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“Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings”!

Last night’s Marvel presentation at San Diego Comic-Con included a lot of fancy title reveals – and really long titles at that. Shang-Chi was no exception, as it was graced with the subtitle: “Legend of the Ten Rings”, a moniker packed with meaning. Let’s dive into it.

Okay, so the Ten Rings are a shadowy terrorist organization in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, something that has only ever been glimpsed from the sidelines. They are supposedly commanded by a character known as The Mandarin, who was the focal point of a very unpopular Iron Man 3 plot twist, in which The Mandarin was revealed to be a random guy named Trevor Slattery, who was basically just a front for a different organization entirely. But, thankfully, there was still a loophole: turns out, The Mandarin does exist, according to the oft-forgotten one-shot All Hail The King, in which Slattery was abducted from the prison by Ten Rings agents and forced to give his name back to the man he had stolen it from – The Mandarin himself. While we never saw the criminal mastermind onscreen, his presence has lurked in the dark sidelines of the MCU. His arch-nemesis, Tony Stark, is now obviously unable to face off against him (being, you know, dead and all), but it looks like The Mandarin won’t be getting off the hook just yet.

That’s right – the Ten Rings, who haven’t been seen since a cameo in the first Ant-Man movie, are returning to wreak havoc in Phase 4 of the MCU. And this time, it’s one of their own who will have to stop them and their nefarious plots: Shang-Chi, who, at least in comics lore, is the heroic son of The Mandarin, will be the star of the upcoming film Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, to be released on February 12th, 2021. While there was no official confirmation that the film would be following the comics in that regard, we do have casting for both roles.

Shang-Chi himself will be portrayed by Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu, in one of the night’s biggest surprise announcements. It’s no wonder, though, that nobody had even a hint of this story going into the panel – Liu only screen-tested for the role last Sunday, and was cast on Tuesday. I don’t know him from anything, but his enthusiasm is unquestionable, so I think we’re in pretty good hands – whether those hands are the “Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu”, as the character was known in the comics, remains to be seen.

As for The Mandarin, he will be portrayed by an Asian actor as well: Chinese screen legend Tony Leung, in fact. Again, I am unfamiliar with most of his work, but he definitely looks imposing – I can’t wait to see how he plays the character: will he be a suave mob-boss or a sinister villain? The Mandarin has been built up so much – I really hope he doesn’t disappoint.

And, in one final bit of casting news that nobody anticipated, Asian comedian Awkwafina, star of Crazy Rich Asians and The Farewell, will be the film’s female lead, though her role is still unnamed as of yet. As a fan of Awkwafina, I’m very excited to see what she can do with this role, and whether it will be comedic or more dramatic. It would be cool to see her as a warrior or gangster: it’s even possible that she’ll be playing Shang-Chi’s villainous sister, Zheng Bao Yu.

How do you feel about this cast? Do you like the premise? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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“Eternals” Cast!

If there was one Marvel project that we knew virtually nothing about going into San Diego Comic Con, it was Eternals – Chloe Zhao’s upcoming movie about immortal alien gods trying to protect the earth from other alien gods called Deviants. This was all partially due to the fact that nobody really knew anything about the Eternals comics (not surprising, considering they haven’t been in print for quite some time), and because there were a whole bunch of rumors about the film that ended up becoming huge headlines from various media outlets, headlines which eventually turned out to be untrue (or, at least, haven’t been confirmed yet).

One such rumor, for instance, was that Marvel’s first openly gay character would be one of three male stars in the film, and would most likely be the Greek God Hercules. Well, last night, four of the male stars of Eternals came onstage – and not one of them was playing Hercules. There’s still a lot of speculation, though, because…well, there’s a lot of chaos going on. First of all, Richard Madden was confirmed to be playing one of the main Eternals, Ikaris – we kind of knew or guessed that already. But the trades have all been reporting that Ikaris was going to be most definitely straight, and in a romantic relationship with the character of Sersi, believed to be played by Angelina Jolie. Last night, though, not only was it revealed that Angelina Jolie is playing a completely different character named Thena – it was also notable that nobody was confirmed to play Sersi. As of this writing, there is no Sersi in Eternals: arguably the only character from this film that even comic-book readers might have a chance at recognizing – isn’t there. So, yeah, in her absence, it’s entirely possible that Ikaris is the film’s gay character – and there’s been lots of (still unconfirmed) speculation that Richard Madden himself is gay, so who knows?

