In 2018, "Black Panther" landed in theaters and grossed $1 billion worldwide, bringing the first Oscar to Marvel Studios. Its impact is not just money and awards. Sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, author of "Film Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism," said: "There has always been a stereotype in Hollywood that black films cannot be sold internationally. And "Black Panther," which was filmed mainly by the black team, sends a message that people have a huge desire for black stories. ”
Now, Marvel hopes to leave a similar cultural footprint through its first Asian superhero movie, Shang-Chiand the Legend of the Ten Rings. The film has already ushered in a hit, with a North American box office of $90 million in four days of release, and a total of $146.2 million in the worldwide box office. Not only did the film break the record for a labor day weekend premiere, but it also exceeded expectations at a time when the epidemic in the United States was rearing its head again.
The success of "Shangqi" in the first game is inseparable from the support of Asian audiences: Asian markets such as San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Honolulu have performed exceptionally well, and the current media evaluation company's analysis shows that Asian audience attendance is 18%, which is twice the average of Marvel movies or more. In many parts of California, Asian-American merchants and non-profit organizations have invited the community to enjoy the film, which is half in Mandarin.
Pictured: Stills of "Shangqi"
Directed by Asian-American director Destin Daniel Cretton, Shangqi begins centuries ago with 10 magic bracelets that give the warlord Xu Wenwu (Liang Chaowei) nearly a thousand years of power. His love for Jiang Li (Chen Fara) makes him decide to get rid of his past life, but after the death of his wife, he is once again obsessed with revenge and power. This is where the story of Wen Wu's son Shang Qi (Liu Simu) begins: he was originally in San Francisco, parking valet during the day, singing karaoke at night, and having a lot of fun, but after a fight on the bus, he began to realize that he would fight his father to save his sister (Zhang Meng'er).
Compared with the characters who first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1973, the movie "Shangqi" has been transformed, including the transformation of the original "Shangqi" that does nothing but kung fu to be more delicate and modern, and completely cut the racist stereotype of Fu Manchu in the original comic, and the film only retains the complex emotional flow between father and son.
"Shangqi" is looking for its own Asian identity in the mainstream superhero universe, and the film's creators are the same. From Liu Simu, who immigrated from Harbin to Canada at the age of 5, to Chen Fara, who moved to the United States from Chengdu at the age of 14, from Zhang Meng'er, who quit "Happy Girl" to study abroad, to Liang Chaowei, who debuted in Hollywood for the first time in nearly 40 years and starred as a supervillain, everyone has experienced the switch of identity and role, which is a unique superhero story, but it is also the story of many ordinary people.
Fu Manchu? inexistent
In 2019, when "Shangqi" officially announced Liu Simu as the male protagonist, he got a stack of comic books for research, and the first advice given to him by the filmmakers was: there is no need to look too carefully.
That's because Marvel is basically free to create a superhero story that belongs to 2021, and the original comic has been basically abandoned.
The character first appeared in the 1973 comic book Marvel Special Edition no. 15, a series of comics called Master of Kung Fu. In this work, Shang Qi is portrayed as a martial arts master who is proficient in various genres of Chinese martial arts.
Illustration: Early Shangqi manga.
The racist overtones of this comic are extremely strong. The characters spend most of their time bare-chested and barefoot, gushing clichés like fortune cookies in blunt English. There is also the problem of coloring. Comics at the time could only produce specific shades with a limited mix of colors, so Asian characters had orange hues that were impossible for normal humans.
Even more serious is the issue of the ethnicity of the characters. In an interview with CNN this year, the two creators recalled that Marvel executives insisted that the character be half white, so Shangqi's mother was a white American woman. And his father must be Marvel's existing intellectual property — in this case, since Marvel owns the rights to the character of Fu Manchu, the father of ShangQi must also be served by him.
Fu Manchu was created by the British writer Sax Rohmer in the early 20th century, when the "Yellow Peril" prevailed in Europe and the United States. The Yellow Peril is an ultra-nationalist theory of Asian nations, especially China and Japan, in Europe and the United States, and its core connotation is that the yellow people coming to Western society is a threat to the white race.
