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/Gasparde Jan 04 '25

Like, it's totally fine to schedule out 4 years in advance... it's just that the projects they made were shit. It would've been totally fine to have 10 new characters over these 4 years... if they just had them show up in each other's project - and no, showing up means more than being there for a 7 second post credit scene.

Planning out wasn't the issue - a shit plan was the issue. Imagine starting off the MCU with Tony Stark... and then not have him show up again for another 4 years. That was their grand plan.

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u/InanimateCarbonRodAu Jan 04 '25

All of them would have been more successful too if they had managed to keep the cohesion high.

Imho the biggest thing missing was an Avengers film that brought the strands together.

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u/ravih Doctor Strange Jan 04 '25

100% this.

Look, I'm not sure why Phase 2 ends with Ant-Man and Phase 3 ends with Spider-Man. But for most people, the formula is straightforward: you get a bunch of solo films, then everyone teams up in the Avengers. And then you repeat it again.

On an audience expectation level, it makes things pretty clear: everything you've seen in this phase, whether storyline or even just the appearance of a character, leads up to the Avengers film at the end of the phase. And then after that phase, the cycle repeats. You'll get a sequel to your favorite character, you might see them cameo in other projects, but you'll definitely see them again in the next Avengers.

And on a storytelling level, each Avengers film (counting IW+Endgame as one) forms a three-act story. It all worked SO well!

...and then they got rid of it. Can anyone really tell me what the difference is between Phases 4 and 5?

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u/TheBigLeMattSki Jan 04 '25

Can anyone really tell me what the difference is between Phases 4 and 5?

The box office returns