Before the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings release, some observers were dialing expectations back. Black Widow had been something of a disappointment, the trailers were fine but not eye-popping, and there was a growing sense of superhero fatigue. But Destin Daniel Cretton and Simu Liu’s mystical martial arts caper ended up as a top-tier adventure and raised the bar for action choreography in the MCU.
Since then, Liu has been busy poking fun at all the haters who confidently predicted that Shang-Chi would be a critical and commercial failure. As the film exceeded box office predictions and picked up rave reviews, he spent time online calling people out.
Yesterday we learned that Liu and director Daniel Destin Cretton are back for a sequel, and he responded in the only way he knows how:
Alongside this announcement we also got confirmation that Cretton is working on a Disney Plus MCU series, though as yet there’s no confirmation whether it’s connected to Shang-Chi or not (Awkwafina x Ben Kingsley team-up please).
But Shang-Chi getting a sequel shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Kevin Feige seemed confident before release, saying:
“We certainly have many ideas of where to take [these characters] and where to put them. And as exactly as you say, what’s so fun, we know the movie’s working when it’s not just the title character that people ask about, but it is the co-stars or the supporting players that people ask about. And in this movie in particular, that’s heartening because we think they’re spectacular, and we think they have great potential in the future.”
The post-credits scene in Shang-Chi appeared to tease the hero as a component of team-up adventures to come and I’d love to see him meeting up with more of the MCU. Perhaps we could next see Shang-Chi battling vampires with Blade or even testing his fighting skills against similarly skilled MCU martial artists like Charlie Cox’s Daredevil?
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is now available to stream on Disney Plus.
