Marvel's Shang-Chi

[womblingfree]

 

 

[monkeydog]

Turns out that Chinatown Transportation Research and Improvement Project are the real heroes!

 

 

[macosx]

Loved this film but bugged me that 

Spoiler

When they saw the fight club abomination the group has no reaction the later when they see the fluffy winged thing they all go bananas as to how can ii exist.

 

[Alex W.]

I don't think that sort of thing is all that unusual to the public in the MCU any more.

[RubberJohnny]

I mean to be fair the fluffy thing had no face or arse, I’d deffo be more confused about that than a big green guy.

[Popo]

On 17/11/2021 at 03:54, womblingfree said:

 

 

This is fantastic. Really brightened my morning. 

[BitterToad]

Absolutely loved this. I wasn't a fan of Far From Home and this kinda summed up why. It was a film that felt entirely based around its central character and his aims and backstory. It used the connected world to make a few jokes and expand things but most of the key stuff was based around Shang Chi. it obviously helped that the action was absolutely top notch throughout. It maybe didn't need to be quite so supernatural in the end, a bit more faith in the martial arts combat that had served the film so well might have had it properly perfectly nail the landing, but it didn't hurt my enjoyment too much. 

 

One of the better non-Avengers Marvel films for me, certainly the best since Black Panther and up there with that and Homecoming at the top of my list. 

[Chewylegs]

Just watched this and really enjoyed it.  Essentially a fantasy martial arts film and pretty far removed from any Marvel film I've seen.  Some of the fighting had shades of Jackie Chan and at times I felt the need to watch House Of Flying Daggers again!

It's got a fucking big Chinese dragon in it as well, and I'm a sucker for them.

 

Much better than I expected from the trailers.

[sir stiff_one]

On 13/11/2021 at 04:00, Gabe said:

I've never had any particular love of martial arts in films

😭

[Gabe]

1 hour ago, sir stiff_one said:

😭

I didn't really have much exposure to them - or quality - when I was younger (I think Retreat, No Surrender was my earliest memory, for example), instead seeing more trashy American action stuff during my formative years. I've still never seen much outside of Jackie Chan's Hollywood stuff either.

[Padaxes]

Thought this was weak.  Boring, bad CGI , unintresting characters and shite ending. 

It wasn't all bad but the good bits were fleeting. And almost everything that happened was either stupid or unsatisfying in some way. 

2/5

 

[squirtle]

Thought this was brilliant. Best one of the new phase by miles. 

[Gabe]

Isn't the new phase just this and Black Widow so far? Not a high bar to clear. 

[squirtle]

Just now, Gabe said:

Isn't the new phase just this and Black Widow so far? Not a high bar to clear. 

The Eternals. 

[Festoon]

47 minutes ago, squirtle said:

The Eternals. 

 

Aside from Shang-Chi it's been more of a limbo competition than a high bar.

[probotector]

I wanted to hate on this and so much to hate but the characters are likeable and the jokes decent. The story had heart.

 

Downsides? Absolutely horrible art design, garish colours but flat and boring at the same time.

 

The CGI and lighting was horrible. Like low budget shit.

 

The Mandarin stole the show again. 

[Illyria]

I saw this in cinema in September, went in with very low expectations and against all odds, loved it!

 

Not all of the humor worked for me and I have a few minor gripes here and there, but allover I thought it was very entertaining!

[HarryBizzle]

Just watched this and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Well up there with my favourite Marvel films. 
 

The cast were great, I thought it was bloody hilarious and even Katy, who could have been really annoying, was good, I thought. 
 

Spoiler

Ben Kingsley being in it was amazing. Was not expecting that and he was one of my favourite bits of the film. 

I think Marvel still don’t quite get that making you really care about the action is way more important than just all out action, and they just can’t seem to have a movie where your baddie isn’t cartoonishly evil, so they fluffed the ending a bit:

 

Spoiler

The fight with his dad should have been the finale. I couldn’t have cared less about the stupid big CGI demon thing and it probably should have never been released.

 

 

Oh, and we had the exact same thing happen with in flight “meal options” a few weeks ago, so absolutely lost it at that bit. 
 

 

The only Marvel films I would ever rewatch are this, Ragnarok, GOTG, IW/Endgame and maybe Captain Marvel.

[drmick]

Seeing this thread bumped- got me thinking- are we starting to see new characters in the MCU being introduced as quite divergent from their comic book equivalents? Shang Chi, Ms Marvel and Moon Knight for sure. Possibly Black Knight, arguably the Eternals. I'm starting to worry for Blade.

[footle]

38 minutes ago, drmick said:

Seeing this thread bumped- got me thinking- are we starting to see new characters in the MCU being introduced as quite divergent from their comic book equivalents? Shang Chi, Ms Marvel and Moon Knight for sure. Possibly Black Knight, arguably the Eternals. I'm starting to worry for Blade.

Moon Knight, barely - there’s been enough iterations, and only the fact that the personas started out not knowing each other (and grant not being a billionaire) feels like it counts.
 

Ms Marvel, well the powers, but the rest of the family environment seems correct?

 

Eternals, not really.

[Benny]

On 13/11/2021 at 14:59, Benny said:

Someone posted somewhere above a review from Film Crit Hulk talking about the film having a great flashback structure. It's not done poorly at all, but I have to disagree with the review on that aspect completely: the flashbacks constantly going back and forth and being added to throughout the film really didn't work for me. It made a lot of the sequences feel unnecessarily broken up and muddled the pacing a lot. It felt like the wrong kind of movie for that sort of structure.

 

Not sure why, but I watched it a second time the other day and none of the above felt like a problem any more. Probably because I'd watched it already, but still.

 

It also seemed much more enjoyable after the nonsense of the second Doctor Strange movie for some reason. You basically get the same big mystical battle shit at some point during the movie, but it's just better, despite being the weakest part of it. And the martial arts stuff, many sequences of which are inspired by a lot of the greats (Avatar series, Iron Monkey etc), are just much more fun to watch than Strange faffing about.

 

And the villain seems to actually have a (semi)believable motivation behind them that would make sense to a normal person. Even with the alluring voice/evil book made them do it defence applied to both film's villains.

[Illyria]

Yeah, I hadn't expected it but I've come to the conclusion that Shang-Chi is so far my favourite thing to come out of phase 4. It's not perfect by any means, but I just really enjoy watching it a lot. Probably cause I really love me some martial arts (House of Flying Daggers was one of my favourite movies back in the day). It probably did help that I went in with low to no expectations.

 

By contrast, I had really high hopes for Loki and that mostly just fell flat for me.

[Chewylegs]

15 minutes ago, Illyria said:

I really love me some martial arts (House of Flying Daggers was one of my favourite movies back in the day).

Ahhh man, that brings back great memories! That film sounded awesome through my old speaker system, the bamboo forest fighting was just sooo good.  

Needs a rewatch.

[Illyria]

I haven't seen it in a gazillion years myself. I was briefly obsessed with it when it came out and watched it so many times back then. But haven't seen it since! I wonder if it holds up. I think you're right, a rewatch is in order