Marvel's SHANG-CHI First "Asian Super-Hero Movie," Looks for "Ethnically Appropriate" Director

[AndyDursin]

It shows anything with a Marvel brand can still make money -- I'm not sure it says anything more than that. This movie opened with a free run and zero competition like most of the COVID-afflicted marketplace, so what it rakes in has to have some kind of qualifier there.

[Monterey Jack]

If anything, this proves that "day & date" D+ or HBO Max releases are hobbled right out of the gate. Hopefully the WB gets that shite out of their system after the new Matrix.

Shang-Chi has also had remarkably small declines in business over the last three weekends, which means that people authentically enjoy this.

[AndyDursin]

I guess. There's also nothing else to see!

Disney has a dual problem in that the box-office may never come back to support the global grosses they once had-- but they've also run through all of the A list heroes and are onto the B-listers like Shang-Chi and Captain Marvel. They've cultivated the brand enough that, like Pixar, some people are going to go to every one of these films regardless -- like a TV series, which it basically is, forever hyping up the next episode. But that level of fan intensity and excitement seems to be waning just a little. Even once they get back to regurgitating the X-Men, that's a cinematic property that's been exploited a dozen times over by now. It can still be quite profitable -- but it's feeling like diminishing returns to some extent, which has nothing to do with covid.

[Monterey Jack]

I guess. There's also nothing else to see!

Granted. I noticed that Sony pushed back Venom 2 to mid-October (which would have pitted it against Halloween Kills), but after Shang-Chi hit hard, they pushed it forward to October 1st. They should have just kept it in its original mid-September slot. Same thing with Paramount acting like pussies and pushing back their pair of Cruise franchise movies. It's clear that no one is as scared of Delta as the media wants them to be, and are just doing whatever they want now, and every time a studio pushes a movie back, all they're doing is further alienating their audience. Spider-Man 3 is going to do BOFFO business opening right before Christmas, and will do even better if Disney doesn't renege on their "no more day & date theater/D+ releases" promise. Considering how well Shang-Chi is doing with no D+ parachute, they'd be crazy to do so.

[Monterey Jack]

Even once they get back to regurgitating the X-Men, that's a cinematic property that's been exploited a dozen times over by now. It can still be quite profitable -- but it's feeling like diminishing returns to some extent, which has nothing to do with covid.

It'll be interesting to see how Disney handles introducing the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters into the fabric of the MCU. The latter characters have NEVER been given a good movie, and while the former certainly have inspired some damn good movies during their Fox run, the continuity of that series was always an absolute mess. I just pity the poor actor who has to replace Hugh Jackman as Wolverine...

[AndyDursin]

It'll get the hardcore fanboys excited, but I don't know how much of a wider fanbase there is to see yet another origin movie for The Fantastic Four. And even then, the franchise is not Spider-Man. The X-Men has wider appeal -- but I mean, talk about a franchise that was PLAYED OUT, we are talking about the 3rd do-over for that series. Not the first or second incarnation -- but the third.

Sure there will be Marvel fans peeing in their pants over seeing them again or so insanely excited over seeing them share the screen with whoever -- but I guarantee you they're not going to be Downey doing IRON MAN or THE AVENGERS money. Those numbers aren't coming around again. They were also punched in the gut because BLACK PANTHER may have been such a hugely overblown "cultural moment" but Boseman was still poised to anchor subsequent sequels and, presumably, Avengers movies. He's gone so that's a vacuum too. So sure, it's still Marvel. They'll still get an audience base because they handle every movie as a sequel in an endless series that "you need to see!" -- but these new movies aren't going to be making the same money, and there's some star power being lost there too.

[mkaroly]

I have zero interest in seeing this, any Marvel movie, any X-Men movies, etc. It is overkill at this point for me.

