By Romy Hildebrand
One of Marvel’s newest film releases, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, tells the exciting tale of martial-artist-turned-superhero Shang-Chi, who must confront his past and estranged father in his fight against the mysterious Ten Rings criminal organization.
At the core of the action-packed story lies an intimate look at the complex father-son relationship between Shang-Chi and his father Wenwu, co-writer and director Destin Daniel Cretton told a UC Santa Barbara audience last week. Cretton was speaking as part of the Carsey-Wolf Center’s Script to Screen series.
“Even though technically in our movie they are enemies… even though it is skewed and warped, there is deep love still between them,” he said. “That was kind of the heart of the story that I initially pitched to Marvel.”
Simu Liu as Shang-Chi in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a groundbreaking film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it stars Marvel Studios’ first Asian leading actor, Simu Liu.
Cretton said he researched original Marvel storylines and comics in order to draft his movie pitch. “I was looking through the source material for something that I could connect to, not only personally, but also as an Asian American,” he said.
It was key for Cretton to wholly represent the Asian American experience in the film, including the struggle many face, feeling torn between two cultures. “In a lot of ways, that was the most important thing. We wanted these characters to be very reflective of our own experience… and the experience of our friends,” Cretton said.
He was careful to avoid contributing to stereotypes, and sought to restructure a character who had previously been portrayed superficially. “Probably the biggest challenge of this movie was that we knew we had to have a villain, named the Mandarin, that had been alluded to in previous Marvel films. And we also knew that that character carried a lot of baggage in terms of being a pretty stereotypical portrayal of an Asian trope.”
Cretton said he expanded upon the character to go beyond a “mustache-twirling,” surface-level villain.
“We knew we had to figure out how to shatter that, and to make a character that was not contributing to that stereotype,” Cretton said.
So he worked to transform the one-dimensional original Marvel villain into the far more complex character of Wenwu.
“We gave him an actual name, we gave him a real backstory, we started to think of him as human, and I started to see him as a man who is battling himself throughout the movie, who is battling his own insecurities, his own need and craving for love and for acceptance.”
Tony Leung, who plays Wenwu in the film, added another layer of depth to the role, telling Cretton about halfway through filming that he saw Wenwu as a man feeling innately undeserving of love, who deeply loves his children but has no idea how to do that correctly. “I thought that was a pretty insightful way to look at that character,” noted Cretton.
Destin Daniel Cretton, co-writer and director of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, who spoke with UCSB students at a Carsey-Wolf Center event last week.
Cretton also wanted to make sure the female characters in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings were not merely serving the male lead, but driving their own storylines. “From the very beginning, the idea was to surround Shang-Chi with female characters who were all not only integral in his growth, but are all individually on their own journeys as well,” he said.
Cretton said he may have been influenced by his upbringing with three sisters, and noted that his mother and grandmother played important roles both in his life and creativity.
Cretton’s personal family experiences also influenced the way he envisioned the film’s characters dealing with their own family’s trauma — the death of their mother.
“There’s six kids in my family,” he said “Over and over, when there is a big event in all of our lives that affects us emotionally one way or another, we all respond to it very differently. This was also the core of the story that I initially pitched to Marvel- the story of a family that was broken by a very traumatic event, and the core beating heart of that family was gone.”
He wrote Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings to be relatable to audiences and to have a social impact. Simu Liu, who plays the lead character Shang-Chi, stressed the film’s unprecedented casting in an Instagram post thanking Cretton. “The sun rose today to a world where Asian superheroes exist as the leads of their story… this film will change the world.”
Romy Hildebrand is a fourth-year Communication major and Professional Writing minor at UC Santa Barbara. She is a Web and Social Media intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.