MCU Commentary Rewatch: Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

So its been a minute since I did my last commentary rewatch, though I’ve seen an awful lot of movies in the last few years. Very few have been in theaters, but almost all of those have been MCU films, and with the recent release of FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, I figured it was time to get back into the swing of things.

Before I dive into my commentary on the commentary, I have a couple quick bookkeeping notes about SHANG CHI.

After pandemic delays similar to BLACK WIDOW’s, the movie premiered August 16, 2021, and released worldwide September 3, 2021. It did slightly better overall than its Phase 4 predecessor ($432 million worldwide against a $200 million budget, 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), with a weaker opening weekend over a much broader base.

It’s the first MCU film with an Asian director, an Asian writer and primarily Asian cast. (I’ll cover Chloe Zhao’s ETERNALS later this week).

And I like it so much that it was a near instant addition to our list of “must watch” films, meaning that if we see it on cable while flipping channels, our decision is made for the night. No matter what point we come into the action, it’s always amazing, due in no small part to our special commentarians for the day, director Destin Daniel Cretton and writer David Callaham , who also did a production re-write for ANT-MAN back in MCU Phase 2 and later penned SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.

TL:DR;

Running Ranking: #8 of 26

For reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang-Chi_and_the_Legend_of_the_Ten_Rings

Normally, I would start my review here, but I would be remiss if I did not also cover the first film of MCU’s Phase 4, BLACK WIDOW. But because that movie is mired in controversy and mismanagement, a director’s commentary was neither commissioned or recorded, and most likely never will be.

Why, you might ask? Though it was filmed in 2019, Disney held onto the completed film for over a year during the COVID lockdown, and eventually did a simultaneous day-and-date release in July 2021, just two months before SHANG CHI’s big day. It booked $380 million worldwide against a budget of $290 million, which is a moderate success by any kind of cinema math.

It was by far the biggest movie for that month, with an ~$80 million opening weekend. In contrast, the previous big summer movie was F9: THE FAST SAGA at ~$70 million, which like most “Fast” movies made the majority of its money overseas.

But it could have been a lot more. The simultaneous release essentially eliminated the repeat viewings that typically pump up MCU box office numbers, and the film’s star and co-executive producer Scarlett Johansson successfully sued Disney for lost earnings keyed to its box office numbers, to the tune of a $40 million settlement, which some estimates say was about $60 million short of its potential outcome.

You see, when the film was still in development, Johansson looked up at the metaphorical wall and saw the future. She was justifiably concerned that Disney would release the film on Disney+ instead of giving it a full-court press, so she added a stipulation to her contract that it would be released exclusively in theaters.

The day-and-date release was a clear breach of that contract, and she took them to task. Not a lot of people ever win lawsuits against Disney, and the mouse house pulled out all the stops to blacken Johansson’s reputation while the suit dragged on. It got real ugly, real fast, and although the exact terms of the settlement agreement are sealed, it was pretty much the end of her relationship with the studio. Johansson was initially credited as an executive producer on THUNDERBOLTS*, but asked for her name to be removed since she had no real involvement with the project. A rumored non-MCU solo project has yet to materialize.

Long story short (too late!) no commentary, not even a fan-made one. Because of MISOGYNY, the movie got dragged hard by trolls and other basement-dwellers prior to release, finally settling at a 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And to add insult to injury, while other MCU actors were called back to voice their characters in Disney+’s WHAT IF?, Natasha Romanov was instead performed by Lake Bell.

So for my purposes here, even though I do like the movie (a lot), BLACK WIDOW ranks dead last in both my Phase 4 (7/7) and overall MCU (26/26) ratings, because even the two Spider-Man movies by Sony had enough special features on the discs to fill in the gaps. Two featurettes and some deleted scenes are all we get here; not enough by half, and the extra $40m Disney paid out in the settlement pretty much ensures we’ll never get one at all.

Okay, now we can talk about SHANG CHI.

So Here’s the Deal.

