Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is clearly a welcome return of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for moviegoers since it represents the first movie that came out during the pandemic that crossed $200 million domestically and continues to dominate at the box office.
But new insights about the creative process between a film’s individual director and how that person interacts with the larger Marvel Studios machine is coming to light, as The Direct reports.
For instance, it may seem that the Marvel characters from the extended universe of the film franchise that make brief cameos into the end credit scenes are perhaps set in stone way ahead of the movie they appear in, but a recent interview with Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton seems to indicate otherwise.
In the interview, Cretton explained that “You would think that more things came straight down from the top,” but that there was more creative influence as a director than he expected.
“You would think that more things came straight down from the top… We were like begging sometimes to [Marvel Studos] just tell us what. But it took a lot of us throwing out options…” he told Yahoo Entertainment.
With the Disney movies and Disney Plus Marvel shows now likely intertwining in unexpected ways, Cretton compared the MCU’s many moving parts as “a living organism.” However, while some suggestions were held onto for a bit, others Cretton proposed ended up being rejected after consideration.
The Marvel characters that did end up making appearances in the post-credit scene were Benedict Wong’s Wong from Doctor Strange, Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner as himself, shockingly, and not Professor Hulk.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is playing in theaters and arrives on Disney Plus on November 12th.