As one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest heroes, the responsibility to save the world (presumably) will fall to Shang-Chi in director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. But unlike many of Marvel’s other upcoming projects that have previously-established roots in the MCU, Shang Chi is set to introduce a slew of new characters whose lives haven’t exactly revolved around the Avengers.
While Shang-Chi’s title gives you a pretty big clue about the chunk of Marvel’s comic lore that the film explores, some of the major questions about the story have revolved around what exactly this incarnation of the Ten Rings are/is, considering that a terrorist group by the same name was previously dropped way back in Iron Man 3.
It always seemed a stretch that Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin would end up factoring into Shang-Chi in any significant way, and in a new featurette for the upcoming film, the cast explains a bit more about how Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) ends up becoming a pivotal figure within the MCU in his own right.
In the featurette, Kevin Feige explains how the Ten Rings featured in Iron Man 3 have a direct connection to the organisation at the centre of Shang-Chi. Tony Stark may be dead and gone, but Shang-Chi further explores how the Avenger was once forced to develop weapons for the Ten Rings, and how Shang-Chi has to deal with the consequences.
The video also spotlights a few shots that tease Shang-Chi’s fantastical/magical elements, but it stops just short of explaining whether the weaponised rings that Shang-Chi and his father Wenwu (Tony Leung) fight with are advanced (Stark) tech, or if their power is mystical in nature.
Even though Phase 4 is meant to be about ushering in the new guard of heroes, it’s good to see that Shang-Chi’s being given a story that will establish him as a proper presence in the world who’s up to the challenge of putting things right when people — including the Avengers — drop the ball. But with that all squared away, now the interesting thing to look forward to seeing is just how tightly crafted and impressive a standalone story Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is when it hits theatres on September 2.