Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - Movie Review

Shang-Chi and his best friend Katy lives the easy life working as valets and partying at night when the thousand year old Xu Wenwu the controller of the mystical ten rings sends his highly trained henchmen to retrieve a pendant from Shang-Chi and his sister Xialing. Shang-Chi now has to dig into his past in order to stop Wenwu before he gains access to a hidden magical village.

In order to not making too many spoilers of movie I have greatly butchered the recap of the story. The truth is that the plot is more convoluted and epic than described. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a modern kung fu movie of war and magic and the fight between good and evil. It is a story about love and loss, family and friendship and finding yourself and your place in the world. Most of the story is set after Avengers Endgame with several flashbacks to before. But unlike WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier it does not spend much time showing how the world has changed.

Visually the special effects of the entire MCU just keeps improving and every new movie is more beautiful than the ones before. All the animations and visually effects are spot on and Shang-Chi is a positive addition to the visual and artistic masterpiece that is all of the MCU. It is a beautiful movie and the way they use the effects and at times the fighting is poetic. Especially how they turn the fight between Wenwu and Ying Li into a dance that shows how the two falls in love.

Before watching this movie I knew nothing about Shang-Chi and I knew very little about the actors. It is very likely that I would never have known or watched this movie if it was not part of the MCU. And that would have been a big missed opportunity because this movie is very beautiful and the story is told in such an amazing way, always evolving the more Shang-Chi digs into his memories of his childhood. And all the actors and their doubles show so such a high level of skills throughout the entire movie with all their fighting and acrobatics. It is impressive how good they all are.

I can not at the moment say anything negative about Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I sort of wish they had used just ten more seconds on showing how the world is still dealing with the effect of the snap. And I believe it could have been a good moment to re-introduce Iron Fist to the MCU. But I have nothing negative to say about this movie. And therefore I will give it five out of five stars. It feels like it deserves it. Someone with more knowledge about Shang-Chi could probably give a better rating.

Side note, this movie is also a very good example of good diversity in movies. Currently to promote more diversity in Hollywood every show and movie gets a diverse cast and that is fine because we are working towards a better future. But true diversity would mean that not all movies have the same standard checklist of a diverse cast but overall the movies produced is diverse; meaning that it is fine to have a movie off a mono culture, mono colour cast or mono sexuality as long as there are equally as many movies showing other cultures, colours and sexualities. And Shang-Chi is a movie with a cast of mostly Asian descent and that is good because the story would not have made as much sense if the cast had been mainly white, black or latinx.