“Aquaman” and “Shang-Chi: the Legend of the Ten Rings”: One Works
“Aquaman” is out in limited re-release and I was kind of sorry I missed it on the first go-round three years ago. It looked like really engaging, dumb fun. It is that until it’s not. Then it becomes a slog. A gorgeous slog, but a slog nonetheless.
The story is comic book dopey; Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is the scion of the Queen of Atlantis who fled to the surface to avoid an arranged marriage (a CGI-enhanced Nicole Kidman? Honestly, I can’t tell anymore…) and a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison). Eventually, Atlantis catches up to her and she realizes she has to return. Little Arthur is trained over the years by his Atlantean family’s vizier, Vulko, played by a game Willem Dafoe. Arthur is possessed of great physical power, can communicate telepathically with all the creatures of the sea and is, in general, a swell guy to hang out with, I guess. Loves his dad, enjoys beer, pretty much beats the holy living shit out of a bunch of pirates. You get the idea.
Suffice it to say, he misses his mom, his dad misses her and meanwhile, down below in the ocean deep, the Atlanteans have had enough of the surface dwellers shitting in the seas, etc They have a point, you know, In a nifty sequence, the oceans erupt globally and the ocean is purged of garbage all along coastlines. Along with submarines and ships…everything except oil rigs (because let’s face it, tear those up willy-nilly and that’s only going to cause a bigger mess).
Arthur is approached by Nera (Amber Heard, who does a reasonable Scarlet Johansson read of her character throughout the move; and that’s not a dig, she does a lot with very little to work with) who tries to impress on Arthur to claim the crown of Atlantis as its rightful ruler (noble firstborn, etc.) and being the surly antihero with a heart of gold, he turns her down until the ocean coughs up the crud,
Does it really matter what happens? Of course, Arthur recognizes his duty, goes on the hero’s journey, bests the combined forces of Atlantis and emerges as King of the Sea, or whatever. Oh, and there’s Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a pirate who survived Arthur’s beat down, but whose father didn’t and just to be sure, he does have a genuine grievance; Arthur could have saved his father but chose not to, seeing as how Manta and his dad killed numerous innocent people. Yes, yes, inner conflict, moral decisions, etc.
If it sounds like I’m giving short shrift here, it’s because there’s just not a lot to say. The cast is way overqualified for the amount of exposition everyone but Arthur is called on to exposit. Momoa is hugely entertaining and Heard is a good foil, but no sooner do they get in a groove and the film gains some genuine narrative momentum then it’s off to another sup-plot, and another, and another.
There are so many scenes intended to be heartfelt, if not moving that I almost laughed at out loud. The action sequences did what they do in almost all of these comic book movies: go on forever. Really. Forevah. Dramatic beats that should have landed just kind of softly thumped and as eye-popping as the film is visually, I was wearied by the eye-candy.
None of this is to say that there aren’t entertaining moments in “Aquaman”. There are hugely enjoyable set-pieces but they’re defeated by spending way too much time with padding out sequences to ridiculous lengths. At two hours and twenty-seven minutes, I was gently amused when I wasn’t so bored I had to walk around and for the first time in a long time, actually looked forward to taking a wee.
I don’t dislike the movie, by the way. James Wan’s direction is fine and he did his best to keep the ball rolling, but the ball is overstuffed and unlike some of these bloated messes, it isn’t full of many compelling ideas, the characters aren’t given any time to be much more than quip machines or sketches that need to be more fleshed out, and as pretty a picture as it is, it starts to pall on you after the first hour (when I took my first break).
I was ready to call it quits after the first hour. I hadn’t felt that way since “Star War: the Phantom Menace”. The difference here is that I did find enough to keep my interest throughout the remainder of the movie. If nothing else, the dialog here - as full of exposition as it is (and believe me, it’s full!) - does pop enough and the performers way more engaging. But at two and a half hours, there’s no reason why this movie needed to be this long.
Which is why watching “Shang-Chi: the Legend of the Ten Rings” shows what can be done with an almost-as-long runtime. It, too, suffers from overlong sequences and more than necessary back-story dialog, but there is much greater economy here. Say what you will about the MCU, the house style is finely honed to ensure that you aren’t fidgeting in your seat, for the most part.