Obviously, the big news was that Jolie would not be playing Sersi, the enchantress and fun-loving witch: personally, that makes me very happy, because the character of Sersi absolutely 100% needs to be played by comedian Jameela Jamil. Oh yeah, and while Jolie takes on the role of the warrior Thena, the actress previously reported for that role, Salma Hayek, will actually be playing Ajak, the leader of the Eternals. But there were many other surprises:

Makkari, the super-speedy Eternal based on the Roman god Mercury, will not be played by Pakistani comedian Kumail Nanjiani – instead, she will be portrayed by Lauren Ridloff, becoming the first deaf superhero in the MCU. The addition of Ridloff to the cast is a welcome surprise. Meanwhile, Nanjiani will be playing master swordsman Kingo, a character I’ve never even heard of before.

Millie Bobby Brown, long speculated to have a starring role in this movie – is not in this movie. The role she was supposedly eyeing, that of the teenage character Sprite or Piper, is instead going to child actress Lia McHugh. So we can finally let the Stranger Things actress take a break from reporters constantly pestering her about when she’s joining Marvel.

Brian Tyree Henry will take on the role of genius weapons-maker and inventor Phastos, in a surprise announcement. There was talk of Phastos being in the movie, but no indication that he would be a star. And, lastly, Asian star Don Lee will be the indomitable god Gilgamesh – a character so powerful that Lee even challenged Marvel’s Hulk, Mark Ruffalo, to a challenge.

Possibly the biggest shock is that this is the full cast: previous reports had stated that there would be no less than five female leads and three male leads – currently, we have four female and four male, perfectly balanced, as all things should be. But this is certainly a downsized version of the cast initially reported early this year, which included characters like Druig, Sersi, a “female archaeologist”, Hercules, Elysius, and Zuras. Whether they’ll be in the film, or simply remain to be cast, is still unknown. But one thing is for certain: despite the fact that a lot was cleared up at last night’s Eternals panel – it’s still just as confusing!

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“Black Widow” Is A Prequel!

Marvel Studios has officially begun its conquest of the next few years of cinema and culture, with an absolutely outstanding array of new films and TV shows being revealed at San Diego Comic-Con – the entire world responded accordingly, pushing Avengers: Endgame past its box-office competitor Avatar to make it the highest-grossing film of all time, while also managing to dominate social media, with all of Twitter’s top ten trends being Marvel-related, from Kate Bishop to Thor: Love And Thunder. Marvel has also given me quite the headache, giving me endless topics to discuss for the next few days, or possibly weeks – and discuss we shall, starting with the first film to be released next year (but the last film to be announced by Marvel president Kevin Feige at tonight’s showstopper presentation).

