Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (a movie review post)

 

I suppose I can't get into this review without at least mentioning that this is the first movie I've seen in the theater since 2019. It was a weird experience, and I think I have lost my love of "going to the movies" over the last year and a half and not just because of the pandemic, but that's a completely separate topic.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is quite possibly Marvel's most complex movie yet, not so much as far as the movie itself goes but its process for coming into being. Shang-Chi, as a Marvel character, has his own complexities, not the least of which is having nothing to do with the "Ten Rings."

And this is where I really want to get out into the weeds and talk about The Mandarin and things which, ultimately, have nothing to do with this movie yet which I find fascinating. Maybe some other post. Let me skip through all of that by saying this:
As an adaptation, Shang-Chi is a poor one. Other than his skill in martial arts, there is nothing to connect the character from the movie to the character in the comics. And I don't care at all.
From me, that's significant, because I am always looking at how adaptations stray from the source material. So a few things here:

1. I never followed Shang-Chi. His series had been cancelled before I seriously got into comics, and I think I probably don't own a single issue of The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, a cumbersomely long title if there ever was one.

2. Shang-Chi's origins are... problematic, at best. On the one hand, Marvel was trying to be more diverse. On the other hand, they were trying to capitalize on the Kung Fu craze of the 70s. Also, Roy Thomas, then editor-in-chief of Marvel, insisted that Shang-Chi be half white, over the objections of the character's creators. 
3. The Shang-Chi of the comics had no connection to the Ten Rings, which was supposed to refer to the Ten Rings of the Mandarin, but The Mandarin, as a character, has become problematic, despite his long history in Iron Man, and this movie became a way for Marvel to address some of those issues.

Looks like I'm getting out into the weeds anyway, so let's just get back to the movie: It was fabulous. Sure, you might say, it's Marvel; of course, it's fabulous, but they took a lot of risks with this one, and it could have flopped entirely, just failed to work, but Marvel is proving to be adept at going in new directions while holding course to their vision. Despite cameo appearances from Banner and Captain Marvel, this is an Asian movie, almost entirely. The only white actor of any consequence is a henchman.

Simu Liu is great. This is my introduction to him as an actor, as I'm sure is the case for most viewers, and he was a good choice. I can't say how good he was as an actor since I have nothing to compare the performance to, but he was engaging. Awkwafina was fun and a savvy choice by Marvel. She has such a distinctive voice and she gave resonance to another recent Disney movie she was in, Raya and the Last Dragon.

Michelle Yeoh was absolutely perfect. Have you ever left the salt out of a recipe? I think not having her in this movie would have been akin to forgetting the salt. It made me want to go back and watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again. Which, you know, was probably an intentional consequence. Not watching it again, just bringing up the feelings, the magical realism, of that movie, because Shang-Chi has its own share of that, and Yeoh just brings it back to earth. I hope her introduction in this movie is just a precursor to future Marvel involvement.

Then there is Ben Kingsley. I'm not going to try and pretend that I was much in favor of what Marvel did with Kingsley and The Mandarin back in Iron Man 3. At the time, I was very much WTF Marvel. But I don't want to get off on Iron Man 3 at the moment. That will come later. Anyway... Kingsley is such a serious actor, pretty much all the time. His role as Trevor is just not like that, and, honestly, it's really refreshing to see him playing this character. It shows he does actually have range as an actor other than being super serious or being the super serious villain. I enjoyed him immensely.

Clearly, this post-Infinity War material from Marvel is dealing with a lot of new stuff. Marvel is redefining the MCU after the loss of three of its central characters. I have hypotheses, but I'm not going to throw them out in a this review. That would be going into the weeds in a different direction.

The take away is this: Shang-Chi is excellent. If you're into martial arts, there's almost no way you can't enjoy this movie. If you're into the mystical, you should love this movie. If you love Marvel, you will love this movie. And, perhaps most importantly about Shang-Chi: It's an excellent stepping on point for the Marvel movies. Being 25 movies in, I think it can be daunting for newcomers to the franchise. That's a lot of movies, and they're being augmented, now, by the various series on Disney+. You don't need any of that to watch Shang-Chi. The story itself is self-contained. There's just enough flavor from the rest of the MCU to make you curious but not enough to be confusing or make you feel like you're missing something.

