be the hero.

    That's the cores of the problematic areas. And they are very real problems. The fact that the writers basically tried to show "but look! Danny is experiencing reverse racism! he's experiencing the very thing that typically Asians in white culture have to put up with, but now he's the guy experiencing it" doesn't excuse any of that. In fact it puts a lampshade on it by saying "other cultures are just as bad as white culture! See! So that invalidates their complaints!"

    Danny being White is not essential to the character. He absolutely could've been played by an Asian guy, a black guy, a brown guy, any race of guy in the series and it would've worked fine. And helped to erase the inherent cultural appropriation, great white hero issues inherent in the property.
    Last edited by Gallowglass; 2021-04-19 at 05:01 PM.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    By that logic they should retire Luke Cage because he started out as a Blaxploitation stereotype.



    After a while, you have to stop judging the character for how they're written decades ago and start looking at the narrative that's being told with the pieces that the current writers have.

    Or to bring this back on topic: Does the fact that Shang-Chi's father, canonically, is a character who, while considered nuanced at the time, is now days dismissed as a racist character mean that one can't tell a good and compelling sorry about Shang-Chi?
    Last edited by Rater202; 2021-04-19 at 05:09 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    By that logic they should retire Luke Cage because he started out as a Blaxploitation stereotype.
    Is Luke Cage a white guy who comes into Harlem to be the savior of the people? I must've missed that.


    That... wow that misses my point by a mile. *shakes head sadly* Never mind. Move along.

    To go a little further. The point is, they didn't change the narrative when they told Iron Fist. They kept the problematic great-white-savior cultural appropriation issues firmly in place.

    making Danny Rand an Asian American would've fixed that while preserving the structure completely in tact.

    We -should- move on from the past and make new stories. Part of that moving on means realizing that race isn't inherent to most characters. its perfectly fine if Heimdal, Johnny Storm, Sue Storm are black. its fine if the Wasp becomes Asian. It doesn't matter to the story and it helps even out the historic inaccuracy and insufficiency.
    Last edited by Gallowglass; 2021-04-19 at 05:20 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    By that logic they should retire Luke Cage because he started out as a Blaxploitation stereotype.



    After a while, you have to stop judging the character for how they're written decades ago and start looking at the narrative that's being told with the pieces that the current writers have.

    Or to bring this back on topic: Does the fact that Shang-Chi's father, canonically, is a character who, while considered nuanced at the time, is now days dismissed as a racist character mean that one can't tell a good and compelling sorry about Shang-Chi?
    Luke Cage is white?

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallowglass View Post
    Because only white guys can be special. Because only white guys can be the hero.
    Isn't this a thread dedicated to a movie about a non-white hero?

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallowglass View Post
    In fact it puts a lampshade on it by saying "other cultures are just as bad as white culture! See! So that invalidates their complaints!"
    So non-white cultures should always be depicted as perfect to avoid implications of racism?

    Isn't that kind of problematic in and of itself?
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2021-04-19 at 05:22 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallowglass View Post
    That... wow that misses my point by a mile. *shakes head sadly* Never mind. Move along.
    Not really.

    You say that Iron Fist is problematic becuase he has a problematic origin.

    But in the many years since then, his origin story hs been revised into something much less problematic. Modern Iron Fist stories are as I've described.

    Likewise, Luke Cage's origin was problematic. He was a Blaxsplotation character, a white man's stereotype of what a young African American would consider a "real" man. But since then he's been reimagined as a character with much more depth and complexity.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    Isn't this a thread dedicated to a movie about a non-white hero?
    And the conversation we're in is about Iron Fist.


    Quote Originally Posted by Giggling Ghast View Post
    So non-white cultures should always be depicted as perfect to avoid implications of racism?
    Obvious false equivalency is obvious

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    By that logic they should retire Luke Cage because he started out as a Blaxploitation stereotype.



    After a while, you have to stop judging the character for how they're written decades ago and start looking at the narrative that's being told with the pieces that the current writers have.

    Or to bring this back on topic: Does the fact that Shang-Chi's father, canonically, is a character who, while considered nuanced at the time, is now days dismissed as a racist character mean that one can't tell a good and compelling sorry about Shang-Chi?
    Difference is that Iron Fist's problems are kind of hard to remove. You can 'Fix' Luke Cage by just changing how he's portrayed, the White Savior trope is built into Iron Fist's backstory.

    And even then, Iron Fist is a fine character. There's some grumbling about the White Savior trope in his backstory, but most of his actual storylines don't really focus on it, so it's pretty easy to leave the backstory in the backstory and tell perfectly fine Iron Fist stories.

    Although they tackled basically the same issue in Doctor Strange by recasting The Ancient One, and trying hard to deflavor his sorcerous tradition away from the orientalist stereotypes from the comic into a distinctly international society of sorcerers, and Strange just happens to find them in Thailand.

