Destiny Daniel Cretton never wanted to make a Marvel movie. The 42-year-old director has built his career on quiet, introspective dramas such as Short Term 12, Glass Castle, and Just Mercy – Not exactly your typical superhero show. He remembers telling his friends that he has no desire to join the world of pilgrims and comic book heroes – until he reads a 2018 news story that Marvel is developing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, his first film with an Asian protagonist.
“When that ad came out, I just went back to my childhood,” Cretton explains. “[Growing up] all I had was Spider-Man. Because he had a mask on, I could dress up as Spider-Man for Halloween. I had a handful of other characters that looked like me on screen, but there were two or three of them I could choose from, and superheroes weren’t part of that. “
Cretton – who was born in Hawaii and is of Japanese descent – kept thinking about how his younger self would react to a superhero movie with a predominantly Asian cast. So he set up a meeting with Marvel. “That’s not how meetings with directors usually start, saying, ‘You know, I’ve never been interested in doing one of these,'” says laughing Marvel studio president Kevin Feige. That Marvel reunion turned into another, then another, until shortly after, Cretton stood in front of thousands of fans at Comic-Con in San Diego in 2019, presenting to the world the kind of hero only the child had dreamed of. or.
The result is Shang-Chi (in theaters on September 3), an epic superhero that combines emotional family drama with gravity-defying martial arts action. The Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu plays the role of the young hero, who spent the first part of his life training to become an assassin under the strict tutelage of his father. Since then he has moved away and tried to build a somewhat normal life in America, only to find himself sucked back into his father’s sinister realm.
“The most interesting thing about stepping into this character was that his back story hasn’t been told before,” says Liu. “We know so many different versions of the story of the origin of Batman, about how his parents were killed when he was very young. We know Peter Parker, who was bitten by a radioactive spider and loses his uncle. Shang-Chi’s story is very unknown. in most of the world, so I had a lot of freedom and creative freedom to do it the way I wanted. “
Maybe it’s not yet a family name, like his fellow heroes Iron Man or Captain America, but the idea of making a Shang-Chi the film is older than the Marvel Cinematic Universe itself. Created by Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin, the kung fu master made his comic book debut in 1973 as a way for Marvel to capitalize on the popularity of martial arts stories among the American public. Stan Lee would have tried to develop a Shang-Chi film with Brandon Lee in the lead roles in the 1980s, but the project never materialized. In the early 2000s, the then-Marvel Studios began assembling a comic book that could title its own films – a book that included Shang-Chi.
Now, after a history of false beginnings, the master of martial arts gets his turn in the spotlight.
“The core of Shang-Chi’s comic book bow is really a family drama,” says producer Jonathan Schwartz. “This was something that Destiny introduced very early in our conversations, the idea of taking this broken family and this dark, even abusive family background and seeing what it does to a child over time.”
Bringing Shang-Chi In the MCU it also meant updating some of its dated origins. The character’s comic story has changed over the years, and Cretton and writer Dave Callaham were eager to give up some of the racially insensitive clichés of the first issues.
“When you look at Shang-Chi’s character through the comic books that go back to the ’70s and’ 80s, the fact that he existed and the fact that he was an Asian character was amazing,” says Liu. “But at the same time, there are aspects of that portrayal of him that might feel a little stereotypical. So, when we started to identify who this character is and what his journey will be during this film, we were all very sensitive not to enter the stereotypical territory. “
Cretton says he wanted to tell a story about Asian identity that felt as vivid and authentic as possible – part of which involved insuring Shang-Chi he had Asian voices both in front of and behind the camera.
“Remember, Asian culture is so diverse,” he says. “I grew up in Hawaii, [and] Hawaiian food is similar to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Filipino, all mixed together. That’s what our crew was like: it’s like this great mix of Asian cultures coming together and responding to the script and [saying things] like, “Oh, I’m not feeling well.” All of this has contributed to what I think is a really nice update on what started in comics a few decades ago. “
“It was a level of Asian representation that I didn’t see and I found it interesting for an Asian American to follow,” he added. Crazy rich Asians the Awkwafina star, who plays Katy, Shang-Chi’s close friend. “It certainly explores different levels of identity.”
