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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Whatever studio Disney’s using for the special effects and compositing… It just looks so cheap and weird all the time. I mean, even in simple shots where this guy is supposed to be standing in front of some trees.

It’s very 2020.

Did they really have to spend ten minutes introducing his parents’ backstory? Seems weird.

Weird colour grading. Everything is desaturated except the reds.

Oh! He’s Chinese! Red! Such symbolic!

OK, that was a fun fight scene. Marvel fight scenes are usually so … bad … just uncoordinated people posing, but that was pretty exciting.

But it wasn’t over!

That was definitely the best action scene of any Marvel movie! Wheee!

OK, I’m resetting my expectations. Perhaps this is a really cool movie? I like the actors, too…

This is a lot of fun. All the flashbacks are holding back the narrative, though. And none of the flashbacks really seem … necessary?

OK, not this movie is really really boring.

So much exposition. That doesn’t really seem necessary at all.

It’s a schizophrenic movie. There’s a bunch of scenes that are really fun — the action scenes are on a totally different level from other Marvel movies (which are mostly about actors striking awkward poses and waiting for somebody to CGI in some energy bursts, or striking awkward poses waiting for the director to tell them to make a “I’m totally hitting this CGI monster now” pose).

The action scenes here are really fun.

But then there’s the other stuff, which is pretty dire.

Hey, isn’t that… I think it is?

OK, I’ve lost all interest in this movie now. There was like several hours of training? And character building? I don’t know; I zoned out.

I’m just disappointed. It started off so well — funny and exciting and interesting. But then the last nine hours (training camp and boss fight) were brutally tedious.

Without that bus and scaffolding scenes I would have given this a , but:

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Destin Daniel Cretton. 2021.

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