[MCU Analysis & Review] Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
This time I’m writing about the MCU film Shang-Chi, which opened on Friday 3 September — the points worth flagging, the analysis and review, and on top of that my predictions for where all of this goes next.
In this post I’ll write up, briefly, the things that caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then go into the analysis.
Spoilers ahead
What If…? is airing right now — check the image below for the episode reviews!
Contents
Overall
A new era arrives
The first origin story of MCU Phase 4! The origin stories up to now, Iron Man and Thor, had no past legacy to lean on, so they stayed sealed inside the world of that one film. This time you can feel the links to all sorts of earlier work — Wong, the Abomination, Iron Man 3, Endgame — and that was really good! The story is easy to follow, big and flashy and fun! The Ten Rings themselves look like they’re hiding something, so there’s plenty to look forward to!
The organisation wasn’t a monolith
One thing that nagged at me a little: it would have been nice to see more of how brutal the Ten Rings are lol They turn coat and side with the mystical village of Ta Lo so easily that it made me laugh.
Dark creatures and the like appear
The enemies that showed up this time are probably one of the Deviants, the dark force that appears in Eternals. But for people who don’t know that, it suddenly turns into fantasy, and it seems like a lot of them were left baffled lol Can’t wait to see Eternals!
Analysis
Where Shang-Chi sits in the timeline
As the film itself makes clear, this is set after Endgame.
Rumour has it that it’s at almost the same point as Spider-Man: No Way Home (NWH), but I couldn’t tell from watching it.
[MCU Discussion and Prediction] Spider-Man: No Way Home [Trailer, Easter Egg]
A real surprise in the mid-credits scene…
Who made the Ten Rings?
In the mid-credits scene Wong comes to see Shang-Chi and the others because the Ten Rings are putting out some kind of signal. Not even Captain Marvel or Bruce Banner can work out what metal they’re made from — an item with a great deal of mystery about it.
More on this below, but the film brings in dark monsters and a species that looks like it has some point of contact with the Deviants from Eternals (see below), so it seems quite possible that the Ten Rings were made by the Celestials.
[MCU Commentary Discussion and Review] “Eternals” [Impressions, Easter Eggs]
Captain Marvel appears
Never thought she’d turn up in Shang-Chi lol
Hulk turned human!?
Right up to the end of Endgame, Bruce Banner was in his merged-with-the-Hulk form, and yet in the mid-credits scene he shows up as Bruce Banner, arm in a sling and all!!
Maybe She-Hulk: Attorney at Law takes place before Shang-Chi, and he turns back into Bruce Banner somewhere in it! And the Abomination was in fine spirits throwing a fixed fight with Wong, so perhaps the show will cover how that came about too!
https://theriver.jp/she-hulk-villain-revealed/
The post-credits scene
His sister Xialing doesn’t break the Ten Rings up at all — she becomes its leader! What’s interesting is how many women have newly joined that organisation! Maybe they’ve simply stopped wearing the hoods they used to wear, but to me they looked like Widows.
The dragons
Two dragons or so appear in this film! I’m a bit shaky on pinning down which comic characters the dragons here are based on, but let me introduce them anyway.
Fin Fang Foom
Here’s the setup from the comics.
A giant monster character who first appeared in a comic from the “pre-superhero Marvel” era, before the Fantastic Four debuted. Height: 126m, weight: 146,000t. A huge dragon lurking in the Valley of the Sleeping Dragon, a hidden region deep inside China.
In appearance it’s a giant monster that looks like an Eastern dragon and a European dragon added together and divided by two, but in truth it’s an alien who came from the planet Kakaranthara (also known as Maklu IV) in the Magellanic Clouds in order to invade Earth. Note: these “dragon-type aliens from Maklu IV” are the species that possessed the ten super-technology rings the Mandarin uses. If you had to put it in terms of Japanese kaiju characters, it’s the sort of thing you’d call an Alien Baltan in the shape of King Ghidorah. It flew to Earth with its fellows thousands of years ago and has stayed on Earth even after they withdrew. From the 1990s it rampaged as an Iron Man villain, and in Monsters Unleashed in 2017 it joined the other kaiju characters in helping Kei Kawade, a.k.a. Kid Kaiju, fight the Leviathans that were targeting Earth.
https://w.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/1375.html
Given that it came from space, and that in the comics Fin Fang Foom has any number of tails, there’s surely no doubt that the boss of this film is based on that character.
The Great Protector dragon and Madripoor
Couldn’t quite work out the comics setup for the dragon at the bottom of the lake in Ta Lo lol Would be nice if it came rushing in whenever Shang-Chi is in a tight spot.
Also, when it comes to Asia and dragons — Madripoor, which turned up in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, has a setup in the comics where the town was built on top of a dragon’s head (details below).
So they might well do the dragon and Madripoor business at some point!
[Analysis & Review] The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 3 [Easter Eggs & Theories]
The Abomination
(Knew it from the trailer, but) the Abomination, the main villain of The Incredible Hulk, being on good terms with Wong was a surprise lol As I said above, it would be nice if She-Hulk revealed what he’s been doing all this time.
Do the dark creatures connect to Eternals?
Up to now the stories set on Earth have been relatively realistic, but this film brought in a lot of fantastical creatures. The dark creatures newly introduced here look like they must have some relationship with the Deviants, the villains of Eternals.
Shang-Chi’s hidden past
Shang-Chi has a past where he finished off the enemy who killed his mother and then, out of the guilt, ran away from his father and the Ten Rings. The film says nothing more than that, but I’ve been thinking this enemy might be the grandfather of Katy Chen, Shang-Chi’s best friend. Then again, if that were true he ought to have mentioned it when he told the story of finishing the man off, so I doubt that’s the setup after all.
The history between the Ten Rings and Iron Man
The Ten Rings themselves actually show up right back in the first Iron Man, in the scene with the terrorists who abduct Tony Stark!
And in Iron Man 3 the leader and the organisation appeared, even if that leader was a fake.
So I was hoping this film would at least touch lightly on why they abducted Tony Stark in the first one, but it never came up lol
The Mandarin returns
Been worried about what became of the cheerful old bloke from Iron Man 3, and it turns out the Ten Rings had him locked up and were making him perform Macbeth and the like… lol Glad he made it out alive in the end, in good company with Morris, the headless creature.
Extremis returns
That Extremis-enhanced human, the thing Aldrich Killian created in Iron Man 3, was there in the Golden Daggers arena! And rewatching Iron Man 3, I noticed it already had Shang-Chi-flavoured touches in it — a dragon drawn on Killian’s skin, for one.
The Death Dealer’s presence
I was absolutely sure the Death Dealer would turn out to be an assassin whose real face had been surgically remade into the mother’s face, but the character just died with nothing coming of it, which took me by surprise.
The creatures living in the mystical village of Ta Lo
Ta Lo had lions, a qilin, a nine-tailed fox, Morris, dragons, a bird that looked like a phoenix and more. It would be nice if Ta Lo’s place in the MCU and the roots of these creatures were made clearer.
