The Mandarin has a long and storied history in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, despite the fact that we haven’t actually met him yet, and won’t until Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings premieres exclusively in theaters on Sept. 3.
Jon Favreau and Kevin Feige initially toyed with introducing Tony Stark’s arch-nemesis in Iron Man, before the idea was dropped, but not before the Ten Rings were established as the outfit behind his capture. In the third installment, Shane Black pulled the rug out from under all of us with the Trevor Slattery twist, before One-Shot All Hail the King retconned things by establishing that a real Mandarin was out there all along.
In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Hong Kong cinema legend Tony Leung plays Wenwu, father to Simu Liu’s title character, who’s also known by his criminal alias of the Mandarin. In a new interview, Feige claimed that audiences aren’t ready for what the actor is bringing to the table.
“We talked about Simu, but also talking about Tony Leung, you mention the family aspect of the movie which I still don’t think people are quite ready for what Tony brings to this movie and what the relationship and how unique it is and how emotional this movie becomes.”
The footage we’ve seen so far has positioned Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as a heightened martial arts fantasy, and Leung is no stranger to getting his hands dirty onscreen—as evidenced by his roles in a string of classics, including Hard Boiled, Infernal Affairs, Hero, John Woo’s two-part epic Red Cliff, The Grandmaster, and more.
The 59 year-old is regarded as one of his country’s finest-ever talents. The prospect of him making his Hollywood blockbuster debut in a big budget comic book effort from the biggest and most successful franchise in the history of the business like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is incredibly exciting.