SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS (2021)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

The above movie poster for RINGS is amusing because, intentionally or not, it recapitulates visual elements from the first issue of the Marvel comic book that birthed Shang-Chi, where the young hero stands in the foreground, kicking some henchman's ass while overhead looms the imaginary figure of his father. But I should leave the majority of direct comparisons between the comic and the film for a separate article. As a CHFB poster asserted (and I'll credit him in the comments if anyone asks), RINGS is far less an adaptation of the MASTER OF KUNG FU franchise than a MCU imitation of CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON.

One of the key differences, though, is that TIGER was in part a modern filmmaker's take on the gender politics of traditional Chinese history, even though that film is set in the 1940s. Neither director/co-writer Destin Cretton nor the other two scripters are capable of critiquing any societies except Western ones, so all their "girl boss" tropes are ultimately as empty as those of BLACK PANTHER WAKANDA FOREVER-- though happily, RINGS does have fewer bossy babes.

I must include one item from the original conflict between Shang-Chi and his father because RINGS utilizes it briefly. In the comic, the evil father trains his son to be a "master of kung fu" so that Shang will perform assassinations in the name of his father. This detail is shoehorned into RINGS, but the movie has very little to do with dramatizing any conflict between father and son. Instead, RINGS is more about the role of women in both character's lives.

For a thousand years the power-obsessed warlord Wenwu (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) wields the power of a god with the ten rings he wears as armbands, and thus he amasses a covert kingdom of crime. Then in modern times he goes searching for power in the lost kingdom of K'un-Lun-- pardon me, I mean "Ta Lo." His attempt to learn Ta Lo's secrets are thwarted by a kung-fu guardian (Fala Chen, who may've been cast because she looks somewhat like Michelle Yeoh). Wenwu is so smitten by this girl boss that he woos and marries her, and they have two children, son Shang-Chi and daughter Xialing. In theory Wenwu gives up the conquering life to be a normal father, though it's a little suspicious that he still insists on Shang becoming a juvenile ass-kicker.

Sadly, Mrs. Wenwu, the woman in all three lives, meets her demise. In his grief at this loss, Wenwu spins a web of sin once more, but if anything he becomes an even less accessible father. At some point both Shang and Xialing flee his influence, though one ends up in the United States and the other in Macau, played in their respective adulthoods by Simu Liu and by Meng'er Zhang. 

There's a reason why Wenwu allows his children to remain outside his sphere of power, and it's tied to his gaining access once more to the forbidden kingdom of Shangri-La-- darn, I mean "Ta Lo!" But finally Wenwu comes after his offspring, or rather after certain artifacts they both possess-- although the artifacts don't serve that much purpose in the script beyond bringing about an alliance of Shang, Xialing, and Shang's comedy-relief girl-buddy Katy (the perpetually unfunny Awkwafina). The alliance takes place only after Xialing beats up her brother for no particular reason, by the way, because that's just the way girl bosses roll.

And why does Wenwu want to gain access to Ta Lo this time? Well, he claims that the people of Ta Lo forced his wife to leave their paradise-- a claim later disputed. But though he has one motive for wanting to invade and destroy Ta Lo, that wasn't quite enough for Cretton and company. So the same lack of feminine influence in the crime-lord's life is used against him, when he hears the voice of his late wife calling out to him, telling him he can be reunited with her in Ta Lo.

With unfunny Kate in tow, Shang and Xialing manage to enter Ta Lo before their bad dad does, and there they meet their good auntie Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh, bringing to bear her usual charisma, even though Ying is a lot sketchier than her character from CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON). Ying and her fellow Ta-Losians explain that a demonic being has spoken to Wenwu in order to trick him into releasing said demon. I must admit that though this cosmic threat is not purely necessary just to make Wenwu invade Ta Lo, the various soul-sucking demons and flying dragons serve to provide a lot of the CGI that MCU-filmgoers probably expect. If RINGS had provided nothing but the wild choreography of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team, it might not have done so well in the American box office.

Though I've made fun of some of the film's rote tropes, RINGS does offer some very basic action-entertainment without lots of preaching, so it's ahead of a majority of other MCU films in that respect. The only tedious sequence in that respect is the scene in which Wenwu discourses on the character on whom he was based, Marvel Comics' "Mandarin." I understand that the writers had to throw in this rationale. A Fake Mandarin had been introduced in IRON MAN 3, and so, because the MCU was married to the idea of using the "ten rings" schtick for Wenwu, Wenwu had to explain why he both was, and was not, the Mandarin. Everything Wenwu said to the heroes about the phony Mandarin was credible, so far as it went. But then the writers felt they had to be cute, claiming that the word "Mandarin" referenced various culinary items. A moment or two on Wikipedia can make clear the word's real history, so why is it worth lying about, for the sake of a lame joke?

Though RINGS happily does not mess with most of the content of the Marvel "Shang-Chi" feature, there are a handful of cameos of MCU versions of Marvel characters, as well as quickie name-checks on such figures as "Master Khan" and "The Dweller in Darkness." And although F* M**c** is the hate that dare not speak its name in RINGS, oddly Tsai Chin, who played the daughter of F* M**c** in a series of five sixties movies, appears as Katy's grandmother.