My problem right now? I want to see it again, but I don't want to go back to the theater to do it.

You Know You've Made It When... (part 2)

Sometimes it's good to ask questions. My last post on Lego minifigures inspired a friend of mine to go into research mode and look for figures that I may have missed, and he came up with some. It made me feel a little inadequate, actually, because I didn't even think to check for most of these guys.

First, though, the fails. The Lego fails, that is. Here are some ones that at least one of us checked only to find out that a very obvious character has never been made into a minifigure.
1. Sallah:

Despite being in half of the Indiana Jones movies, Sallah was never made as a minifigure. John Rhys-Davies does appear as this minifig, though:

Rhys-Davies did do the voice for this one, so I guess he can get partial credit for it:

2. Jane Foster:

Despite having more than a dozen Avengers related Lego sets, Jane does not appear as a minifigure.

Natalie Portman does appear as this figure, though:

3. Galadriel:

Explain to me how, exactly, Galadriel

does not get made into a minifigure while

Irina Spalko gets a figure in three different sets (while Sallah has none!). If I was Cate Blanchett, I'd feel robbed.

Also, a retraction. As I was working up this post, I realized that I was in error about Chris Evans.

The Fantastic Four have not, yet, been made into physical minifigures, although I could have sworn they had some sort of Lego set out several years ago with their flying car. When the FF re-boots, soon, it will no longer be Evans as the Torch, so it still won't count for him. He got robbed, too!

But there are a few new editions to the list of actors made into two different minifigure characters!

1. Ryan Renolds

2. Ben Kingsley

(Again, really? Nizam from Prince of Persia gets a figure but Galadriel doesn't?)

3. Alfred Molina

Another Prince of Persia figure on the list? Seriously? And he gets one from Raiders of the Lost Ark, too!

Which brings me back to my question of how the heck does Sallah not have a figure? Satipo, here, dies in the opening sequence of Raiders, but Sallah doesn't get one? I smell a conspiracy! Or a rat! Or Denmark!

But that's not all! Because there's also

Which gives Molina three different characters in three separate movies which may just make him the greatest actor of all time! Except, then, there's

4. Warwick Davis. Davis has been four different characters in two different movie franchises, though two of the movies from one of the franchises were 15 years apart. Who's greater, Davis or Molina? I guess you will have to decide. Here are Davis' figures:

5. Gary Oldman! And, really, how could I forget him the first time? I feel so bad. I love Gary Oldman! And he was by far the best thing about the Nolan Batman movies.

And he's also

Well, there you have it. The best actors who have ever lived. Or something like that. If I ever get a movie made out of any of my books, I'm going to make sure I'm some side character, some vital side character, so that if they ever get Lego sets, I will get to be a minifigure, too! Now that's the DREAM, folks!

The Religion of Writing: Part Three -- Speaking in Tongues

The debate over speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, is not a new thing. Sure, we look at some of the "Charismatic" and Pentecostal churches and the spouting of gibberish from their mouths while they writhe around on the floor and think, "Man, if that's what I need to do to get into Heaven, then leave me out." [And don't ask me why they're called "charismatic" or why it's the "Charismatic Movement," because I don't see any good reason for the usage of the term (and didn't feel like spending more than the 10 minutes I wasted not finding an adequate answer).] Trust me, I'm with you. Well, I'm with those of you that feel the way I do about it. [Because what I can say is that we don't have examples of that kind of behavior in the Bible. Paul never "sizzled like bacon" while letting nonsense drip out of his mouth.] I am not flopping around like a fish out of water or roaring like a lion or any of that other nonsense that goes on when those people are all being "slain in the Spirit."

Which is the heart of the controversy, actually, because "those people" say  they're not doing it by choice. They're being possessed by the Holy Spirit, and they just can't help it. However, it is what gets you into Heaven (according to them), so, well, it's in your best interest to get in there with them and lose control of your bodily functions.