    Regardless, the bigger problem with the Netflix Iron Fist, from my understanding, was that it just kind of Sucked. Netflix Marvel never really made the Hand work as compelling antagonists, the actor they cast to play Danny Rand didn't have a martial arts background, and a lot of the storyline was dedicated to a boring corporate politics subplot. The result was just kind of a standard Superhero Show, but the protagonist's fist glowed before he punched people real hard, and that focused too much on "Does Danny Rand get to waltz back to New York and inherit a corporate Empire" vs Iron Fist stuff.
    Which, considering the character of Iron Fist was created specifically due to the boom of interest in Martial Arts movies in the 70s, was a big miss.

    Trailer looks good, but it's easy to make a trailer look good. Simu Liu, our star, doesn't have an especially impressive resume (Mostly a bunch of TV bit parts), but Marvel Casting is generally pretty good at picking winners.
    Last edited by BRC; 2021-04-19 at 05:26 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gallowglass View Post

    Danny being White is not essential to the character. He absolutely could've been played by an Asian guy, a black guy, a brown guy, any race of guy in the series and it would've worked fine. And helped to erase the inherent cultural appropriation, great white hero issues inherent in the property.
    This is...demonstrably untrue, though. If Danny were Asian, the story wouldn't work at all. If he were any other race, his own story would work fine, but the history he's built up over the last 60 years with Luke doesn't have the same punch anymore. Danny Rand is one of the few characters in media where his race is actually integral to the story that has been consistently told with him. An outsider, a fish out of water, one who needs to learn to see other perspectives. It is a constant, inherent part of the story told with the character and has evolved over the decades to tell an updated version of that story as the understanding of underlying social trends has changed. Heroes for Hire (the team, not the comic) simply DOES NOT WORK if Danny is Hispanic, or black, or any other race.

    Tony Stark doesn't need to be white, and neither does Captain America; their stories, for the most part, would be identical no matter their race. But Danny kinda has to be white (and even more especially NOT Asian; technically he could be something like of Italian descent in this day and age, etc., ethnicities that just aren't discriminated against anymore) for the story to work, just like Luke Cage and Black Panther need to be black, and Shang Chi himself needs to be Asian.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallowglass View Post
    Obvious false equivalency is obvious
    But that's kind of the underlying implication, right? You're saying that making K'un-Lun racist is just an attempt to invalidate complaints about Iron Fist being racist, but doesn't that mean the only non-racist alternative is to make K'un-Lun an absolute utopia?

    Why is K'un-Lun the only place to get this whole "human civilization" thing completely right?
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2021-04-19 at 05:29 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    This trailer makes the film look like a fairly generic fantasy martial arts epic, with the only differences being that it'll actually be recorded in English and that the budget's higher than usual. Even the cast, which includes Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung, is exactly the kind of people you'd see in a high-budget fantasy martial arts epic.

    Personally I'm of the opinion that you can never have too many martial arts epics, so sure, let's do this, I'm just not sure how it will connect to the rest of the MCU (I mean, there's not really any need for that to happen, but people have expectations regarding the Marvel logo at this point). The one worrying thing for me would be that movies like this are dependent upon the believability of the martial arts, and the chosen Shang-Chi, Simu Liu, doesn't exactly have a lot of action credits to his name (I'm told Kim's Convenience is quite good, but it's a very different skill set).
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    Not really.

    Yes. Really.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    You say that Iron Fist is problematic becuase he has a problematic origin.

    But in the many years since then, his origin story hs been revised into something much less problematic. Modern Iron Fist stories are as I've described.
    Look, This will be my last post on this. Feel free to get in whatever last word you want to get in. But everything you are writing, everything you said in your post, is boilerplate excuse-ism for cultural appropriation issues that are very real. I'm obviously not going to get you to see that and I'm not really interested in continuing to try.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    The one worrying thing for me would be that movies like this are dependent upon the believability of the martial arts, and the chosen Shang-Chi, Simu Liu, doesn't exactly have a lot of action credits to his name (I'm told Kim's Convenience is quite good, but it's a very different skill set).
    Well, to be fair, every action star has to start somewhere, and I'm sure lots of money is being poured into training Liu for the role. That double flying kick looked pretty authentic.
    Last edited by Giggling Ghast; 2021-04-19 at 05:35 PM.
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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Cikomyr2 View Post
    the Iron Man 3's Mandarin was probably the best way of depicting that character in an eurocentric Iron Man movie. The Mandarin has always played in the super racist anti-Asian stereotypes, and actually turning it on its head so it was a character in-universe trying to play up these stereotype was a brilliant move.

    Now, nothing says that there can't be a *real* Mandarin or whatnot that the guy from IM3 heard about and just decided to steal the name.
    What's the problem with the Mandarin? I'm going to assume it's not the simple reason that he is Chinese and a villain. Hopefully it's not because he's a martial artist because you have someone in this thread arguing that making a white guy a super martial artist is wrong for some reason. Alien rings? Not sure what the problem with them would be? His wardrobe? So he dresses like he's the Emperor of China? They say dress for the job you want not the one you have. Is it that he is a "mad scientist"? Asians can't be?

