SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF TEN RINGS - MARVELS NEW CLUB IN BAG

Recently Marvel announced that they were working on development of a Shang-Chi film staring Simu Liu along with other casts from Crazy Rich Asians. This notion met with great applause but also a large portion of criticism. Mostly from Chinese & other Asian communities via social media channel posting decrying the depiction of Shang Chi throughout the Marvel’s journey was racist.  Unfortunately, characters like Dr. Fu Manchu are still grossly poor interpretations of Asian people and one of the biggest problems Marvel had in the '70s was coloring them. Due to a limitation on colors offered by the printer, Marvel settled on coloring Fu Manchu in an off-yellow color while Shang-Chi was a bright bronze/gold color. This was considered offensive and unnecessary, but was the result of not wanting to color him the same as Caucasians. As printing technology developed, this problem went away, but Shang-Chi's golden history remains a complicated aspect of the character's past.

LET’S DIG A LITTLE DEEPER INTO THE CHARACTER AND BE PREPARED FOR UPCOMING MARVEL FLICK.

SHANG CHI & FU MANCHU

Shang Chi in his very first appearance, was presented to come from evil lineage, as the son of the evil Fu Manchu, a supervillain and who went on to become the archenemy & nemesis of Shang Chi. In comic series Shang Chi was raised by his father to be the greatest assassin to keep an aid to his evil ways. Shang Chi rejected his father evil ways when he discovered to his horror that his father was actually an evil mastermind and dedicated his life to opposing him. The two over the years clashed repeatedly, later the identity of Fu Manchu was redesigned as an immortal sorcerer Zheng Zhu, who simply used “Fu Manchu” as an alias. This was mainly due to rights over character of Fu Manchu, as Sax Rohmer was original creator of Fu Manchu, and Marvel just took the temporary license over name to publish comics.

SHANG CHI POWERS

Shang-Chi is Just an ordinary fighter with no true superhuman abilities like Hawkeye & Batman, but he is probably one of the best hand to hand fighter and numerous other forms of combat and have beaten up numerous superhuman villains. He is best empty handed fighter and practitioner of kung fu, and much of his strength is from his mastery of chi. Shang's mastery of chi allows him to disperse physical trauma across his entire body (as opposed to accumulating at any single point) and strike with enough force to break through reinforced steel. On many occasions, he has also demonstrated the ability to dodge and deflect bullets from automatic weapons after they've been fired. Shang Chi is also known to have many popular students, some of his prominent students & partners are Captain America, Wolverine and Spiderman & Domino. While possessing no superhuman senses, Shang-Chi is highly attuned to his surroundings thanks to his training and having spent most of his life thwarting his father's assassins. He is able to pinpoint the breath sounds and heart beats of silent aggressors, as well as the distant loading of firearms by gunmen. On one occasion he was even able to detect the precise location of Jean Grey and Cyclops, cloaked by the former's psionic powers. Shang Chi was given many Hi Technology weapons by Tony stark, but still he preferred to fight with bare hands. Recently, Marvel added to Shang-Chi abilities and give him a new superhuman ability - the power to create numerous copies of himself, each just as skilled in the martial arts as the original. It was never clear if he gained this ability to a finite limit of copies or if he can continue to produce duplicates of himself as much as he wants.

BOND & HOLMES CONNECTION

Over the time Shang Chi have worked with many characters who have strong roots in world of fiction. At various times he have worked closely with Agent Clive Reston of MI-6 and he rumored to be the son of great James bond and it doesn’t stop there. Reston is also rumored to be the nephew of Sherlock Holmes, which ties Shang to some of the greatest detectives of all time. Some of the inspiration for the character clearly comes from Bond as well as Holmes, even with the majority of his personality and skills coming out of Chinese culture and the practice of Kung Fu.

SHANG CHI & IRON FIST

In terms of martial artists in the Marvel Universe who are considered the very best, there is another Shang-Chi must stand beside: Danny Rand, the Immortal Iron Fist. Since his creation, Rand has been presented as the greatest martial artist in the Marvel Universe, which puts the previous assertion that Shang-Chi is the preeminent martial artist to the test. Fortunately, these two allies have had the occasion to spar with one another, which is how we know they are equally-matched in skill. While Rand can focus his chi into his fist making it a formidable weapon, his skills alongside the fist make him, at the very least, an equal to Shang-Chi. Each character has distinct skills and accomplishments, but at the end of the day, Shang-Chi is the "Master of Kung Fu."

 DEATH OF FU MANCHU

Fu Manchu was archenemy of Shang Chi, and they both have clashed many times. But Shang Chi never had the intent of ending his own father’s life, even after he sent his childhood friend, M’Nai to take down Shang Chi in New York, which resulted in lethal end of character, he still wanted to only stop his father, not completely destroy him. But unfortunately, Shang Chi was the one who led to demise of Fu Manchu. Fu Manchu was already 200 years old when Shang Chi was born. The source of his Mojo was his a special “Elixir Vitae” which preserved his life. Over the time the effect of Elixir diminished & Fu Manchu needed the blood of his son to continue living. Shang Chi smashed a vial of his blood on the floor depriving his father of its restorative nature and he succumbed to rapid aging as a result

SHANG CHI & BRUCE LEE CONNECTION

In earliest comics of Shang Chi he had a strong resemblance to master of Kung Fu Bruce Lee. It’s no accident as the creator of character modeled him after Bruce Lee to capitalize on the martial arts trend during the 70’s and Bruce Lee was the man responsible for it. Back in the 1980s, Stan Lee met with Linda and Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's widow and son. During that time, a film was pitched where Brandon would go on to play Shang-Chi, but nothing ever came of that meeting. Sadly, Brandon's life ended while filming The Crow in 1994, but he would have been perfectly cast to play Shang-Chi in honor of the character and his father.