Here’s an interesting treat, though: “Shang-Chi..” almost doesn’t feel like a Marvel movie. If anything, it’s a nice homage to a lot of pop Asian filmmaking. Nods to John Woo, Jackie Chan and Jet Li’s approaches to character on the one hand, epic style mise-en-scene build-up along the lines of Tsui Hark and King Hu on the other, and really wonderful CGI builds and creature design evoke, well, Disney, as much as anything from Legendary combine to make a full but not fussy film.
As with “Aquaman”, there is an awful lot of plot, but why does so much more work here than there? Part of it might be because it is such a pastiche and editing between flashback and present is handled more deftly than in the underwater epic. But mainly, the characters actually read like people trying to work stuff out. Particularly in the movie’s first half.
Simu Liu and Awkwafina are two old pals who work as parking valets in San Francisco and of course, he’s “Shang-Chi” who has assumed the name Shaun to escape his father Wenwu, the leader of the mysterious organization known as “The Ten Rings” (named after the ten rings he wears on his forearms that imbue him with great power, etc.) Voiceover narration tells us that Wenwu could have used the rings for good, but instead, determined the fate of the world by leveling countries and pulling strings from behind the scenes. Power hungry, he goes in search of the mysterious realm Ta-lo where a secret martial art is practiced and it’s there that he meets the woman he weds.
They leave Ta-lo because, well, he’s a well-known evil sonofabitch and she isn’t going to give him up and so joins him in exile where they have Shang-Chi and his younger sister. Domestic bliss ensues, we gather Wenwu pulls back from being evil and power mad (but still trains his son to be a deadly assassin). Wenwu’s past catches up to him and while he’s out for the evening, a cadre of guys with grudges show up and demand payment for the blood Wenwu has shed. His wife dies, he returns and begins to hunt down his wife’s murderers, Shang-Chi is tasked with killing the ringleader and disappears from his family’s life after killing the guy.
His sister Xialing (a remarkable, understated Meng’er Zhang) gets the short end of the stick. She isn’t allowed to learn martial arts so she watches the guys and becomes better than they and after Shang-Chi doesn’t return, she leaves at sixteen to begin her own criminal org in Macau. Really, are all unhappy families so un-alike?
Already, story is chock full of threads and sub-plots and aside from a couple of Easter eggs, one particularly amusing (though it did leave me with a case of the serious WTFs), the story unfolds free of much in the way beholden to the wider Marvel universe. Once Shang-Chi’s cover is blown by an attack on a bus, Awkwafina’s Katy asks him who he really is. We get much of the aforementioned backstory and the film pitches into higher gear out of prime 80s Hong Kong cinema.
The story mechanics don’t matter - really, do they ever in these things? - but we follow our duo to Macau where Shang-Chi reunites with his sister and both are in turn attacked by Wenwu’s Ten Rings. There is a nifty fight on scaffolding outside a skyscraper that hears back to vintage Chan. It’s one of the few action pieces that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Then we have the big family reunion with the great Tony Leung showing his chops (seriously, he and Michelle Yeoh lend so much legitimacy to this enterprise) as Wenwu-as-dad. In a sort of more ominous counterpoint to the family meal around the table in “Black Widow”, there’s more exposition and so on and so forth. One cool thing is that Wenwu does invoke the Ten Rings referenced in both Iron Man and Iron Man 3, as well as the Mandarin (“I made them afraid of an orange”) from IM3.
Eventually, everyone converges on Ta-Lo in another series of sequences that brings another nod to the greater MCU into play and a call-back to Iron Man 3; Trevor Slattery returns, cleaned up but no less dim (maybe more so?) and heroics and epic CGI kaiju battle occupy the last half hour (it seems longer somehow). There are some genuinely heartfelt moments, particularly between Shang-Chi and Yeoh’s Ying Nan, his aunt. A sacrifice is made, the good guys win (even the Ten Rings had to join the forces of Ta-Lo) and we get a typical Marvel ending with Shang-Chi and Katy recounting their tale to friends in a bar (who earlier had pointed out how directionless “Shaun” and Katy’s lives were, and how overqualified they were for their job) when a portal opens and lo! There’s Wong (we see him earlier, but this time is different)! Off to more adventures. Roll credits, mid-credits cameos, end-credits stinger, both setting up Shang-Chi 2 and maybe some other Marvel Phase Four movies.)
