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THE VIEWING GUIDE
A deep dive into the must-see moments from the month’s big release
Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings
DESTIN DANIEL CRETTON’S Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings — the 24th film in the MCU, and the first to focus on an Asian-American hero — is an enchanting mix of spectacular martial-arts fight scenes, batshit-insane fantasy elements, and grounded family drama, as a son comes to terms with his father’s dark legacy.
Here, Cretton talks us through the key moments.
MEET WENWU
Unusually for a Marvel movie, the film introduces us to the villain before we meet the hero, showing us how Wenwu, Tony Leung’s centuries-old warlord and Shang-Chi’s dad (a redrawing of the character known as The Mandarin in the comics), fell in love with Li (Fala Chen) and gave up his criminal ways to raise a family. And unusually for a Hollywood blockbuster of any kind, it’s a lengthy sequence which is entirely subtitled. “I thought we would probably get pushback,” says Cretton. “But Kevin [Feige] and Marvel were very reasonable. They like taking risks. It was a matter of putting it in front of audiences and seeing how an English-speaking audience reacts to ten minutes of subtitles at the beginning of a Marvel movie. And to their credit, it was never a problem.”