After years of not prioritizing any voice or story other than white dudes, Marvel is now full steam ahead on the diversity express. Thanks to the success of Black Panther—and due in no small part to Ike Perlmutter’s control being loosened on the movie studio—they have greenlit a Black Widow movie and, now, they are developing a movie based on Shang-Chi, one of Marvel’s (few) Asian characters. This is a DEEP cut off the bench, but then, it’s not like there are a ton of options in the first place and Marvel TV blew their wad on a (sh-tty) adaptation of Iron Fist, which could have easily been updated for an Asian-American actor (but wasn’t). The movie will be written by Asian-American screenwriter David Callaham, who has written for the Expendables franchise (yikes), but also is a credited writer on Wonder Woman 1984 (yay). Marvel is also seeking an Asian-American director.
Shang-Chi is one of Jim Starlin’s characters, which means he’s pretty out there in terms of mythology. The short version is that he is a martial arts expert raised by a villain who decides to join the hero’s team when he learns his dad is a bad guy, and he has ill-defined magic powers relating to his chi (shades of Iron Fist), which give him some super strength and limited magical abilities. But basically, given how well known he isn’t, and the sheer ambiguous quality of his powers, he can kind of be anything on screen. There’s a lot of leeway. At the very least, this should be a kung fu movie with some good visual effects.
I’ve been getting mail lately questioning whether or not the increasing inclusion in the film industry results in a kind of reverse racism where only people who look like those characters can tell those stories. Like only black filmmakers can tell black stories, only women can tell women’s stories, only Asian filmmakers can tell Asian stories. The first step toward greater inclusion is just to let people tell their own stories. So yes, right now, it’s a lot of people making movies about their own experience, because up to this point, that has not even been a guaranteed outcome. Like five years—hell, THREE years ago—a Shang-Chi movie would be made by and starring white dudes and very few people would even blink.
So it’s a step in the right direction that this story is being told by Asian-American voices. And it will be sort of delicious if Shang-Chi ends up being everything Iron Fist wasn’t, because the lack of Asian-American involvement was a big part of Iron Fist’s bumbling attempts to make that character work. That probably won’t help the spiky relations between Marvel Studios and Marvel TV, but it is a kind of mulligan for the audience, giving us a do-over on a proper Asian superhero.
Lainey PS. Can we start playing the casting game now? I nominate Godfrey Gao – photo attached.