So why did “Shang-Chi” work where “Aquaman” didn’t? It really comes down to script, dialog and characterization. If the script doesn’t allow for the characters to be more than charming/witty/evil/insert adjective here types, then all you’re left with are types. There’s no buy-in. You can have the best cast in the world but if they’re spouting bullshit the whole time, and by bullshit, I mean backstory or explaining what’s going on right in front of us, then any narrative momentum is going to grind to a halt. Lastly, yeah, these are dopey flicks. But why does Marvel’s dopeyness work where others don’t? It’s not a matter of embracing the silliness quotient (SQ); it’s letting the SQ overrun narrative structure.
The plots in any of these genre films are practically interchangeable/irrelevant. The success of any given film is how much we accept the characters’ struggles, motivations, and relationships as genuine. Or as reasonably genuine within the confines of the generic nature of these films. None of these types of movies are high art (I’m not going to evoke Scorsese, Gunn, or Villeneuve’s comments, but they’re in mind right now), although a few are really compelling and very gripping dramas. The Nolan Batman series, “The Black Panther”, and I’d argue the Russo brothers’ take on the MCU (owing a huge debt to Whedon’s Avengers movies) are all examples of the range and occasional depth that these films can attain.
Marvel has a formula that works really well and when it affords more independence to the film and its characters (and its showrunners) as here, you come away with more interesting films. The problem with the DCEU is that its cinematic response to Marvel has been just that: a response. For the most part, the Snyder movies were presented as the anti-Marvel films with an excruciating lack of self-awareness and wit, both of which are requisite for a genre that is essentially, pretty silly. That said, not all comic book films have to be silly or even acknowledge that nor do they all have to be brightly colored fun machines. However, like any good example of a genre, there needs to be a committed vision to the story at hand. Most of the Marvel films get this. Even the more lackluster entries have a sense of the characters and their rationales and internal make-up. Even “Aquaman” has that! The best of these films from Marvel or DC work because some deeper degree of caring about the characters is evident. That alone isn’t enough, of course. So many of these movies get lost in too much plot, too much connectivity with extraneous elements, and frankly, too much action that doesn’t awe or engage.
It appears that DC is shelving the idea of any grand, overarching tale to tell and I believe it’s reasonable to suspect that Marvel has one under development. Neither model is better than the other; but if it’s all empty spectacle, then there’s not much of a reason to watch.
Random reflections for both “Aquaman” and “Shang-Chi”:
- Both casts were fun to watch when they weren’t burdened by exposition.
- I like that Momoa is so invested in Arthur that he’s taking a more hands-on involvement in the script in the sequel, but I really hope they fill out the supporting cast more. Well, see the above diatribing drivel for why.
- Auntie Nan #michelleyeohforever. Speaking of, what if her character here met Aleta Ogord, who she plays in “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2”?
- Awkwafina has her own action figure! About time!
- If Sammo Hung, Yuen Wo-Ping, or anyone from Shaw Brothers was helming “Shang-Chi”, it would not have taken that long to tell the story. They’d have it done in two hours. Maybe even 90 minutes. Admittedly, it might have been weirder, but it would have been great.
- My two favorite DCEU movies remain “Wonder Woman” and “Shazam”; “WW84” was such a tragic misfire, but་I think I can definitely say I prefer “Aquaman” to it. So, three “favorite” movies?
- More movies need Benedict Wong.
Pretty pictures follow.
It helps if you get the cinematographer (Don Burgess) who shot the first Raimi Spider-Man film, “Contact”, ‘Forrest Gump”, and “Castaway”.
It helps if you get the cinematographer (Bill Pope) of The Matrix series, the two Raimi Spider-Man sequels, “Alita: Battle Angel” and “Baby Driver” to shoot your flick.
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