Like Black Panther before it, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings feels like a step in the right direction for making the Marvel Cinematic Universe a more inclusive, diverse franchise.
Talking to Empire Online, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige addressed that head-on and explained what led to the decision to put the spotlight on Shang-Chi. "I remember seeing a viral video when the Black Panther poster first came out," the veteran producer recalls. "It was some young men in a movie theatre overwhelmed with excitement at seeing the poster, and it was moving because people were excited about the movie we were making."
"But it was also a harsh realisation that they were reacting that way because they had not seen it before. So Panther really coalesced the notion of, ‘Everybody deserves to see themselves portrayed in these larger-than-life ways.’"
That proved to be crucial to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton, too. For him, making this movie was an opportunity to portray the Asian-American identity on the grandest cinematic stage possible thanks to Marvel Studios.
"I grew up with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan and Jet Li," the filmmaker says. "But I haven’t seen a hero on screen that really walks and talks like me, dresses like me, listens to the music that me and my friends listen to; somebody truly Asian-American. And that was what was really exciting to me, to create something that just shows the Asian-American experience through the eyes of a budding superhero."
It's clear that Shang-Chi's big screen debut is going to be a huge deal for the MCU, exploring new corners of this shared world and what sounds like an authentic portrayal of the Asian-American experience.
Check out a couple of new stills from the movie below: