Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

I am not what you would call an aficionado of the Marvel Universe. I have four boys, so I have watched many, if not all, of the Marvel movies, but I would be hard pressed to name a favorite character or movie in the bunch. And I was not too wowed by Black Widow, the other big Marvel movie to grace the big screen this year, but I liked this one. It has a mournful note in the backline that struch a chord with me. Plus I love the Wushu. The basic story is one of a dysfunctional family dynamics which are even more important than the ten rings that grant such immense power to Shang Chi’s power-hungry father Wenwu, who has lived for 1,000 years and created a society called the Ten Rings that has destroyed kingdoms and swayed the events all over the world. When Wenwu found love with Jiang Li, there was peace. They married and started a family. But after Shang-Chi’s mother died, a newly monstrous Wenwu tried to make his son a killer, causing the young boy to leave behind his sister Xialing. Shang-Chi comes home when there is a disturbance in the force, and he brings with him his American friend Katy (played so ably by Awkwafina, who adds not just the outsider perspective but also the comic relief. I am a big fan), and the three of them join forces with Jiang Li's village to put an end to Wenwu once and for all (or at least put him on pause because we know dead is not dead when it comes to Marvel). The film is a mega-budget ballet, one that glides and floats over an abyss of grief. As a side note, I am happy to see that the vast majority of the cast in this movie set in Chinatown in the US and Macao is that the actors are largely Asian, and that is spectacularly important. If the stories are about a culture, a country, or a people, the actors who are employed to tell the story should be of that background--the story wouldn't be the same otherwise.