If you’re an actor, there are certain signs you’ve hit the big time. Sometimes it’s simply booking a meaningful part in a major motion picture, and obviously it’s a tremendous deal if you’ve scored the leading role. Kim’s Convenience star Simu Liu accomplished the latter when he was brought aboard for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, but getting to play a superhero brings more than just Hollywood prestige. It also means you’ll be depicted in toy form, and Liu had a dynamite response to seeing the LEGO figure of his Shang-Chi.
While it’s unclear if Simu Liu has been sent an actual LEGO Minifigure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Shang-Chi, at least he got to see how he’d look in LEGO form with the rest of us. Here’s what the actor had to say about the LEGO Twitter page sharing its recreation of the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings teaser poster.
That is some mighty fine hair for a LEGO Minifigure, though it pales in comparison to the real deal. Still, now Simu Liu can brag about how his likeness has been captured as a LEGO figure. It’s just one of the many perks of becoming an MCU superhero, with Shang-Chi being the first new leading protagonist of the MCU’s Phase 4, which kicked off on the movies side of things last week with Black Widow.
Shang-Chi has been part of Marvel Comics lore since 1973, and following a few video game appearances, he’s finally making the jump to live-action. While a Shang-Chi movie has been in development in one form or another since the early 2000s, the project now known as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has been in the works since late 2018. Simu Liu’s casting as the eponymous protagonist was announced at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, with Destin Daniel Cretton directing Legend of the Ten Rings and co-writing the script with David Callaham and Andrew Lanham.
Within the MCU continuity, Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi is the son of Tony Leung’s Wenwu, a.k.a. the real Mandarin, whose existence was revealed in the Marvel One-Shot All Hail the King following Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery making a mockery of the name in Iron Man 3. As the leader of the Ten Rings organization, Wenwu raised Shang-Chi to be one of the world’s greatest assassins, but he allowed his son 10 years to live the life of his choosing. Now Wenwu is demanding that Shang-Chi take his rightful place in the Ten Rings, but he wants nothing to do with his father’s criminal activities, leading to a clash for the ages.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings also includes Awkwafina, Michelle Yeoh, Fall Chen, Meng'er Zhang, Ronny Chieng and Florian Munteanu, and the most recent trailer revealed that we’ll also reunite with Wong and Abomination. The movie punches its way into theaters on September 3, and you can learn what else the MCU is sending to the big screen in our upcoming Marvel movies guide.