Now, here's the interesting part (isn't there always an interesting part?):
There has been a lot of research done into glossolalia. Which makes sense, because, if it's real, if people are spontaneously speaking some kind of language they didn't previously know, it would be a mighty strong proof of God or, at the very least, some kind of supernatural phenomenon. Before I go on, there are two types of glossolalia:
1. The kind everyone thinks of when they think of speaking in tongues: speaking an unknown language which no one understands. This is usually thought of as speaking in the tongues (languages) of Angels.
2. Xenoglossy: speaking an actual language that the speaker didn't previously know. Like breaking out into fluent Mandarin without ever even having had chow mein or orange chicken.
Here's the first interesting part: Nearly all of the actual instances of glossolalia in the Bible are xenoglossy. During Pentecost, it was xenoglossy that was happening. Or, perhaps, reverse xenoglossy since it was the listeners that actually heard the speakers in their own language.
If you look in the Bible for an example of what we think of when we talk about "speaking in tongues," we get exactly what goes on these days: a bunch of people (in Corinth) speaking in tongues and boasting about it, "Ha ha, we're better than all of you." Paul had to send a letter telling them to cut it out.

Modern xenoglossy is completely unverified. There are sporadic claims that it has happened, but there are never ever any witnesses or proof or anything of the nature. Usually, it's something along the lines of someone coming back from China and proclaiming to have broken out in Chinese while he was there, but there's no way to know if it happened, since there's never anyone available to say, "Oh, yeah, that guy totally spoke Chinese to me." The few case studies have pretty much shown that xenoglossy was not taking place.

Which leaves us with the gibberish form of speaking in tongues. Study after study after study (after study after study) by both linguists and psychologists have shown that no actual languages are being spoken during these episodes. [I'm not going to get into the technical aspect of how they know that.] There is also considerable psychological evidence that these bursts of "tongue speaking" are psychologically triggered in order to conform to expectations. Like peer pressure. What this means is that neither God nor "the Universe" is talking to any of these people. It's all coming out of their own minds.

Not that you can convince them of that.

And, also, that is not to say that there are not or have not been actual cases of speaking in tongues. I believe that some form of xenoglossy happened at Pentecost. There were potentially thousands of witnesses, and the event is recorded in some extra-Biblical texts. And, sure, there is the potential of the other form of speaking in tongues being real, too, just not in big groups of people the way it is commonly claimed today. So I'll admit the possibility of these things but not the current actuality of them.

Which brings me to the writing part of all of this.

So many, many writers claim to get their stories from "the Universe," or some muse, or some source of inspiration that is outside of themselves. "It was as if the story was just given to me, channeled through me, whispered into my ear," or whatever other nonsense. I'm sure there's no more validity to this than there is in the whole speaking in tongues thing. The human mind is a wondrous thing. Infinitely creative. The idea that we are incapable of coming up with remarkable stories is... well, it's just ludicrous.

It's why it bothers me so much that there are people out there trying to disprove that Shakespeare wrote the plays he's credited with. The idea being that no one can be that creative. What? Did the plays just materialize? Spring forth from the aether fully written? Beamed down by aliens? As with a rose, why does it matter what we call the guy who wrote those plays? Someone wrote them, but, instead of just saying, "Wow, what a creative mind," we have people out there trying to prove that, what amounts to, no one having written them. It's kind of insane.

What I say is this:
If you wrote something, own it. I mean, really own it. Don't try to blame it on some outside force or influence. Take responsibility for it, good or bad. And, if it's bad, keep working on it and make it better. If it's good, say, "I did this! Me!" I don't see why it is that we have to always discredit ourselves and our achievements, like we're not good enough. And that's what you're doing when you try to blame your art on the "the Universe": discrediting yourself.

