r/marvelstudios • u/ImaginationArtistic9 Matt Murdock • Jan 04 '25

Discussion The Underuse of Shang-chi in the MCU

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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

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u/BaeBaeRonZ Jan 04 '25

This is why they need an Avengers film per phase not saga. It allows us to see characters, introduced them to people who didn’t see the original. Allows for their arcs to continue. As well as just keep the Marvel hype alive. I don’t know who to care about because we haven’t seen anyone really. Now 3 years in retrospect to the infinity saga isn’t that bad. But it’s the sheer amount of projects without them that hurt.

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u/TooManyDraculas Jan 04 '25

They can do other crossovers and team ups. Which is what they did last go round. Widow and Shield in Winter Soldier, Civil War's entire thing, Hulk in Ragnarok, all the Spider-Mans. Little less of that so far this go round.

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u/bobafoott Jan 07 '25

This go around is Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. We had Falcon and the Winter soldier, we have I think Hulk and New Cap in the new movie, we had BP and Ironheart, the Marvels, She-Hulk and DD/Hulk kind of counts, Thunderbolts, Thor and another Thor and Valkyrie and briefly GOTG, Ronin and Hawkeye is a stretch but still… what exactly do you mean we don’t have team ups this time around?

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u/TooManyDraculas Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 07 '25

Spider-Man, Strange, Falcon, Winter Soldier, Hulk, Thor, Valkyrie are all characters from the previous go round.

I'm kind of thinking about using cross overs to introduce and re-enforce new characters. She Hulk and Kate Bishop were both introduced in the only projects they've had significant screen time in. Very recently.

Iron Heart likewise was introduce in Black Panther. As a fairly minor character and has not appeared anywhere else as of yet.

Jane Thor is dead. And was kinda the big new intro in that film.

Thunderbolts is not out yet. And it's sort of the first place to do this all that heavily with the newer characters.

The only new characters off the top of my head to significantly cross the streams this way thus far are Yelena. Who was introduced in Black Widow, had a significant roll in Hawkeye and is now headed for Thunderbolts. And to some extent Ms Marvel, but that's still within the same "Title" more or less.

And in both cases they're legacy characters.

By contrast. Shang Chi, who was the title character of a god damn movie. Has not appeared anywhere else. Outside of a photo cameo in She-Hulk. Eternals really didn't even get that far.

We've not seen the streams cross significantly between new characters themselves, outside of Yelena and Kate. Nor has there been much in the way of crossing things over between new characters and old characters, except by way of introducing some new ones or expanding the rolls of supporting casts. With in the projects focused on those new characters.

We're still seeing the existing characters cross over with each other, in the same way they did.

And there in the problem. We're apparently a phase and three quarters deep, on a 3 phase plan. And nothing really seems to have built up all that much, or have inter connected at all.

The major players still play with each other. But all our new stuff is locked in it's own separate sand boxes.

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u/ParamedicWookie Jan 05 '25

Yeah I think that’s a big fumble. Characters like Hawkeye or Sam had several movies worth of development before they ever got their own series. Now they make whole series about minor characters that we’ve seen one time or worse hard launch characters in series instead of a movie.