Marvel’s upcoming film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings recently had its final trailer dropped prior to its September release date and fans quickly noticed some familiar faces.
Alongside the newly introduced Shang-Chi character to be played by Simo Liu, in the trailer’s final moments, there seemed to be two returning characters facing off despite being from completely different films prior. In the scene, Dr. Strange’s sidekick Wong takes on none other than The Abomination, a Marvel villain who hasn’t appeared on the big screen since The Incredible Hulk in 2008.
Both of these cameos were confirmed by Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes where he clarified what people thought they had seen in the trailer.
“Yes, we just recently released the final trailer for Shang-Chi,” Feige said to Rotten Tomatoes. “Some fans said, ‘This looks like a character they hadn’t seen in many years named The Abomination, fighting a character that looks like Wong. And I can say the reason it looks like that is because that is Abomination fighting Wong.”
Continuing in his interview, Feige explained that bringing back characters from past Marvel films is one of his favorite things he gets to do working on the expansive MCU. Alongside the return of these characters, Shang-Chi will see Marvel reintroduce comic-book villain The Mandarin into the MCU after using his character as a decoy in Iron Man 3. Feige explains that isn’t the only tie-in that the upcoming Shang-Chi film will have to the MCU, with the earliest links established in the very first Iron Man film.
“The Ten Rings being the organization that kidnapped Tony Stark at the very beginning of Iron Man one. And that organization was inspired by a character called the Mandarin in the comics,” Feige said. “We’ve been talking about that when we do bring this character to the screen, [we] only wanted to do it when we felt we could do it supreme justice and really showcase the complexity of this character, which frankly we couldn’t do in an Iron Man movie because an Iron Man movie is about Iron Man; an Iron Man movie is about Tony Stark.”
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is slated to release on September 3rd and we’ll be sure to have more answers on how these unlikely characters ended up together then.
