Shang-Chi, the Mandarin and the Ten Rings, Explained by the History of Marvel

Marvel Studios triumphantly returned to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 to unveil project after project in its post-Endgame, Phase 4 series. Head of the movies and TV series was Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings, the MCU’s first film with a protagonist of Asian descent.

It’s a long road from comics to screen for this particular Marvel project. The publisher’s first attempts to make a Shang-Chi film date back to the 1980s, and Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings was originally released on February 12, 2021 to coincide with the first day of the Chinese New Year, but pandemic delays have shifted the release date three times.

But with the release of its first trailer, Disney looks confident that Destin Daniel Cretton (Short term 12directed movie – starring Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Tony Leung as his father, Wenwu, known as “the Mandarin” – will finally hit theaters on September 3, 2021.

You would think that you remember the Mandarin as the villain of Ysterman 3, and you may think you remember the Ten Rings terrorist network of Ysterman. But Shang-Chi offers a clear version of these threads from the Marvel Cinematic Universe tapestry. If you’ve never heard of Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu, we’re here to help.

Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images for Disney

Who’s Shang-Chi?

When kung fu rage came to America in the 1970s, Marvel Comics wanted to take part in the action. First, the company tried to Kung Fu TV series, but Warner, who owned DC at the time, turned it down. Marvel was more successful in acquiring the rights to the infamous pulp villain Fu Manchu, and in 1973 Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin created Shang-Chi as a way to establish Fu Manchu as a villain in the Marvel universe. . Shang would be a heroic young hero standing up to his criminal father.

In his childhood, which was spent studying martial arts, Shang thought his father was a humanitarian person. But in a meeting with Manchu’s nemesis, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, he learned the truth. During the ’70s and ’80s, Shang-Chi thwarted his father’s scheme and fought his siblings The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu. After reuniting with Sir Denis, he undertook several global adventures as an MI6 agent and later helped establish his own espionage agency, Freelance Restorations, Ltd. With the help of freelance agents, Shang finally saw Fu Manchu die, after which he retired and decided. to lead a simple life.

It did not last long. Over the years, Shang-Chi would once again become an MI6 agent, fight his resurrected father, leave the espionage game altogether, and join the new Heroes for Hire. Later, he would become a member of the Secret Avengers and had the task of preventing the Shadow Council from reviving his father, which resulted in the villain’s permanent death. During his time with the Avengers, Shang learned that his father was not actually Fu Manchu, but an old wizard named Zheng Zu who took the Manchu identity. (In other words, Marvel lost the Fu Manchu rights.)

In recent years, Shang-Chi has worn many hats. He became a member of the main Avengers team just for fun, chatting with the X-Men character Domino and at one point gaining the power to create copies of himself after being exposed to cosmic radiation. Along with several other Asian heroes, such as me. Marvel and Silk, he became a member of the hero team, the Protectors. Along with Amadeus Cho, Silk, White Fox, Jimmy Woo and many more, he joined a new Asian team of Marvel superheroes in Greg Pak and Nico Leon New agents of Atlas – and got his own solo miniseries from Gene Luen Yang and Dike Ruan – and another earlier this year.

Shang-Chi will fight the Mandarin

In his solo film, Shang-Chi goes against his own father, Wenwu / the Mandarin, played by Hong Kong cinema legend Tony Leung.

The Mandarin made its comics debut in the 1964s Tales of Suspense # 50, the work of Stan Lee and Don Heck. The Mandarin was born shortly before the communist revolution on the Chinese mainland and grew up on science and fighting – and that was all before he found the crashing ship of a dead alien dragon (seriously) known as a Makluan. By studying Makluan science, he learned how to use ten powerful rings from the ship.

Marvel Comics

In his supervillain career, the Mandarin tried several times to conquer the world, becoming Iron Man’s most famous enemy after repeatedly trying to use Tony Stark’s technology to further his goals. From the same orientalist stock as Fu Manchu, China and Chinese have involved history – or a misconception of culture – in several of its storylines. He had a castle in China and a giant dragon named Fin Fang Foom under his command. Once, the Mandarin was cursed with dragon claws for hands after refusing to return his Rings to the eight alien dragons they originally possessed.

Is not the Mandarin false?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has used only the Mandarin and the Ten Rings – which are not literal gems in the movies, but a terrorist network. In the very first MCU movie, Ysterman, the Ten Rings collaborated with Obadiah Stane to kidnap Tony Stark. Ysterman 3 committed controversy with updating the non-outdated comic book villain; Ben Kingsley apparently plays the role, only to reveal that he actually plays Trevor Slattery, an actor hired to pretend to be the Mandarin on the whims of the true villain, Guy Pearce,’s Aldrich Killian. It seemed like the MCU version of the Mandarin was a mere fiction.

Marvel Studios

But at the end of the Marvel One-Shot Everyone greets the king, a member of the Ten Rings broke Trevor out of jail and told him that the real Mandarin wanted to talk to him. From the sound of things, he does not seem to rejoice over a pretense that harms his reputation.

It was also not the last time we saw the ten rings, thanks to a removed scene in 2015 Ant-Man. When Dardie Cross of the movie tries to sell his Yellowjacket armor, a Ten Rings member with a barely hidden tattoo is present at the time of purchase. Neither the Mandarin nor the Ten Rings have been in another movie since.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said one of the purposes of the Everyone greets the king was short to determine the possibility that a more cartoon-accurate version of the iconic villain does exist in the MCU. Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings confirm this. But exactly what the legend of the Mandarin is, will have to wait for when Shang-Chi hits in the fall of 2021.