Client: Michelle Yeoh – Talent; Ronny Chieng – Talent
Marvel has dropped the first trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, alongside a brand new poster and official images.
The studio surprised Simu Liu, who stars as the titular hero in the upcoming MCU movie, with a "birthday present" in the form of the teaser trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which is due out in theaters on September 3. The trailer shows Liu in action as the Master of Kung Fu, confronting the past he thought he had left behind before getting drawn into the Ten Rings organization.
On Twitter, Liu also shared a teaser poster for Shang-Chi featuring his character suited up in costume. In the image, he sports a distinctive red and black outfit with a tactical design perfect for combat. He's pictured with his fists firmly clenched ready to take on any adversaries, including his father, Wenwu, the leader of the Ten Rings terrorist group.
Alongside the trailer and the poster, EW unveiled a batch of official stills for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, offering fans a closer look at the main cast, which features Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi's friend Katy and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen as Jiang Li, Meng'er Zhang as Xialing, Florian Munteanu as Razor Fist, and Ronny Chieng as Jon Jon.
One of the images depicts the movie's titular hero, who spent his early years training to become a skilled assassin under his father's strict tutelage, stepping out to carve his own story as a martial arts master. Liu said his character will be given the spotlight for the first time, following in the footsteps of other comic book characters that have made big screen debuts before him.
"His backstory has never been told before," Liu said. "We know so many different versions of Batman's origin story, how his parents were murdered when he was very young. We know Peter Parker, who was bitten by a radioactive spider, and he loses his uncle. Shang-Chi's story is very much unknown to most of the world, so we had a lot of freedom and creative liberty to make it the way that we wanted to."
Shang-Chi's backstory will no doubt reveal more about his complicated relationship with his father, who has "gone by many names" over the course of history, including "The Mandarin," one of Marvel Comics' most legendary supervillains. However, producer Jonathan Schwartz promises that the movie will deliver "a more complex and layered take on the character than that name would lead you to."
The martial arts epic will not only pack a punch with an emotional family drama running through its core, but also an elaborate sequence of highly choreographed fight scenes, which Schwartz recognizes as some of "the best action [Marvel has] ever done," explaining that, "every punch is meaningful, every fighting style is meaningful, and the story is told visually in such a great way."
Shang-Chi finished filming towards the end of last year after production briefly shut down due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Liu shared a powerful message to honor the wrap of production, noting in a private Facebook group that it would be "impossible for Hollywood to ignore us after this." The movie is set to hit theaters on September 3 after Black Widow took its original planned July release.