So, yeah, I will admit to the possibility that "the Universe" or the Force or God or, even, aliens may have influenced someone at some time to write something. Or paint something. Or make music. But, just like with speaking in tongues, I'm pretty sure it's not happening on any kind of regular basis. People are just scared to own their creations, because, like in mass "tongue events," society says pretty consistently, "You can't say that you yourself did a good job." But, not only that, society says that when someone comes along and tells us we did, we have to brush it off and say "it was nothing" or "I was inspired." It wasn't me.
What hogwash.

Don't be scared. Take credit for your work. If aliens want to send us books, let them send us the books. They don't need to whisper them in anyone's ear.

Ironbivalence

One of the things that Marvel has done so well with their series of movies has been to keep the characters true to their comic book origins. I say Marvel in the sense of the movies that Marvel has done, not in the sense of all of their characters (because, if you look at what Fox did to Wolverine and will be doing to him again this summer, you will find that non-Marvel companies have not handled the characters quite so faithfully). With that in mind, I was looking very forward to the Mandarin as the villain in Iron Man Three.

The Mandarin, for all intents and purposes, is Iron Man's nemesis. He pre-dates the Iron Man comic book just as Iron Man does [Iron Man made his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #39, the Mandarin in issue #50], so I was expecting something... well, I was expecting something epic. Iron Man's greatest foe and all of that. That is not even close to what Marvel delivered with this movie, and I can't say more than that without offering spoilers. Let's just say that I was... disappointed with the Mandarin, especially given that it was Ben Kingsley. Not that Kingsley didn't do a great job; he did. I mean, he was fantastic in the role that they wrote for him; it just wasn't the role I wanted to see him in.

Here's the thing, for most of you out there, the vast most of you, the most of you that didn't spend more than a decade reading Iron Man comic books, there will be no issue with the role of the Mandarin at all. See, it works great in the movie. Which is what causes my divergence of opinion. On the one hand, I'm disappointed with the portrayal of the Mandarin, but, on the other, Iron Man Three was completely enjoyable to watch and has a lot going for it. In my head, I know that the continuity that the Marvel movies is setting up is not the same as it is in the comics, but that doesn't change my emotional reaction to it. The "why did they change that?" reaction.

Of course, it's comic books, and, maybe, they didn't change anything. It is conceivable that the Mandarin will still become who and what he is in a later movie. Or, maybe, he's that, now, but they're just hiding it.

As for the movie itself, it was quite good. Robert Downey, Jr. was amazing as always. It's a more personal movie than the previous two in a lot of ways. Tony is dealing with... issues, mostly brought on by his experiences in New York during the alien invasion in The Avengers. For much of the movie, he's effectively alone without any armor, and it was interesting to see Tony operating as a person rather than an iron man. Downey pulled that off with what appeared to be effortless ease.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle were respectable in their roles. Even Guy Pearce was adequate. Okay, probably more than adequate, but I really don't like the guy, so, when he plays a villain, he gets an automatic boost from me in that regard, so I actually have a difficult time in telling whether he's doing a good job or not, because I'm not going to like him anyway. I'll know that he can actually act if he ever bothers to play a good guy and he can make me like him. And, as I stated, Ben Kingsley was amazing. He really was.

Iron Man Three is slightly different in structure than the other two. It starts with an opening narration, and I don't tend to be fond of narration in movies. Of course, it ties in with the way the movie ends, which almost makes it worth it, but not quite. It also starts and, then, jumps back, which I'm also not fond of, but, at least, it didn't do a "three days earlier" or anything like that.

Also, the CGI is a bit... clunky... in this one. I didn't know why until I got home and looked it up: ILM did not do the effects on this one. Now, that is something I completely don't understand. ILM did the effects for both other Iron Man movies and The Avengers, so why switch when Disney owns ILM, now? And Iron Man. If it was that they (ILM) were too busy with the new Star Wars, I could understand, but they have at least half a dozen films coming out this year that they're doing the effects for, so having someone else do this Iron Man seems odd to me. Oh, well, I'm sure it was cheaper. It's always about the money, right?

So, yeah, as a movie, I liked it. It's great, in fact. But that doesn't stop me from being ambivalent.