Starting with the positives, the best thing about this film is the action. This film probably has the most versatile action in any MCU film. There's hand to hand combat, martial arts, CGI fights and it's all filmed so well. You can see some actors are doing their own stunts and it's really impressive to watch.
I also really enjoyed the cast. Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Michelle Yeoh, Tony Leung and more, they all play great roles and all have standout moments, especially Simu Liu. I'd never heard of him before he was cast and now I'm excited to see him carry on the character of Shang Chi. And how can you forget Ben Kingsley. This man is fantastic and a true breath of fresh air and I want him to be in more MCU films.
I also love, despite the MCU being around for over a decade, there's still room for world building with other heroes and there's plenty with Shang Chi especially when we get to a section of the film where we see the exploration of the East Asian culture and how they fight and survive. It's a part of the film i'd like to explore more in the future if Shang Chi is lucky to get his own franchise.
Now let's talk about the villain, The real Mandarin or just Wenwu to make it easier. What a strong and complex character he is. He has a really strong character arc and is developed really well. You can sympathise with him and while you don't agree with his motivations, you believe that he believes what he's doing is right and how they conclude his arc ultimately feels like the best way to do it.
Now I'm not the biggest fan of slow motion because of how goofy it can look at times but this film has one of my favourite uses of multiple slow motion scenes as it helps us see how the featured characters are feeling, the emphasis portrayed on their face and I thought that was a really good touch.
And finally I loved the 3rd act, the final battle. Without going into spoilers, the final battle goes from small stakes to high stakes the moment the big threat is realized, our characters achieve their goals and realize their destinies and it features one of my favourite team up tropes.
Moving into the mixed aspects and the only thing is the humour. Now this is a very funny film and I was laughing an awful lot. But the reason it's mixed for me and this is actually a mixed negative is whilst a lot of it works, it causes the film to become inconsistent with the pre established tone. This film works better as a dark character study and I'd rather see a version of this film where there's no humour and is instead played all serious throughout the entire duration.
Now moving onto the negatives and staying in line with the humour, whilst it does land a lot, there are certainly moments where it feels really forced and is misplaced at times. There's at least two moments where there's really interesting exposition being given and it gets cut off for humour and it just doesn't feel right.
And along those same lines, the film does suffer with some familiar MCU tropes and whilst I do love these tropes, once again they feel forced.
Also what was Abomination doing in this film? He had no purpose at all. I wouldn't mind if he was a different character but considering he was established before and is set to reappear in the future She Hulk series, I expected him to have a bigger role and you can literally edit his scene out and it wouldn't affect the film at all. His appearance feels like a gimmick for the trailer to bring in audiences if I'm perfectly honest.
Finally and this is a nitpick, there seemed to be a script issue with the continuity of the film. What I mean by this is Awkwafina's character on two occasions struggles to understand Chinese but then there's other moments where she's spoken to in Chinese and she seems to understand what's said to her. It's a small thing but it did bother me.
But besides that, I did love this film and I'd love to see a sequel made which I'm sure will be done and this is a film that MCU fans will really enjoy.
⭐⭐⭐
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