Destiny Daniel Cretton never wanted to make any Marvel movies. The 42-year-old director built his career from introspective and silent dramas like Short term 12, The glass castle, i Just Mercy – It’s not exactly your typical superhero show. He remembers telling friends he had no desire to join the world of comic book layers and heroes, until he read a 2018 report Marvel was developing Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings, his first film with an Asian protagonist.
“When that ad came out, I instantly went back to my childhood,” Cretton explains. “[Growing up] all he had was Spider-Man. Since I had the 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 maybe two or three to choose from and the superheroes weren’t part of it. “
Cretton, who was born in Hawaii and is of Japanese descent, kept thinking about how his younger self would have reacted to a superhero movie with a predominantly Asian cast. So he set up a meeting with Marvel. “It’s not usually like that as director meetings start by saying,‘ You know, I’ve never been interested in doing any of these things, ’” Marvel studios president Kevin Feige says with a laugh. That Marvel reunion became another, then another, until soon after, Cretton was in front of thousands of fans at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, introducing the world to the type of hero with what his childhood he had only dreamed of.
The result is Shang-Chi (in theaters, Sept. 3), a great superhero epic that combines emotional family drama with gravity-defying martial arts action. Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu stars in 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 the United States, only to find himself sucked back into his father’s sinister dominance.
“The most exciting thing about getting into this character was that his story had never been told,” Liu says. “We know so many different versions of Batman’s origin story, of 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. Chi is very unknown, to most of the world, so we had a lot of freedom and creative freedom to turn it the way we wanted. “
Maybe it’s not yet a name known as his fellow Iron Man heroes 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 debuted in comics in 1973 as a way for Marvel to capitalize on the popularity of martial arts stories among American audiences. Stan Lee reportedly tried to develop a Shang-Chi film starring Brandon Lee as early as the 1980s, but the project never materialized. In the early 2000s, then-Marvel students began assembling a notebook of comic book characters that could potentially headline their own films, a notebook that included Shang-Chi.
Now, after a story of false beginnings, the martial arts master finally gets his turn in the spotlight.
“The core of Shang-Chi’s arc in comics is really a family drama,” says producer Jonathan Schwartz. “That was something Destin introduced very early into 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.”
Bearing Shang-Chi in the MCU it also meant updating some of its dated origins. The story of the character’s comic has changed over the years, and Cretton and writer Dave Callaham wanted to dispense with some of the racially insensitive clichés of early editions.
“When you look at Shang-Chi’s character through the comics that go back to the 70s and 80s, the fact that he existed and the fact that he was an Asian character was amazing,” Liu says. “But at the same time, there are aspects of this portrait that might seem a little stereotypical. So when we started identifying who this character was and what his journey would be like throughout this film, we all we were very sensitive so that they would not enter a stereotypical territory “.
Cretton says he wanted to tell a story about Asian identity that felt as inhabited and authentic as possible, part of which involved making sure. Shang-Chi he had Asian voices in front of and behind the camera.
“Remember, Asian culture is so diverse,” he says. “I grew up in Hawaii, [and] Hawaiian food is like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Filipino, all mixed up. That’s kind of 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, it doesn’t feel all right.” All of this helped to contribute to what I think is a really nice update of what started in comics a few decades ago. “
“It was a level of Asian representation that I haven’t seen, and I thought it was affordable as an Asian American to see,” he adds. Crazy Rich Asians the star Awkwafina, who plays Katy, Shang-Chi’s close friend. “It definitely explores different levels of identity.”
When it came time to release the charming hero, Marvel launched a global quest for an actor of Chinese descent. He was found by 31-year-old Liu, known for his role as Jung Kim in the Canadian television comedy. Kim’s convenience. The actor had long dreamed of disguising himself as a superhero, to the point that he was tweeting at Marvel back in 2014, hoping to see an Asian-American hero join the franchise. When Shang-Chi was announced, followed by another tweet: “OK Marvel, shall we talk or what?“
“What definitely didn’t cross my mind was,‘ Hey, I’ll tweet at Marvel and they’ll answer me, and I’ll get that role, ’” he says now laughing. To his surprise, he actually received an invitation to audition and, after officially landing the paper in July 2019, was on a plane a few days later, heading to San Diego to join Cretton in the Comic-Con
When the film begins, Shang-Chi (pronounced “song”, not “sung”) lives in San Francisco as a seemingly ordinary twenties. She is a bit out of direction and spends most of her time hanging out with friends, like Katy from Awkwafina. She is one of her closest confidants, but she doesn’t know much about her story or why she is no longer in contact with her parents. And she’s definitely not familiar with the action-packed world of killers and kung fu masters.
