While Black Widow rewound the clock last month to show what Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff was up to between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, the next two entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s film slate are centered on new characters. November will introduce the Eternals, and early next month, we’ll meet Shang-Chi. There’s just a few more weeks to go until Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ theatrical release, the movie’s first clip has been released, and it sees Simu Liu’s Marvel character fighting in an especially dangerous environment.
Like his comic book counterpart, Simu Liu’s version of Shang-Chi was raised to be one of the world’s greatest fighters. But even he can only do so much when he’s being attacked on the side of a skyscraper. Take a look!
While it’s unclear how Shang-Chi and Awkwafina’s Katy ended up on edging their way around the side of that massive building, it doesn’t take long for them to be cornered by these assailants. To buy Katy some time, the martial arts extraordinaire fights his opponents on rickety scaffolding across multiple levels. He succeeds in knocking a few of them off, but the blows just keep coming, and eventually Shang-Chi ends up falling too. Fortunately he doesn’t plummet to his demise, but he’s not out of trouble yet.
We’ve seen snippets of this skyscraper fight in the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings trailers, and in the second of these previews, we learned that Shang-Chi’s father, Tony Leung’s Wenwu, a.k.a. the real Mandarin, sent the warriors, as he wanted to be proven right that they wouldn’t succeed in killing his son. So this particular conflict in the movie boils down to Wenwu wanting to see if Shang-Chi’s combat skills are still up to snuff. After all, it’d be a short movie if that fight ended with our main character decapitated or falling to his death.
After 10 years of living an independent life, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings follows its eponymous protagonist being drawn back into his father’s criminal organization, the Ten Rings. However, when Shang-Chi decides he doesn’t want to follow in Wenwu’s footsteps, this leads to an epic clash between father and son, along with plenty of other battles to look forward to. Shang-Chi’s cast also includes Michelle Yeoh, Meng'er Zhang, Fala Chen and Florian Munteanu, along with featuring the return of Abomination and Wong in cameo roles, respectively. Just Mercy’s Destin Daniel Cretton directed and co-wrote the script with David Callaham and Andrew Lanham.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hits theaters on September 3. Those of you looking further into the MCU’s future should look through our upcoming Marvel movies guide to learn what’s being primed for the big screen.
