MCU feature #25, and the sound by now is that of the bottom of the barrel being scraped. Now it's the turn of Shang-Chi, originally created by Marvel to cash in on Bruce Lee mania and then given a mystical dimension to fit into the world of superheroes. There's now a glaringly obvious cash-in motive for Disney to promote the character to centre stage, namely the Chinese market, and accordingly large cheques have also been thrown at Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung to lend their names as back-up to the lesser-known younger leads.
There is a suggestion of wit in the dialogue, and Ben Kingsley reprising his ham actor character from Iron Man 3 raises hopes briefly, as does having a more than usually complex antagonist in the person of the hero's father, who's prepared to bring about doom to bring back his dead wife, but it's ultimately submerged by the generic chopsocky sequences (nothing Chinese about these any more, since every MCU fight is rooted in all protagonists being expert martial artists) and daft dragons and monsters duking it out in the finale.
Move along, nothing to see here.
5/10
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