◎ Dong Ming
"This is the origin of a new superhero, and there is no image of Fu Manchu in the early comics who is suspected of insulting and racism." Although Marvel Studios President Kevin Feizi personally clarified, it could not stop "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" from still encountering doubts, and the Douban score has fallen to 6.3, far below the 92% freshness and 98% popcorn index on Rotten Tomatoes. For a Hollywood film designed to portray Asian superheroes, filled with a lot of oriental elements, the cultural misalignment behind this apparent gap is particularly subtle.
From a business point of view, "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" is undoubtedly a success, the current North American box office of 224 million US dollars temporarily ranked the local champion in 2021, even if it does not count the Chinese mainland market, its global revenue has reached 430 million US dollars, sweeping away the credibility crisis caused by the "courtyard network synchronization" release of "Black Widow". Disney and Marvel executives breathed a sigh of relief, creating an Asian super-British move is the right move, just as at the end of the film, Benedit Wang "draws a circle" to find Shangqi, this passerby Chinese guy is about to join the "Avengers" circle of friends, in the fourth stage of Marvel to contribute their "Chinese martial arts" and standard Mandarin.
The film uses a lot of Mandarin dialogue, and Marvel's concept of creating a "multicultural" for the "multiverse" is understandable, but in the eyes of many Chinese audiences, the flattering posture of "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" still has a strong "Zuo Zongtang chicken" flavor. The specious scene of Chinese elements piled up and Chinese and English mixed at any time is a "live-action version of "Kung Fu Panda"" to say, which is seriously "cultural appropriation", and still has not gotten rid of the curiosity-style Western perspective. This also triggered a series of thoughts when watching the film: Who is this film for? Is this a consumption of Chinese (Asian) culture, or a tribute?
If you look at the list of casters in the film, you will find an interesting detail: the English name of the male protagonist Liu Simu is Simu Liu; but the heroine Okafina uses the stage name Awkwafina, who broke into Hollywood and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, instead of her own Chinese name, Lin Jiazhen. Liu Simu is a first-generation immigrant born in Harbin, and Okafina is a Chinese-Korean mixed race who has lived in the United States for three generations, and the two young people in the film are just doing hotel parking jobs in the United States, which is actually "out of the blue" in the eyes of Asian families who have always attached importance to education. At the same time, Katie called Zhou Caiqin "Grandma" at home, and the first time she met Liang Chaowei, she was asked, "What is your Chinese name?" They all emphasize their "roots" in family and culture at all times, and even if they live in the West, they cannot forget their roots, which is very familiar to many overseas Chinese. And they may be the core audience of this film.
When it comes to the image of "Shangqi", his "roots" unfortunately carry a historical "stain". In the early years, Marvel creators did not seek to understand, in 1973, when drawing Shangqi, they just wanted to rub the heat of Bruce Lee, and randomly grabbed an "Oriental celebrity" to make him a father, whether it was Fu Manchu, Mandarin or Zheng Zu, all with the historical traces and stereotypes of "exclusion of Chinese" and "insulting China" in the American social and cultural circles, and when Marvel Comics restarted Shangqi in 2000, they could only rely on the younger generation of Asian authors to modify the settings and turn him into a new immigrant who actively integrated into modern society. In the movie, it is even more tireless to dissipate negative traces, first the "Wenwu" played by Liang Chaowei personally denies the Western planting of his own booty, and then the "false Mandarin" played by Ben Kingsley has completely become a funny clown, and the image of greed and fear of death sets off the sentient and righteous orientals.
This is reminiscent of "Mulan", which belongs to the same Disney and is also based on Chinese culture, even if there is an animation IP and Jet Li, Zhen Zidan, Gong Li pressed the front, in China, it still suffered a word-of-mouth and box office lose-lose, and the scenes in the film where "concubines walking at the door of the main hall" make people laugh off their teeth. In contrast, the characters are overhead, and "Shangqi", which has more original components, has less of a historical and cultural drag, and not many people will be more realistic about the armor costumes in the film, the immortal beasts and architectural styles in "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", but the theme of "killing the father" that is hard to stuff is still far-fetched, even if Liang Chaowei's appearance and acting skills are escorted, it is inevitable to feel blunt.
In order to avoid offense as much as possible, Feige once said in an interview that WenWu, like Loki and Thanos, is a "villain who can make people understand and empathize." Sure enough, under the interpretation of Liang Chaowei, this old monster with a thousand years of life expectancy is like a "loving wife and father", in order to live with Chen Fara, he can retire to the jianghu, in order to see his dead wife again, he can break the boundary, this infatuation, and the shangqi who has not really talked about love is of course not very understanding.
Marvel's caution in this "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" can be seen everywhere, cautiously dealing with every Asian character, even if it is a villain and a supporting role, it also sets up a plausible reason for them, as the protagonist's Shangqi, but more like an "escapee", and the dialogue that finally dissuades the father seems empty and bottomless.
In fact, Shangqi did not "convince" his father in the end, but "subdued" his father. Fathers such as Wen Wu have a certain universality in traditional Asian culture, and some people are stubborn, a bit patriarchal, not good at communicating with their children, even if they are sacrificed, they only look at their sons and will not open their mouths to say the "love" of Americans. In the great battle between father and son, his greatest relief was to finally see that his son's martial arts surpassed his own, and he took over the ten rings one by one, which made him smile at Jiuquan. Also in the real world, even if the parents of the previous generation of immigrants want their children to go to the Ivy League, become lawyers or doctors, if they really break through a little fame in the show business like Liu Simu, they are also praised and proud in their hearts.
As for the film's special effects scenes and action design, this is the strength of the Marvel Universe, director Destin Creighton is not well known, but with the strong Hollywood industrial system and the support of Brad Allen and other members of the family class, several climactic scenes can be handled decently. However, from an aesthetic point of view, it is still inevitable that there is some "Chinatown" flavor, especially the "Tarot (Da Luo) Village" that exists as a paradise, which is the same as the Asian cultural smorgasbord in Disney's animation "Dragon Quest".
And Liang Chaowei's skill, without the concentration style in "A Generation of Grandmasters", can only be regarded as a dazzling fight, and Chen Fara's bamboo forest "double dance", it seems to be using the "Kung Fu Panda" camera scheduling to pay tribute to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". And the old Yang Ziqiong, Yuanhua, and the familiar carriage fight are reminiscent of the former Hong Kong kung fu films, and finally the climax of the Oriental Dragon vs. the Western Dragon, which can also be regarded as the greatest appease for the Asian audience, but looking back, no matter how powerful the superhero, finally did not run to the American city, living a daily life of drinking coffee and parking.