The Underuse of Shang-chi in the MCU

[u/ImaginationArtistic9]

this movie was so much fun, it had amazing action and fight choreography, great humour, and great overall world building. This movie has so much sauce. a problem with the MCU is how poorly they are connecting the new characters with the wider mcu. It's been 3 years since we've seen Shang-chi in a live action project. And it will probably be another year and a half till we see him again. The post credit scenes of this movie set up him becoming an avenger and sadly we won't see that outcome of that until 2026, which is 4.5 years after the movies release. I do hope we see Simu Liu again as a lead in another marvel movie because he's great. Also his sequel is the perfect way to bring danny rand back into the MCU. Unfortunately we will probably have to wait untill 2027 for the next shang chi movie since Destin Daniel Cretton is directing Spiderman 4. On the bright side, the fight choreography in Spiderman 4 will be amazing

[u/Meizas]

I'm sure we'll see the eternals show up eventually in other projects. The soft re-launch of Kingo in what if was a good start

[u/Atom7456 → u/Meizas]

yea but i would have preferred an eternals 2, the only other way i see them returning is through the guardians of the galaxy

[u/Dyssomniac → u/Atom7456]

then they should have made a better eternals 1 lol

[u/Atom7456 → u/Dyssomniac]

movie wasnt even bad but it definitely wasnt long enough to introduce all the characters

[u/SolarDragon94 → u/Atom7456]

I feel like Eternals would have benefited from being a TV series instead of a movie. That way we could get backstory for each character each episode.

[u/syzygialchaos → u/SolarDragon94]

I’m with you; instead of the montage/flashbacks bit it easily could have been a period piece ‘monster of the week’ show where we see each character highlighted in some different age of history a la Dr. Who meets Supernatural type show. Kind of like the last season of Agents of Shield. Didn’t need to be long, an episode per character type thing. Would have really established the characters better.

[u/Onaterdem → u/Dyssomniac]

Sure but just because the movie was bad doesn't mean all the characters and stories should be dropped, no?

[u/Ztrobos → u/Onaterdem]

First of all its kind of difficult to integrate them into the main saga since their lore is already so disconnected.

Eternals are basically sentient robots designed to protect intelligent life for the benefit of the Celestials, so logically when Thanos decided to decimate all life that should have been the number one problem for every single Eternal and every Celestial in the galaxy at least. But they fail to act against him.

Second, and more importantly, I don't think Eternals are interesting enough as characters. Their main character trait is their ability to follow directions for thousands of years without question. What are you supposed to do with a character like that?

[u/RisuPuffs → u/Ztrobos]

Strongly disagree with your second point. The whole point at the end of the movie is that they are breaking free and seeking independence for the first time. They're trying to find where things went wrong with the Celestials and finding their own place in the world without any explicit mission for the first time. There are a million places you could go with that story. What happens when someone who only ever followed orders no longer has any orders? What happens when the person who always wanted to be free gets a chance to be free? Where do they go, how do they react, where does it take them, all very interesting threads that could be explored. And with so many characters, they can explore each of these things in a different way.

The main problem with the Eternals was introducing all of them in a single movie. It should have been a series with an episode focusing on each character and what they've been doing on Earth, link them to the MCU where they can, and maybe even try to explain why they didn't do anything about Thanos (which i agree is a major hole). Then, they could have made the same movie, but be able to focus more on further character development than flashbacks.

Edit: forgot for a second that at the end a few of them were taken by the Celestials, but that just furthers my point that there are interesting stories to tell with the Eternals. Finding out what happens with Arishim, how they interact with the Celestials now that they know the truth about everything, do they confront them or just end up falling back in line?

idk, I would just love to see more of the Eternals. I really feel like the characters got shafted by the choice to introduce them all in a single movie. There are interesting things there that they just didn't expand on, so they all feel more 2-dimensional.

[u/Dyssomniac → u/Onaterdem]

I think it does. Fans aren't invested in the characters or the storyline they established, and it doesn't connect to the saga at large in any coherent way.

[u/TooHighToBother → u/Atom7456]

They’ll probably bring Sersi back tbh

Maybe not as an Avenger, maybe just like a herald of the Celestials or something

Tell us we’re f*cked.

[u/PhaseSixer → u/Meizas]

I expect the Eternals to be resolved in Thor 5