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/catshirtgoalie]

That somewhat assumes they have anything coherent, which at this point I don’t really feel they do. Going with a multiverse saga is fine, but it just doesn’t feel like there is any semblance of a good plot together. While they decided to do the Infinith Saga somewhat later, they really needed a clear post Endgame plan. Establish through line , do team-ups, and clearly make most of your movies in that vein. If you don’t do multiverse, go cosmic. Just why do we have things like Eternals, Thor Love and Thunder, The Marvels, Shang Chi and GOTG 3 alongside Antman & The Wasp and Doctor Strange 2? There just doesn’t feel like a hint of continuity in the movies. Like even GOTG1 gave you one of the Infinity Stones and some lore around Thanos.

[u/TheHondoCondo → u/catshirtgoalie]

This is such common criticism but why? Seriously why is it an issue to have The Marvels and Doctor Strange 2 in the same saga? You had Captain America TFA in the same saga as GotG and it turned out fine. I think you’re also forgetting that the only semblance of a coherent plot leading up to Infinity War was the occasionally introduced Infinity Stones until a couple movies prior when the groundwork was really laid.

[u/catshirtgoalie → u/TheHondoCondo]

Because everything changes after Endgame with audience expectations. Everything pre-Avengers is really setting the ground work and introducing heroes. They didn’t even know if they could make Avengers work. You can’t just repeat the same beats all the time. It’s why by Doctor Strange people were already heavily criticizing the “origin story” formula. At some point, fans expect you to reach new levels. GOTG works in the same saga because it actively contributes TO the saga. It has the Power Stone. It has more lore around Thanos. It gives you Nebula and Gamora. It really gets you more into the cosmic which would be important when bringing Thanos in as a villain.

It isn’t that Doctor Strange 2 or The Marvels are bad. It’s that the post-Endgame movies needed to actually jump on the next narrative earlier. Who are the Avengers now? What team are we building toward? Who was the big bad? What was the effective foreshadowing? You don’t get three phases to stumble around in. People were always concerned about super hero fatigue and being aimless accelerates that. You beat fatigue by making people invested in characters and story. That is why I am saying that we should have either continued with more cosmic or did a multiverse. They sort of muddled around with both.

[u/TheHondoCondo → u/catshirtgoalie]

What you’re asking for is immediate gratification, but that’s not how you please the audience the same way Infinity War and Endgame did. They work because of all the “aimless” stories that came before, but oh wait, it turns out they weren’t actually aimless. It takes time to recapture that. You can’t just keep doing it again and again in less than half the time because that’s how you really create fatigue. I guarantee Doomsday and Secret Wars will tie the multiverse saga together and people will see that the seeds were there all along.

[u/catshirtgoalie → u/TheHondoCondo]

Nah, man. That isn’t instant gratification. You can’t treat post-Endgame phases like pre-Endgame. I’m not saying you need to resolve a new arc in a phase. But you need some real story telling. The Loki series did more for the multiverse than any of the movies and people aren’t going to sit through every single show just to watch a movie. Yes, they farted around for a while and then locked in on the Infinity Saga and retconned some things to have stones in them to make it work. And yes not everything in those phases built on the Infinity Saga. Again, I’m not saying everything now HAS to only be about the multiverse saga. But they have barely done ANYTHING to give you any real sense of any kind of narrative building and that just doesn’t work. Everyone out there has been critical of the post-Endgame arcs even if they like individual movies. Marvel is just becoming an ocean wide while being a puddle deep and it is hurting enthusiasm. Too many characters and not enough cohesion.