The monumental accomplishment of this movie by Marvel Studios was the make the studios first Asian super hero movie did this by making a sampler platter of all the other Asian super heroes that just do not fall under the Marvel banner. We have have some breaded "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" cheese sticks. We have a side of Sesame "Dragon Ball z" balls, along with bacon glazed Jackie Chan strips. When some white guys from New York decided they wanted their own comic book version of Bruce Lee back in the 70s, they created Shang Chi, the Master of Kung fu- David Csrradine also had a show with a similar premise at the time. Over the years the character managed to stay on life support cropping up here and their , but was a 3rd stringer who mainly sat on the bench. So when the actor playing him seems to grasp at straws in a effort to make him something other than a Bruce Lee homage, well that is because he never really had much of a fleshed personality.
While I think a good rule of thumb for super hero movies would be a a minimum requirement of being able to carry at least a hundred issues under the belt, to have them and their world flesh out . Marvel just wants to pump out product and will do whatever to market it. The first hour of the movie is fun, but it is there when the formula begins to reveal itself. We are going to have a big fight, then tell you a fable about the days past when all this back story is supposed to matter. While I like how the untangled the mess they created with Iron-Man's version of the Mandarin, Every one is pretty disposable, aside from his comic relief side kick all the other supposedly kick ass women who make up his familiar are all inter changeable. Depending on where you are in the story his mother , aunt and sister could all be the same person. While praise is being heaped on the Mandarin, is he really any different from another evil emperor we have seen be it from "Mulan" or insert martial arts movie here.
The trap this movie falls into is the third act gets lost in non-sensical anime like fantasy. Does it have to have dragons in it ? Wait isn't that stereo typing? Shang Chi at any time could have been replaced by Iron Fist and it would have almost been the same movie. When he does get more powered up there is not explanation , and these are certainly not what his powers are in the comic books. Instead we get a bunch of non sense that feels like a child dumping all their action figures on the bed and trying to come up with a fight for them to have. This fantasy wonder land of eye candy is an exaggeration, yeah we get cgi creatures walking around but otherwise t he land scape looks no different than any other martial arts movie which is what this is, just another martial arts movie with a heavy dose of fantasy. More manga than Marvel.
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