Illustration: Early image of Fu Manchu.
Fu Manchu is considered to be an anthropomorphic manifestation of the Yellow Peril theory. The character itself has a strong racial color, he is dressed in a costume similar to the official clothes of the Qing Dynasty, with two long beards, narrow eyes and a treacherous face. But he was an intellectually superior, with phDs from top universities, proficient in the world's Chinese and Eastern occult arts, and an evil genius whose only ambition in life was to conquer the West.
In the Shangqi series of comics, the story relies more on the villain Fu Manchu than on the protagonist to promote. It was clear that the character existed to revere his martial arts to white audiences, and when kung fu was no longer popular in American culture, the role was no longer popular. Marvel stopped the comic in 1983.
When deciding to shoot the "Shangqi" movie, Marvel's first decision was to abandon Fu Manchu. Screenwriter David Callaham said there was little negotiable, "there are a billion reasons for abandoning Fu Manchu." ”
In its place is Xu Wenwu, perhaps one of the most delicate and sympathetic villains portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In many ways, asking Liang Chaowei to come out of the mountain to perform this movie is a signal to everyone: no matter what form it takes, Fu Manchu will not appear in this movie. Writer Wang Lanzhi said, "I can't imagine Liang Chaowei being the embodiment of Fu Manchu's kind of character, which is impossible from a human point of view, because he has entered the annals of film history." ”
Asian men who are not sexy and Asian women who are overly sexy, neither are they here
Photo note: The new version of Shangqi Manga in 2021.
The "Shangqi" comic series has been out of the box for 40 years, until 2020, when an all-Asian creative team finally launched a new series, team members including Eisner Award winner and cartoon writer Gene Luen Yang, now "Shangqi" was born in China, packing boxes of sesame balls and pineapple buns in a bakery in San Francisco's Chinatown until he was recruited to save his estranged sister and escape from evil life. Fu Manchu has naturally been abandoned, and his current father role is called Zheng Zu.
Comics are evolving, and so are movies. The producers are so aware of the prejudices they face that they even make a list of Hollywood stereotypes of Asians in hopes of dispelling those stereotypes.
Clayton of Shangqi, who is half-Japanese, said, "I grew up in Hawaii, all my friends are Asian-American or Pacific Islander mixed-race, and I hope that the characters in Shangqi will remind me of my own friends." ”
Clayton is determined to show more humanity in the film, breaking through the prejudice that Asian men are not humorous or sexy.
"Men in Southeast Asia and East Asia are completely castrated," said Daniel York Loh, a British East Asian actor and writer. "When you watch Western TV, you think Asian men are genderless. Asian male characters are often portrayed as negative nerds or evil villains, which are destructive stereotypes. ”
In addition, most of the Asian men in film and television works are also very boring. Clayton said, "We wanted to find a new image that would break with the old-school Asian kung fu actors." Many people think that Asians are not only not humorous, but also often become the object of ridicule in Western movies. It was with this in mind that the dialogue between Shang Qi and his Asian friend Katie (played by Okafina) was amusing, and the laughter in the movie theater was continuous.
At the same time, the producers are well aware of the stereotypes of Asian women — either submissive and vulnerable, like Madame Butterfly, whose sole purpose is to please white male protagonists, or the so-called scorpion beauties, who use their beauty and sensuality to manipulate others. In this film, the audience can see the subversive feminist image.
Abandoning the Asian image from a white perspective, the film also incorporates real and reliable Scenes of Chinese life.