This track is chocked-full of all sorts of crunchy bits, and while I took notes throughout this morning’s rewatch, I’m editing things down to cover only the high points. There’s just too much to process “chronologically,” and my purpose here is to rate and review the commentary track, not the movie proper.

And we begin. Dan and Dave have never done a commentary before, but quickly strike a good balance between narration and production details. The commentary track was recorded a week before They talk at length about the casting process, and how they went after their actors, including HK film legends Tony Leung, Fala Chen, and OSCAR WINNER MICHELLE FUCKING YEOH! This is important stuff, because there are only two white guys in the entire cast, and one of them is OSCAR WINNER BEN FUCKING KINGSLEY!

Later in the commentary they reveal that both men had brought their own pitches to the project, and the final version of the script was a blend of those initial drafts, writer’s room revisions, and input from fight coordinator Brad Allan. In particular, Allan ensured that every fight had a story to it, which in turn had to advance the stories of the characters involved. Members of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team coordinated the stunts, and Callaham himself holds a brown belt in jiu-jitsu.

(Sad note: Brad Allan died of a heart attack at the age of 48 in 2021, just days before the commentary was recorded. His work lives on in an incredible filmography that includes almost every possible kind of action, and the movie is dedicated to his memory.)

Part of Cretton’s pitch was the initial cocktail lounge scene with Shang-Chi, Katy, and their friends. It was important to show Asian characters hanging out together, and straddling the line between traditional culture norms and 21st century San Francisco life, in particular how Asian-American life intersects with multi-generational families.

Fun fact: The writers and production crew were on the bus fight bus, filming the bus fight on the streets of SF, but did not know how to stop the bus to end the bus fight. So the team took a few minutes to watch the city go by, then Brad Allan came up with the solution with bus fight bus still bussing, and broke the scene down on the fly.

So much happens in this movie, and these guys get it. They break down (and give props!) to all the vfx, sound, and cinematography beats. They give equal credit to Andrew Lanham who helped write the screenplay, and it’s really apparent how much they loved doing the picture.

Which makes this a really strong commentary.

So let’s check in on the rankings:

A reminder on how this works. I start from the bottom of the list, and ask, “is it better than _?” The first no I come to gets a metaphorical pin stuck in it, and I continue up the list until the second no. I then re-rank the existing slots accordingly, based on what the commentary did and did not do, in relation to the other movies.

You can see the list as it stands at the end of Phase 3 here .
Also, rather than repost the full rankings every time like I did on my Infinity Saga Rewatch, I’ll instead post the overall MCU list at the end of Phases 4 and 5, respectively.

MCU Running Ranking:

SHANG-CHI clocks in at MCU #8, sandwiched neatly between CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER and ANT-MAN. There were lots of cool “inside baseball” things, but also a lot of “In this scene, Nora (Awkafina) does this, and we were happy to see our script work out so well.” I didn’t learn a lot about their process, other than that they had one. I did learn a lot about Brad Allan and Bill Cole’s processes, and if either of those men was available to do the track, it would have been #4 easy. But my initial gut was #8, and after I went up the ladder it fell right into place and nothing else changed.

PHASE 4 Ranking:

1. SHANG CHI
2. (tbd)
3. (tbd)
4. (tbd)
5. (tbd)
6. (tbd)
7. BLACK WIDOW

Note: while the WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY HOLIDAY SPECIAL special presentations are technically Phase 4 movies released on Disney+ in 2022, they have no commentary tracks. And while I may well do a rating/ranking of D+ offerings in the future, this COMMENTARY REWATCH is a COMMENTARY about COMMENTARIES available on HOME VIDEO RELEASES.

So they don’t count. Stop asking.

Multiverse Saga (Phases 4, 5, and 6)

1. SHANG CHI
2. (tbd)
3. (tbd)
4. (tbd)
5. (tbd)
6. (tbd)
7. (tbd)
8. (tbd)
9. (tbd)
10. (tbd)
11. (tbd)
12. (tbd)
13. (tbd)
14. (tbd)
15. (tbd)
16. (tbd)
17. BLACK WIDOW

Next up, 2021’s ETERNALS, about which I have many, many feelings.