[BobaMike]

I saw it the other night. It's pretty decent. A cut above Black Panther and Captain Marvel, for sure. The movie started out well, had some inventive action scenes, the two leads were good. I can live without ever seeing Awkwafina again. She's pretty one-note. Also, more swearing that I expected!

My biggest complaint was that the final action sequence devolved into the usual Marvel good guys fighting a swarm of cgi aliens/bugs/monsters/robots/whatevers.

The score was good, except the theme doesn't really ever stand out.

[AndyDursin]

Bobamike your review aligns precisely with what my friend said: Awkwafina should have been relegated to the first 30 minutes, and the ending was too interchangeably "Marvely" with every other climax in every other film of theirs.

It's amazing they can't come up with anything else -- but that's what I find tiresome about all these films. As an avid comic book reader as a kid, there used to be ALL KINDS of story lines -- heroes doing this or that, running afoul of a certain villain, whatever. That story line would play out over multiple issues, which you would THINK would translate into an endless array of possibilities for movies.

But no, the Marvel MOVIES are nearly all apocalyptic, end of the world stories -- but that's not what most comic books used to be about. Disney just doesn't want to stray off formula, and wants to sell that formula, but it becomes just so tedious. Every climax is the same, every one of them is just some loud barrage of noise and effects, and all of them are the least appealing part of every one of the films.

[BobaMike]

Andy, I agree 100%

It's one of the reasons I enjoy Doctor Strange, the Ant-Man movies, and the first Captain America more than some of the other Marvel films the endings were at least something a bit different. Dr. Strange was him just sort of talking to the bad guy over and over until he won!

[AndyDursin]

It was, but even there it fell into a blob of FX and noise for a time. lol

[AndyDursin]

Not to veer way off-track but since I brought up the X-Men, the smarter move IMO for Disney would be to cast adults -- established/quasi-recognizable actors -- in the roles when they start that up again. Casting another group of unknown teenagers and basically making a re-do of the re-do -- i.e. another FIRST CLASS that starts from scratch -- would be a real mistake. Remaking, say, Singer's X-MEN -- at least where the team is mostly "established" already outside a couple of characters -- would be the smarter move. That's not how it usually works (these fools press the re-set button every time and give us endless origin movies instead of just going forward), but it's the smarter gameplan there to me.

AND speaking of Singer's X-MEN it's fascinating to wonder about the movie that could've been -- the one where Singer got his first choices in Dougray Scott (Wolverine!) and Rachael Leigh Cook (Rogue) instead of Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin. I couldn't see Scott in that role -- I mean, who knows, alternate universe maybe it may have worked -- but Cook I think would've been fine. Paquin runs hot and cold with me, I like her in those movies, but there are times I feel like she's too much.

Cook spoke about that recently and said she was stupid to turn it down (yup!):

[Monterey Jack]

While I enjoyed the chemistry between Jackman and Paquin in the first X-Men movie (and it was a smart decision to have these characters be our "in" to this fantasy universe, especially for those like me who didn't read the comics or watch the cartoon beforehand), Paquin was never given anything to really do after that (even getting cut entirely from Days Of Future Past without it effecting the overall narrative of the movie in the slightest!).

Agreed that giving us an all-adult cast would be preferable, but we all know that Disney likes to cast young, because then they can get a decade+ of performances out of their actors before they "age out". We'll never get another 45-ish Robert Downey, Jr. type established actor in one of these.

[AndyDursin]

Which of course only eliminates my interest in them. And I know I'm not alone. We've sat through 2 entire cycles of X-Men movies -- and a total reset with kids already. Doing it again will placate the hardcore Marvel fans, but for anyone old enough to have already watched them, the interest level will be diminishing returns. Fox pillaged that series to death, and only the nutty fanboys who will pass out because OMFG X-MEN AND BLACK PANTHER ARE SHARING THE SCREEN TOGETHER EVEN THOUGH IT'S REALLY NO BIG DEAL AND WON'T CHANGE YOUR LIFE are really going to be tapped into that.