“You can't outrun who you really are.”

Refreshing, fun, artistically innovative, and surprisingly weighty for what we’ve come to expect from Marvel affair; Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is an impressive soiree into actual “film”-making from a universe that has offered us almost nothing more than cheap treats for the last 14-years.

Shang-Chi stands head and shoulders above everything else Marvel has created up to this point, and I hope they use it as a totem to build upon rather than a one-off stroke of genius. Though, while writing this after seeing No Way Home, I have my doubts.

From cinematography to score, Shang-Chi utilizes its source material, modern filmmaking techniques, and a uniquely creative vision to make something truly worth your time. With some excellent fight choreography and camerawork to enhance, many of the fights feel like something more out of John Wick than The Avengers. Though it still suffers from the atrocious visual-effects that we’ve seen from recent Disney outings like No Way Home, Black Widow, and The Mandalorian; Shang-Chi shines with moments of brilliance to showcase exactly the extent to which computer graphics can be utilized for these fantasy settings. I just wish their creative blades had been a little more evenly tempered and given a more stable visual experience instead of the extreme highs and lows offered by the film.

From a storytelling perspective, Shang-Chi doesn’t quite break out of its shiny, Marvel packaging, but it does certainly extend it. There are still moments of cliché and hand-holding editing in place of artistic and interpretive elements seen in more refined films but, by and large, Shang-Chi does an excellent job of telling a mostly meaningful narrative with mostly believable characters in a mostly believable world. As with almost all Marvel-types, the plot does hinge on a singular out of place story element that is neither explained nor justified by the end of the film but… what’re you gonna do? At least it wasn’t as bad as the storytelling in No Way Home.

I look forward to more efforts from this team and I hope that the allure of Disney-money and studio pressure doesn’t damage their creative vision for future projects. If you’ve even minorly enjoyed any of the popcorn-munching candy-films that Marvel has churned out before, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is going to absolutely blow your mind. If you didn’t like any of the things that have come before, this one is still good enough to give you hope for the future of lightweight cinema.

“If you aim at nothing, you hit nothing.”