When it came time to cast the charming hero, Marvel launched a global search for an actor of Chinese origin. They found him in 31-year-old Liu, best known for his role as Jung Kim in the beloved Canadian sitcom Kim’s convenience. The actor had long dreamed of dressing like a superhero – to the point where he was has been tweeting to Marvel since 2014, hoping to see an Asian-American hero join the franchise. When Shang-Chi was actually announced, followed by another tweet: “OK Marvel, shall we talk or what?“
“What certainly didn’t cross my mind was, ‘Hey, I’ll send a tweet to Marvel and they’ll come back to me and get this role,'” he says with a laugh. To his surprise, he actually received an invitation to audition – and after he officially landed the role in July 2019, he was on a plane just a few days later, heading to San Diego to join Cretton at the Comic. With.
When the film begins, Shang-Chi (pronounced “song”, not “sung”) lives in San Francisco like a seemingly ordinary twenty-year-old. He is less focused and spends most of his time with friends such as Katy from Awkwafina. He is one of his closest confidants, but he doesn’t know much about his history or why he is no longer in touch with his parents. And she’s certainly not familiar with the action-packed world of assassins and kung fu masters.
“It doesn’t make up much of the weight,” says Awkwafina. “But at the end of the day, she has a real heart and has loyalty and devotion to her friendship with Shang-Chi. She is super brave.”
Shang-Chi’s current life may seem average, but his past is different: his father Wenwu is a strong, ancient figure who trained his son to follow in his footsteps. It’s been about 10 years since Shang-Chi found out about his father’s misdeeds and left. “This is not a twist. ‘Luke, I’m your father,'” Feige added. “He knows who his father is and decided to leave the world behind before returning to it.”
To play the villainous master, the filmmakers touched the legendary Hong Kong actor Tony Leung, known for films such as Wong Kar-wai’s In the mood for love and Chungking Express. “A character like Wenwu could easily have been a one-dimensional heartless bastard,” says Cretton. “Tony opened this character [so] This is an antagonist who has a deep ability to love. “Wenwu and Shang-Chi’s on-screen relationship is complicated, but outside the room, Leung and Liu quickly became friends, bonding with snowboarding.” He’s a huge adrenaline junkie, “Liu says of his cinematic father.
Wenwu is a new character, created entirely for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He has links to Ten Rings, the mysterious terrorist organization named in 2008 Iron Man. As Schwartz and Feige put it, Wenwu has “known many names” over the decades – and one of those titles is “Mandarin,” one of Marvel Comics’ most infamous villains. This name previously appeared in 2013 Iron Man 3, only for that version of the character (played by Ben Kingsley) to be revealed as a fraud, a jobless actor named Trevor Slattery. Leung’s Wenwu is something new – and much more dangerous.
“I think people hear ‘mandarin’ and expect a very specific kind of thing, and maybe that’s not the thing they get,” Schwartz teased. “We hope they get a more complex and layered character than that name would give you.”
Of course, you can’t make a movie about the most skilled fighter in the world without choreographing some pretty elaborate fights. “I think this is the best action [Marvel has] ever done, “says Schwartz.” Every fist is significant, every fighting style is significant and the story is told visually in such a great way. “Because Shang-Chi is a master in many different types of martial arts, Cretton was inspired by various sources, from the elegant, almost ethereal style of wushu Crouching tiger, hidden dragon to the more kinetic choreography of Jackie Chan’s action comedies. Brad Allan, the coordinator of surveillance stunts, was used to help unify Shang-Chi various styles and schools of expertise.
For Liu, that meant throwing himself into training: the actor jokes about it some in his Marvel cohorts, Shang-Chi’s face is never hidden by a mask, so he had to learn to do as many stunts as possible. Almost as soon as he left the stage at Comic-Con in 2019, he started practicing various martial arts forms and trying to get up without losing Shang-Chi’s flexibility and agility. “I want to sit here and tell you that I used to be pretty good at martial arts,” Liu admits. “Maybe I worked a few days as a stuntman in Toronto. But really, my martial arts experience was like flipping in my yard when I was a teenager and doing parkour with my friends.”
But even with all the high-flying kung fu action, Cretton always wanted to keep Shang-Chi grounded – and make a superhero movie that he would have loved younger.
“We wanted to make sure Shang-Chi was just like any of us,” Cretton explains. “I want to watch this movie and say, ‘Yeah, that’s how I feel.’ I sometimes feel out of place and cover it with humor ”. He is a child who no longer has his element and a fish in the water here in the USA, and he covers him with this charisma that I consider very relatable “.
This post has been updated to add the file Shang-Chi teaser trailer.