Marvel’s latest blockbuster is an electrifying fusion of convincing characters and breathtaking CGI
Although it often feels as though barely a month passes without another comic book movie puffed as a new pinnacle of achievement for the superhero genre, it’s vanishingly rare for a film to actually deserve its hype. But Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings does so, and more. Director Destin Daniel Cretton, who co-wrote with Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham, is canny enough to realise that the key to success with an effects-driven, eye-popping extravaganza is not the CGI spectacle, it’s the basic stuff. Textured characters. Karaoke and shots-fuelled friendships. And electrifyingly badass fight choreography.
In the goofy exchanges between Simu Liu’s Shaun (heir to his father’s tricky relationship with power, and his mother’s fierce empathy) and his best friend, defender, drinking buddy and fellow valet car-parker Katy (Awkwafina), the film is already one of the freshest Marvel pictures in a long time. And that’s before the fight on a runaway bus featuring an eastern European man mountain with a laser arm prosthesis.