“It doesn’t take much heavy effort,” Awkwafina says. “But in the end, she has a real heart and has fidelity and dedication to her friendship with Shang-Chi. She is super brave.”
Shang-Chi’s current life may seem average, but his past is anything but: his father Wenwu is a powerful, ancient figure who trained his son to follow in his criminal footsteps. It’s been about ten years since Shang-Chi learned of his father’s misdeeds and left. “That’s not a touch of ‘Luke, I’m your father,'” Feige adds, “He knows who his father is and has decided to leave this world behind before he goes back.”
To play the evil master, the filmmakers played the legendary Hong Kong actor Tony Leung, known for films such as Wong Kar-wai Be in the mood for love i Chungking Express. “A character like Wenwu could easily have been a heartless one-dimensional villain,” Cretton says. “Tony opened this character [so] he is an antagonist who has a deep ability to love. “The on-screen relationship of Wenwu and Shang-Chi is complicated, but outside of the camera, Leung and Liu became fast friends, relating to snowboarding.” He’s a huge adrenaline junkie, “says Liu, a film father.
Wenwu is a new character, created entirely for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He has ties to the Ten Rings, the mysterious terrorist organization that fell in 2008 Iron man. As Schwartz and Feige said, Wenwu has “had a lot of names” over the decades and one of those titles is “The Mandarin,” one of Marvel Comics ’most infamous villains. This name appeared earlier in 2013 Iron Man 3, only for this version of the character (played by Ben Kingsley) to be revealed as a fraud, an unemployed actor named Trevor Slattery. Leung’s Wenwu is something new and much more dangerous.
“I think people listen to‘ Mandarin ’and expect a very specific kind of thing, and maybe it’s not what they’re getting,” Schwartz scoffs. “We hope they get a more complex and layered interpretation of the character than that name would bring you.”
Of course, you can’t make a film about the world’s most skilled fighter without choreographing some pretty elaborate fights. “I think this is the best action [Marvel has] never done, “says Schwartz.” Every fist is significant, every fighting style is meaningful and the story is told visually in such a fantastic way. “Because Shang-Chi is a master at several different types of martial arts, Cretton was inspired by a variety of sources, from the elegant, almost ethereal wushu style. Crouching tiger, hidden devil in the most kinetic choreography of Jackie Chan’s action comedies. Supervising Trick Coordinator Brad Allan was chosen to help unify Shang-Chi various styles and schools of expertise.
For Liu, that meant getting into training: the actor jokes differently some of his Marvel cohorts, Shang-Chi’s face is never covered by a mask, so he had to learn to do as many tricks as possible. Almost as soon as he left the Comic-Con stages in 2019, he started practicing different forms of martial arts and trying to group together without losing the flexibility and agility of Shang-Chi. “I want to sit here and tell you that I used to be pretty good at martial arts,” Liu admits. “Maybe I had worked a few days as a stuntman in Toronto. But really, my experience in martial arts was like going back to my backyard when I was a teenager and doing parkour with my friends.”
But even with all the high-flying kung fu action, Cretton has always wanted to stay Shang-Chi on the ground – and make a superhero movie that your young man would have loved.
“We wanted to make sure Shang-Chi was like any of us,” Cretton explains. “I want to see this movie and say,‘ Yeah, that’s how I feel. Sometimes I feel out of place and I cover it with humor. “He’s a guy who’s out of his element and a fish out of water here in the United States, and he covers it with that charisma that I find very relatable.”
This post has been updated to add the file Shang-Chi test trailer.