A belated review of Marvel's Shang-Chi
First of all, it is a pretty good movie. Lots of fun action, great references to Chinese culture, and all the usual MCU tie-ins. But I found that I had expected... more. Warning - minor spoilers.
The village of Ta-Lo: The CGI team clearly did their research here, and there was a good deal of legitimate Chinese mythology at play in the local fauna. However, the traditional wuxia mysticism felt like it was being shoehorned into a setting reminiscent of Black Panther's technologically advanced Wakanda, with a result that ended up in a sort of no-man's-land rife with uncertainty and loose ends. Is Ta-Lo's only deterrence for discovery the shifting bamboo forest that "eats" trespassers? Have there been no attempts over thousands of years to build additional defenses around the Dark Gate? Why did their ancient civilization have skyscrapers but rely on archers as their main force? I loved seeing qilin and fenghuang on the big screen, but the literary bridge connecting this world to that of the Avengers was built half-heartedly at best.
The wushu: It's always great to see Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung doing their thing, and there were a decent number of shots where the actors themselves did the action, instead of cutting to one of their top-tier stunt doubles - not something you see every day. But I found myself perhaps unreasonably disappointed by the martial arts on screen. I get that the gist of it was a struggle between Ying Li's taijiquan (which actually felt more like baguazhang) and Wenwu's bajiquan (with a splash of trickster flair); but more often than not, these styles were kind of washed out by typical marvel-style snappy fight sequences. It was good fighting! Just not quite as special as I had thought it would be. The weapons were also pretty cool - tiger hook swords and rope dart are traditional wushu apparatus - but they didn't really have anything to do with either Ying Li or Wenwu's respective fighting styles.
The archery: This was actually an extremely gratifying inclusion that I didn't expect to see. Most modern archers use what's known as a Mediterranean draw, in which the string is pulled back with three fingers and anchored somewhere along the jawline. Katy and the other archers of Ta-Lo are using a proper Mongolian draw, pulling the string with a thumb all the way back to the ear. My only nitpick is that in the mural depicting the Dweller-in-Darkness's original defeat, Ta-Lo's archers are using some kind of two-finger draw floating way past the back of the head that I've never seen before. That just felt a little bit sloppy for a piece of artwork that otherwise would have been a neat continuity nod.
The Chinese: The amount of Mandarin in the film was a pleasant surprise, and Katy's struggle to understand was deeply relatable. There were quite a few mistranslations, but I can more or less accept this as prioritizing the spirit of certain phrases over their literal meaning. I actually take more issue with Marvel's persistently using the outdated Wade-Giles system of romanization, rather than the almost ubiquitously accepted Hanyu Pinyin (e.g. Shàng Qì).
The sexism: Not that my background as a cishet male gives me any particular insight on this subject, but I found it ironic that Xialing, whose somewhat lackluster character development revolves around her father's disregard, is as a character more or less disregarded by Marvel in much the same way. She's presented as an exceptionally gifted fighter able to manipulate a complex weapon perfectly after seeing it handled from afar, as well as a shrewd businesswoman able to manipulate a complex underground organization after coming in as a complete stranger. She's all strength with no weakness; the façade of a perfect woman with no depth to support her. There doesn't seem to be anything Shang-Chi can do that Xialing couldn't do better, so the focus on the male sibling (even if he is the titular character) ends up feeling contrived. Their mother doesn't fare much better, introduced as a stalwart warrior able to fend off a legendary thousand-year-old warlord... only to die off-screen at the hands of small-time gangsters. Ying Li deserved better.
This is not at all meant as a knock on Shang-Chi. It's a solid movie, a credit to its actors, and definitely a step in the right direction for Asian representation in cinema. I just think it's missing that extra mile that would have made it truly incredible.
titsay
theartofmadeline
jbbartram-illu
turnnoffyourmind
