REVIEW
By REBEKAH HIGGINS
Current Editor
A familiar Marvel logo comes onto the screen as I take my seat in the theater. A woman begins the story in Mandarin, and the story of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings unfolds.
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, Shang-Chi is the second movie to be released in Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
The movie was originally announced to come out in February 2021 but was delayed due to Covid-19. The seventh-month delay was worth the wait.
This movie broke a record for Labor Day weekend. The movie grossed $94 million in the United States and Canada alone, making it the highest-grossing movie on Labor Day.
The movie itself is a wonderful nod to Chinese culture and it is stunning with its special effects, cinematography, and well-choreographed fight scenes. Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu, portrayed Shang-Chi in a way that created a sense of relatability and rawness to the character. The lead female character, Katy, who was played by Awkwafina, provided the movie with humor and a wonderful character arc. Together they made the movie very entertaining to watch.
While the movie was, for the most part, amazing, it did have its flaws. Trevor Slattory played by Ben Kingsley was an absolute throwaway character. It seemed like they were trying to make the movie more comedic, but they didn’t need a character like this especially when Marvel had an actress as hilarious as Awkwafina. For such an amazing movie it also had a soundtrack which was lacking. It caused some of the fight scenes to not feel as exciting as they should have and the most interesting parts of the soundtrack occurred during the end credits.
Even though the movie had some flaws it was fun to watch. The MCU introduced its first Asian superhero in a way that has audiences on the edge of their seats until the very end.
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