Black Widow, officially confirmed for a May 1st, 2020 release date, with David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, Florence Pugh and O.T. Fagbenle set to star alongside Scarlett Johansson’s KGB assassin in what will be a semi-prequel movie set in between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, during a time in which Black Widow was a fugitive from her own government: it was not revealed whether or not Captain America, Falcon or Winter Soldier would be in the film. It appears that large parts of the movie will be set in the fabled city of Budapest, though it is still unclear whether the events depicted there are flashbacks to the battle of Budapest referenced by Black Widow and Hawkeye in The Avengers – and Jeremy Renner was not among the cast members revealed for the film, so there’s a possibility Hawkeye isn’t even in it. Footage from the upcoming film was shown to a cheering crowd (who all received Black Widow hats afterward): the brief sizzle-reel showed Black Widow fighting Florence Pugh’s character, confirmed to be Widow’s antihero nemesis and “sister-figure”, Yelena Belova – called it! – before moving on to an intense brawl with the film’s main villain, Taskmaster, seen sporting his iconic shield: still no word on who will be playing that character, but we do know that David Harbour will portray a man named Alexi – in other words, Harbour will not be playing her father, Ivan, as was previously believed by many theorists. I’m still holding onto hope that my theory about Widow’s father being the Eternal, Ivan Druig, is correct. Eternals had its fair share of surprises during their opening presentation, but we’ll talk about that in a separate post. It was also confirmed that Fagbenle’s character “has feelings for” Black Widow, which is interesting. It wasn’t said whether she reciprocated his affections, or not.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to cover the rest of the SDCC reveals tomorrow morning – Black Widow happened to be the least eventful of Marvel’s many panels, so it was easy to talk about all the basics. Stay tuned for discussion of Lady Thor, the Multiverse, Kate Bishop, Eternals casting and more!

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“The Witcher” First Trailer!

Firstly, let me preface this post by apologizing for my delay: I’m more than an hour late by now, due to not being able to get home fast enough. Destiny has arrived, so have I, and so has the first teaser trailer for The Witcher on Netflix!

My first impressions are a mix of chaos and confusion: I’ve never read the books or played the video games that this series will be based on, so I have almost no idea what the plot is – I am slightly familiar with the main characters like Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and Ciri (Freya Allen), mostly because I watch a lot of videos by BookTubers who are devoted fans of The Witcher series: specifically Elliot Brooks – go check out her channel, it’s great.

But for right now, until she publishes her own review of the trailer, which will undoubtedly be far more intelligent than mine, I must work from what I know: very little. Okay, let’s dive in. Let’s see, we’ve got Elves, beautiful dark-skinned Elves for a change, and we get a tantalizing glimpse of the paradise they created long ago in this strange world, known as The Continent. These Elves were sorcerers, and taught the arts of chaos magic to humans – only to have the humans rise up against them and massacre them. From what I gather, that is a core theme of the series, both in book format and TV – humans are horrible, despicable creatures, little better than the monsters that populate their myths and dark imaginings. This trailer shows off just how wicked people can be, through some montages of them killing people…wait a second, for a moment there I thought this was Game of Thrones.

Netflix wants this to be Game of Thrones for a new audience dissatisfied with how that show ended, and so they’ve gone to elaborate lengths to make sure this show looks incredible. The production values are insane – beautiful costumes, realistic CGI, and mostly good wigs (there was a lot of worry about that last point, after Henry Cavill had shared a picture of himself wearing one depressingly-cheap set of platinum extensions). The only thing that indicates this show has to work on a somewhat smaller budget than your average movie studio is the general absence of top-notch talent – Cavill is the biggest star by far, and his co-stars are virtually unknown actresses. But thankfully, they do a pretty good job, in this trailer at least, of being mysteriously magical. Magic is one of the trailer’s big attractions, in my opinion: it’s always been an element that fantasy films and TV shows are wary of, because it can easily look and feel slightly ridiculous. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones both steered clear of depicting much magic onscreen, unless they absolutely had to: magic is something that usually finds its way into more light-hearted fare, such as The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. But The Witcher doesn’t shy away from fancy lights and displays of sorcery and enchantment: we have glowing trees in the desert, plenty of monsters (including giant spiders, can’t go wrong with those), catastrophic explosions of uncontrollable power, and even people throwing lightning from their hands. When was the last time you saw that in mainstream fantasy? It’s actually been a while since we’ve seen anyone but superheroes and psychic teenagers harness supernatural powers like this. At least, it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything like this.

Overall, it looks really good, definitely something that I’ll want to binge-watch when it arrives on Netflix this…Winter? I don’t know, the trailer doesn’t inform me. Well, whenever it comes out, it looks like it will be really good. Fingers crossed, people!

Trailer Rating: 8/10