It's almost here ladies and gents. Marvel Studios' Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is finally about to grace our movie theatres and here's everything you need to know about the Master of Kung-Fu.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: BEFORE YOU WATCH
Marvel Studios' latest film in the MCU's Phase 4 introduces us to Shang-Chi, The Master of Kung-Fu. However, the MCU version of the character will be slightly different from the comics version. In this article, we're going to give you a brief summary of Shang-Chi's origins, powers and abilities, as well as what to expect in the MCU film.
Shang-Chi's Origins
Shang-Chi first appeared in Special Marvel Edition #15 released in December of 1973. He was created by Steve Englehart and Thanos originator Jim Starlin, In the original Marvel comics, the immortal crime lord and sorcerer Fu Manchu raised Shang-Chi to become a deadly assassin. However, Shang-Chi became aware of his father’s evil nature and defected after his first assignment. He then began to attack various elements of his father’s criminal empire and allied himself with his father’s archenemy, Denis Nayland Smith, and MI-6.
In the MCU, Shang-Chi confronts the past he thought he left behind when he's drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organization. Wenwu a.k.a. The Mandarin (not to be confused with Sir Ben Kingsley's fake Mandarin) is the father of Shang-Chi and owns the magical Ten Rings. He’s an immortal man burdened with, as the saying goes, the great responsibility that comes with great power. He wields his abilities brutally for thousands of years—leading armies, building terrorist organizations, and becoming less and less human as he sculpts the world according to his vision.
Powers and Abilities
Shang-Chi is one of the greatest martial artists on Earth, having been trained possibly since birth to become the ultimate warrior. Shang Chi is skilled in various martial arts with a particular specialization in Chinese martial arts. He has been shown defeating multiple highly skilled opponents simultaneously as well as superhumans. His great strength and chi (qi) allow him to strike with inhuman force enabling him to break through barriers such as brick, concrete and iron, withstand physical impacts almost to a superhuman degree, and ease all forms of pain and discomfort.
He's also known to be a great gymnast with great agility even comparable to Spider-Man. He can locate different pressure points on a person's body; incapacitate, paralyze, severely injure, or kill a person. Shang is highly skilled with all martial arts weaponry such as the Chinese double-edged sword (Jian), butterfly swords, oxtail swords, staves, and both single and double nunchaku. He has often made use of make-shift weapons as well, using metal pipes and even a tree trunk.
Shang is also a master marksman able to throw ranged weapons such as shuriken (throwing stars) with pinpoint accuracy. One of the most impressive abilities he has is the ability to control his nervous system. This enables him to deaden his body to physical pain, resist the effects of drugs or poisons, limit the spread of toxins in his bloodstream, and even slow down his bleeding rate That's pretty darn impressive and he's definitely a force to be reckoned with.
What to expect from Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings:
According to early reviews and the RottenTomatoes score, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be an absolute blast and will be far different from any superhero flick we've seen before.
“Shang-Chi is a movie that ended up on a ‘Wouldn’t It Be Great’ list where ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could do this as a movie,’ probably twenty years ago,” Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige previously told Rotten Tomatoes. “It’s a great story of a young man that realizes his father is essentially one of the world’s greatest supervillains and one of the world’s greatest criminals. How do you process that? And how do you deal with that as a child? How do you evolve beyond that?”
Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings is scheduled to be released in the United States on September 3, 2021. It will have a 45-day exclusive theatrical release, rather than being released simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access like Black Widow.
The film is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton from a screenplay he wrote with Dave Callaham and stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi alongside Awkwafina, Meng’er Zhang, Fala Chen, Florian Munteanu, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh, and Tony Leung. The film is produced by Kevin Feige and Jonathan Schwartz, with Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, and Charles Newirth serving as executive producers.
Follow Us
Subscribe