It's quite shocking to see a Marvel movie that opens with a voiceover in standard Mandarin and lasts for a long time. According to Clayton, language choice "is always rooted in the logic of the character and who will naturally speak what language." ”
"When we get into any scene, there's a constant discussion: Should these characters speak Mandarin or English now? What meals are on the table? Is this true for the Wenwu family? Does that feel real to a Chinese-American family like Katie? Clayton said. It's interesting because we're sharing our own shared experiences: Simu will share his family up in Canada, Leung Chao-wai will continue to share his experiences in Hong Kong; Zhang Meng'er is from Chinese mainland. So everyone has their own shared experience, and they contribute to the authenticity of this film. ”
Shangqi is also inspired by Asian cinema and art. The bamboo forest scene is similar to the bamboo forest in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the fight on the bamboo scaffolding seems to be borrowed directly from a Hong Kong kung fu movie. Clayton said, "The factors that influenced this film came from classic Chinese martial arts and kung fu movies. There is also the influence of cartoons. There is also the influence of video games. Our films draw inspiration from Asian cinema and Asian art. ”
Simu Liu: A new superhero
The "Shangqi" movie is rebuilding its identity, and the protagonist Liu Simu is the same.
Liu Simu's childhood photo
Liu Simu was born in Harbin in 1989 and lived there until he was nearly five years old. And then on a seemingly normal morning..." A stranger appeared at the door and said to me, 'Hey, Simu, I'm your dad,'" he said. "So I had to say goodbye to my grandparents, who were the only parents I knew, and then I started a whole new life in Canada."
Liu Simu later understood that shortly after his birth, his parents were given the opportunity to go to graduate school at Queen's University in Canada, so they decided to establish themselves in a foreign country first. His name illustrates this separation. "They knew I would grow up without my parents," he said, "and I would miss them forever, and they would miss me forever." ”
For many years, Liu Simu has always had a sense of dislocation. He thinks his single eyelid is ugly. He felt that the Chinese lunch he brought was incompatible with the classmates. He started getting angry with his parents because they didn't give him a "white name." At the age of 19 he began working at Hollister. "The typical Hollister clerk is blonde, blue-eyed, six-pack abs, and I have six-pack abs, but I don't have anything else," he said.
His parents were aeronautical engineers and wanted him to do professional work. He went to business school, got an accounting job at Deloitte, and was fired within 8 months. He decided to try acting. His parents were upset. For the next two years, he barely spoke to them and his career stagnated. He can only earn extra money by performing at the children's birthday party. "I would dress up as Spider-Man, but there was one condition for the job: I had to wear a mask because I was Asian and Spider-Man wasn't Asian."
Although his main achievement over the years was to make a five-season Netflix series, Kim's Convenience, somehow, Liu always thought he had a chance to become an Asian superhero. He even paid for his own money to direct, write and star in two superhero parodies.
In 2018, he jokingly posted on Twitter mentioning the official Marvel account saying, "Hey Marvel, do we really want to talk about it, and put it on the hashtag of "#尚气" hashtag.
Liu Simu tweeted
A year later, he really became Marvel's first Asian-American superhero. Liu Simu also said that he forgot the tweet (he tweeted too much every day) and did not think about it until the news that he had been officially announced to be the protagonist was turned around on Twitter.
"Did the Marvel staff really read that tweet?" I don't think so. But I think there's power in allowing yourself to express yourself that you want to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe," he said.
Liu Simu also found common ground in himself and his characters. "I'm the one who's struggled with my identity all my life, and I'm the kind of person who always feels like I'm not doing enough or not being good enough, and that's the core of shangqi character," he said.
Enter a real world
There is a lack of Asians in Hollywood, and Asians rarely see faces that look similar to themselves on the big screen when they grow up.
According to a report by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California, of the 1,300 highest-grossing films between 2007 and 2019, only 44 were starring or co-starring asian-American actors, and of those 44, 14 were starring Dwayne Johnson (whose mother was from the Pacific island of American Samoa). Meanwhile, a quarter of the Asian-American characters in these films died at the end of the film.
Liu Simu has been outspoken that Asians need to be brave enough to tell their stories. "My parents never liked to talk about the experience of coming here. In a way, if we don't fight for these stories, they disappear in time because white people don't write these stories for us. So in a lot of ways, I feel it's our responsibility to document what's happening in our world and our community. ”
If you want to see Shangqi in a movie theater, you only have a month and a half. Shangqi will be played on Disney Plus 45 days after its release at no additional cost.
Source: New York Chinese Information Network
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