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Marvel eyes China with 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings'

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Huw Griffith, Agence France-Presse

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C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></a></div><div style="padding-top:8px"><div style="color:#3897f0;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-style:normal;font-weight:550;line-height:18px"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CSW6X-GrfR8/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style="background:#FFFFFF;line-height:0;padding:0 0;text-align:center;text-decoration:none;width:100%" target="_blank">View this post on Instagram</a></div></div><div style="padding:12.5% 0"> </div><div style="display:flex;flex-direction:row;margin-bottom:14px;align-items:center"><div><div style="background-color:#F4F4F4;border-radius:50%;height:12.5px;width:12.5px;transform:translateX(0px) translateY(7px)"> </div><div style="background-color:#F4F4F4;height:12.5px;transform:rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px);width:12.5px;flex-grow:0;margin-right:14px;margin-left:2px"> </div><div style="background-color:#F4F4F4;border-radius:50%;height:12.5px;width:12.5px;transform:translateX(9px) translateY(-18px)"> </div></div><div style="margin-left:8px"><div style="background-color:#F4F4F4;border-radius:50%;flex-grow:0;height:20px;width:20px"> </div><div style="width:0;height:0;border-top:2px solid transparent;border-left:6px solid #f4f4f4;border-bottom:2px solid transparent;transform:translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"> </div></div><div style="margin-left:auto"><div style="width:0px;border-top:8px solid #F4F4F4;border-right:8px solid transparent;transform:translateY(16px)"> </div><div style="background-color:#F4F4F4;flex-grow:0;height:12px;width:16px;transform:translateY(-4px)"> </div><div style="width:0;height:0;border-top:8px solid #F4F4F4;border-left:8px solid transparent;transform:translateY(-4px) translateX(8px)"> </div></div></div><div style="display:flex;flex-direction:column;flex-grow:1;justify-content:center;margin-bottom:24px"><div style="background-color:#F4F4F4;border-radius:4px;flex-grow:0;height:14px;margin-bottom:6px;width:224px"> </div><div style="background-color:#F4F4F4;border-radius:4px;flex-grow:0;height:14px;width:144px"> </div></div><div style="color:#c9c8cd;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:17px;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:8px;overflow:hidden;padding:8px 0 7px;text-align:center;text-overflow:ellipsis;white-space:nowrap"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CSW6X-GrfR8/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style="color:#c9c8cd;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;line-height:17px;text-decoration:none" target="_blank">A post shared by Marvel Studios (@marvelstudios)</a></div></div></blockquote><div><script async="" src="http://www.instagram.com/embed.js" type="text/javascript"></script></div><p>LOS ANGELES - In Hollywood&#x27;s latest attempt to score in the huge -- but highly restrictive -- Chinese market, an Asian actor has been cast as a leading Marvel superhero for the first time.</p><p>&quot;Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,&quot; out on Friday, takes the 25th installment in the wildly popular Marvel film series into mythical China, where enormous beasts, mysticism and kung fu collide for a tale about the difficult relationship between a son and his father.</p><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IlYYWLOTqIM?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more in <a href="//www.iwantv.com.ph/">iWantv</a> or <a href="//tfc.tv/">TFC.tv</a></div><p>The titular son -- played by relatively unknown Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu -- fled his controlling dad as a teenager, after being sculpted into a deadly assassin, and washes up in the United States.</p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/08/18/21/hollywood-and-asian-community-cheer-for-shang-chi-world-premiere">Hollywood and Asian community cheer for &#x27;Shang-Chi&#x27; world premiere</a></li>	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/04/20/21/watch-shang-chi-trailer-promises-a-battle-royale-with-marvels-master-of-kung-fu">WATCH: &#x27;Shang-Chi&#x27; trailer promises a battle royale with Marvel&#x27;s Master of Kung Fu</a></li></ul><p>There he lives anonymously, palling around with the underachieving Katy, played by Awkwafina (&quot;Crazy Rich Asians&quot;), until his father -- Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung -- sends a sinister gang to chase him home.</p><p>&quot;Shang-Chi&quot; locates itself firmly in the record-grossing Marvel Cinematic Universe series of movies, with an amusing reprisal of Ben Kingsley&#x27;s washed-up actor Trevor Slattery from &quot;Iron Man 3.&quot;</p><p>Its value for Marvel Studios, and owner Disney, however, was expected to be as a vehicle for expanding into the Chinese market.</p><p>&quot;It&#x27;s very moving because it&#x27;s been a long time coming to have an Asian superhero, and a movie that celebrates not only our culture but our humanity,&quot; Asian-American actress Jodi Long told AFP at the film&#x27;s world premiere in Los Angeles.</p><p>&quot;And I think that&#x27;s really important in this time of Covid and xenophobia.&quot;</p><div><strong>&#x27;STEREOTYPE&#x27;</strong></div><p>Yet despite a predominantly Asian cast, and huge swathes of dialogue in Mandarin -- both predicted to be popular among China&#x27;s cinemagoers -- success for &quot;Shang-Chi&quot; is far from guaranteed.</p><p>Like the previous Marvel film &quot;Black Widow,&quot; the film still doesn&#x27;t have a release date in China, where movie theaters reopening this summer are stocked largely with domestic, patriotic features.</p><p>As well as protecting Chinese filmmaking, this could reflect growing discontent with Disney-owned Marvel, whose next big superhero outing &quot;Eternals&quot; is being directed by Beijing-born Chloe Zhao.</p><p>Zhao won two Oscars including an historic best director statuette this year for &quot;Nomadland,&quot; but her success has been censored in China after a nationalist backlash over years-old interviews in which she appeared to criticize her country of birth.</p><p>Excitement in China for &quot;Shang-Chi&quot; also appears to be lukewarm among some social media users.</p><p>&quot;This movie will only deepen the world&#x27;s stereotype of us,&quot; wrote one user on Weibo, China&#x27;s Twitter-like messaging service.</p><p>&quot;Marvel may not want to insult China, but it is a fact that in terms of casting, it has to cater to the American social aesthetic of humiliating China.&quot;</p><p>Another user called it &quot;a poor attempt to mint money from Chinese audiences.&quot;</p><p>On popular review site Duoban -- similar to Rotten Tomatoes -- one user bemoaned the notion of an Americanized Chinese man returning to his homeland to do battle with his traditionally minded father.</p><p>&quot;Marvel do you really want to enter China with such a plot?&quot; the user wrote.</p><div><strong>&#x27;MULTI-DIMENSIONAL&#x27;</strong></div><p>Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, in a recent interview with a Chinese film journalist, sought to tamp down that criticism, insisting the narrative is actually one of Shang-Chi returning to his roots.</p><p>&quot;That sense of running away... is presented as one of his flaws,&quot; he said, according to Variety.</p><p>Director Destin Daniel Cretton told AFP that filmmakers had worked hard to overcome &quot;some very clear stereotypes that were created in life and society, and that were also part of the original comics.&quot; </p><p>&quot;So for me the most important thing to get right in this movie were the characters -- that they are relatable, that they are multi-dimensional, whether they are the hero Shang-Chi or whether they are the quote-unquote villain.&quot;</p><div><strong>hg-amz/sst</strong></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div>

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, out on Friday, takes the 25th installment in the wildly popular Marvel film series into mythical China.

Marvel eyes China with 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings'

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Marvel eyes China with 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings'

Huw Griffith,

Agence France-Presse

Published Sep 01, 2021 09:53 AM PHT

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shang-chi

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tony leung

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