    You want to make a Mandarin that maintains the flavor and isn't problematic to anyone that will actually watch the movie and not just look for a reason to be offended? Here goes: Start with a guy who is descended from a family that lost everything in the revolution, giving him a grudge against the current regime. Have him be quite intelligent and a good business man, essentially the Chinese Tony Stark. Keep the martial arts mastery. Have him have an affinity to antiquities from before the revolution. Maybe have an outfit like he typically wears in the comics in a display case somewhere. Make sure he speaks clear English, nothing even approaching Engrish. From there he's either still in China planning to make his move from within after discovering the Rings or he has since transferred his wealth out of China and intends to attack from abroad. Throw in some reason to dislike Stark if he were still around and there you go.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Tyrant View Post
    What's the problem with the Mandarin? I'm going to assume it's not the simple reason that he is Chinese and a villain. Hopefully it's not because he's a martial artist because you have someone in this thread arguing that making a white guy a super martial artist is wrong for some reason. Alien rings? Not sure what the problem with them would be? His wardrobe? So he dresses like he's the Emperor of China? They say dress for the job you want not the one you have. Is it that he is a "mad scientist"? Asians can't be?
    It's more that he heavily drew on "Yellow Peril" aesthetics of the 50's/60's in a probably not malicious way, but in ones that really haven't aged well. Much like a lot of things in comics from the 50's/60's, they need to be updated to better reflect the modern day. Back then, it was cliché. Today, it would really stand out as egregious stereotyping.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    This is...demonstrably untrue, though. If Danny were Asian, the story wouldn't work at all. If he were any other race, his own story would work fine, but the history he's built up over the last 60 years with Luke doesn't have the same punch anymore. Danny Rand is one of the few characters in media where his race is actually integral to the story that has been consistently told with him. An outsider, a fish out of water, one who needs to learn to see other perspectives. It is a constant, inherent part of the story told with the character and has evolved over the decades to tell an updated version of that story as the understanding of underlying social trends has changed. Heroes for Hire (the team, not the comic) simply DOES NOT WORK if Danny is Hispanic, or black, or any other race.

    Tony Stark doesn't need to be white, and neither does Captain America; their stories, for the most part, would be identical no matter their race. But Danny kinda has to be white (and even more especially NOT Asian; technically he could be something like of Italian descent in this day and age, etc., ethnicities that just aren't discriminated against anymore) for the story to work, just like Luke Cage and Black Panther need to be black, and Shang Chi himself needs to be Asian.

    In my opinion, false.

    Look if you made Danny Rand Asian-American, you preserve the fish-out-of-water story when he crashes in the mountains and is taken in by K'un L'un. As a rich american kid, he would still be thrown into a world he didn't understand and forced to embrace it. The difference is, the cultural appropriation component gets changed into a return-to-your-roots storyline where Danny has to discover his cultural roots rather than come in and save the primitive culture. That would be the way to rewire the narrative to "fix" the problems. Again - In my opinion - Everything I'm saying is just my opinion.

    The Rich guy vs Not Rich guy relationship with Luke Cage is preserved. You -do- lose some of the White vs. Black punch in it, I agree with that. Doesn't mean it doesn't work. Just means its different.

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    Default Re: Shang Chi and the Very Long Subtitle About Obscure Marvel Lore

    Iron Fist is not unsalvageable, but that doesn't mean it's not problematic. As a general rule, the biggest problem with Iron Fist as a character and a setting is the general lack of Asian superheroes for him to be in contrast to.

    The story of someone who is an outsider everywhere is a good story, and you can do that with Iron Fist (especially if you start things off by having him be just one of the Eight Immortal Weapons rather than the sole saviour of Mystical Lands, an out the comics specifically wrote to move him away from the White Saviour archetype.) However, if he's the only (or nearly the only) example of Asian cultures being used in a setting, it gets a lot worse a lot more quickly.

    When Iron Fist first came out, the Marvel landscape was direly white. I'm not sure whether there were any Asian superheroes at that point, and the ones who showed up shortly afterwards were mainly terrible stereotypes.

    When Iron Fist first arrived in the MCU, the only Asian characters in the MCU were Jim Morita (from about five minutes of The First Avenger), Daisy and May from Agents of SHIELD, and a handful of extremely stereotypical bad guys from Daredevil (the "ninja mob" and the "mystical Chinese" mob.)

    In both cases, the general lack of Asian representation made the flaws of Iron Fist more dramatic, and frankly in the case of the show they made it worse by generally having the show be bad. They cast a guy who didn't know how to fight, they didn't give him good fight training for about two years, and they kept demanding that he just be the least charismatic character alive. (Seriously, the difference between Season One / Defenders Danny, and Season Two / Season Two Luke Cage Danny is night and day.)

    Also, Danny is a pretty crummy White Savior in the show given that he seems to have gotten everyone in K'un L'ung killed by being an entitled white jerk.

    *EDIT* Because it's related!

    Regarding the Mandarin conversation, the Mandarin's primary problem is honestly just that Fu Manchu exists, and Fu Manchu is so drastically racist both in concept and execution that anything that even remotely compares itself to him is starting at a serious penalty.
    Last edited by Friv; 2021-04-19 at 05:43 PM.
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