Spider-Man and Shang-Chi Movie Reviews

Spider-Man: No Way Home

The third Spider-Man film in the shared Sony and Marvel Universe (MCU), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” goes deep into nostalgia, but wide with how the story wants to make you feel. It’s everything a fan of the wall crawler’s cinematic history will love and that’s more than enough to get people in seats.

In terms of audience cheer moments, it’s not as monumental as Avengers: Endgame, something it tries to be but falls just short of reaching. No Way Homes’ internal lows are there only to further the plot. They serve no other story function. While the confirmed Charlie Cox as Matt Murdoch/Dare Devil cameo is a nice moment for MCU fans of the Netflix series, his impact on the story is minimal. As is his reason for being in the story. There’s a lot of setup and little payoff for certain moments early on in the movie. When there is, the movie feels the need to make it a fan service moment than internally consistent with the characters.

That by far is the biggest gripe people will have with this film. The characters serve the plot and it’s blatantly obvious the characters are inconsistent at best, idiots at worse. While the screenwriters do acknowledge Spider-Man’s naivety, there is no story without him going to Doctor Strange for help. When all villains show up, it becomes a sitcom, complete with episodic character development for one villain that borders on lazy writing. His motivation is boiled down to reasons the writers made up to increase the conflict in the third act.

With all the problems the first half has with the goofy tone, the second gives the fans what they want and saves this movie from being completely unsalvageable. Without it, the film barely scurries by being worth a matinee ticket price, even with all the nostalgia moments and the best performances Tom Holland and Willem Dafoe have given thus far in these types of movies.

Rating: B+/A-

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Marvel Studio’s superhero origin of the master of martial arts, Shang Chi has the fight choreography of Winter Soldier with the heart of Black Panther. Yet by the end, despite the non-stop action of the climax, boredom will creep in as we’ve seen this all before.

The first origin story film of phase 4, "Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” retcons a controversial plot point of the Iron Man films regarding the Mandarin and the Ten Rings organization. The fix is ankle deep and introduces more questions than it does answer. Did the Mandarin know about the plan to capture Tony Stark and when did he disband the Ten Rings organization? At the very least it makes for a good “What if…” episode on the Disney+ streaming service.

The emotional core of Shang Chi comes from actor, Tony Leung who plays the Xu Wenwu /The Mandarin and also Shang Chi’s father. Unlike other MCU villains with similar tragic backstories—Thanos comes to mind—the villain’s motivation is understandable and performed with such humanity that questions of the moral and ethical ramifications don’t come into play as heavily as with someone like Thanos or even Loki in the Avenger’s tetralogy of films. Plus, it’s easier to relate to a human than a mad titan or a god, even if the latter is humanoid-looking. Even with someone like Killmonger from Black Panther, the animosity that he felt toward the world was justified, if a bit extreme. Wenwu’s character is extreme, but not justified. Yet it works because of Leung’s performance.

While the other actors like Simu Liu and Awkwafina are giving their all in the paving of a further path for Asian and Asian-American representation in Hollywood, Leung undoubtedly steals the show in every scene he’s in except for the opening subtitled prologue—which leans in hard on Marvel humor and makes the beginning of Wenwu and _____'s relationship more of a joke than something to be taken seriously. That said, unlike a DC movie with a similar opening info dump, Shang Chi adds culture and action to something that could've easily turned into Aquaman.

Rating: A-/A