Finished watching Shang-Chi! (We started yesterday and got to basically right before the final battle.)
Really good movie! Was thinking yesterday and continue to think - just, good, and they’re really good with/at how they do reveals, and the flashbacks (which continued in the end), and good at mixing the humor and the other parts and having it work. And very good fighting scenes! (really in particular noticed the reveals and the flashbacks and how well they were done.)
Love Katy and her character things!! (Also wow I had not known Awkwafina was in this movie and I saw her and was just like omg Awkwafina!!). Wenwu is very good. His arc and basically everything with him is very very good and well done. Love their aunt* and things with her!
(Also kept thinking/saying, well they definitely wanted to make a martial arts movie! (and from my view at least did a good job!))
I think the weakest part of the movie was the ending part, actually. It was still very good to watch! But it felt like it did not get enough time, and there was a lot that feels like it didn’t get set up in a way that made it work - and that it could have, it just didn’t. And the time is just a really strong feeling about it I think - there was just so much there that felt like it needed more time devoted to it than it got. (And they added a new moral arc thing like, right before the final battle, which is one I wasn’t happy about**, and then - just - didn’t actually do anything with it and dropped it?? That was very strange.)Â
But it felt like there was a lot that just - needed more exploration and more being brought to a close and - really as I said just more time. And I really wish it had gotten it! And similarly that there was some major stuff that really needed some ‘here’s how this works’ in some form to make it fit together. And I think the movie really managed to - not have this have a disturb-the-viewing-experience-a-lot effect, and compliments to them on that skill, but it still really felt very there to me and I think I’ll be thinking more about it having finished. And again it feels like it really could have been fixed. (And if it took that I wish they’d shortened some of the earlier fight sequences to give the time it needed to this!)
I think I’m going to have more thoughts and feelings on the treatment of Xu Xianling****.
(I feel like I have now devoted much more space to criticism than to praise, which might create the wrong idea of my feelings of the movie. Which, would not be accurate at all, I think my more critical thoughts are just easier to put into expanded words and thoughts here, while my positive thoughts are just very - it was good. This was good and this was good and this was good. And overall my feeling is - it is a good movie, this movie is good, the experience of watching it as a movie is that it is good - which I don’t have better or longer words for but it’s very true!Â
And I definitely think that this shows, with Black Panther, how really good things can be when things like this are done and done (at least as far as I can tell) well.)
I have a bunch of thoughts and feelings about Black Widow and contrast and immigrant things.Â
Spoilers below this point!!
*and I’m so glad she didn’t die!
**the one about killing people, which like - is ever possible to do well, I think Avatar did it, but in general I don't like it and I think usually it’s not done well at all and I was very unhappy when it just suddenly showed up?
***it got a cool use and the subversion is neat but I was totally expecting a showdown with the masked guy (and maybe a reveal about him?) and possibly with Razorblade and did feel disappointed it didn’t happen!
**** - I really liked how they did an arc with the sexism she experiences and then Ta Lo and her aunt and that line! But it also feels very much like - the movie on a meta level treated her the way Wenwu did (which stands out because they drew attention to that!) It’s very very there in the final battle - Watsonianly and Doyalistically both everything is looking to Shang-Chi and not Shang-Chi and her, and this just - happens, it’s not remarked on, it’s not anything, but it’s so very very there. And then Wong brings in Shang-Chi and Katy and not her - and yes Shang-Chi is the one with the rings Wong is tracking, but he pulls in Katy (which is never really explained - and to be clear I’m glad he does! But it makes the complete exclusion of Xialing or any mention of her even more felt to me). And again, this isn’t remarked on, it’s not made part of the arc, nothing is explored about it, it just taken for granted happens.