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Shang-Chi star Simu Liu says Marvel sidestepped the character’s problematic origins in the MCU
To update Shang-Chi for the big screen, Marvel Studios had to sidestep his racist past
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If you go back and read Shang-Chi’s early comics, you might not like everything you see. The character first debuted in Special Marvel Edition #15 (1973), during the height of America’s kung fu craze. While Marvel’s creators had good intentions, they were Americans writing an Asian character, and the results were sometimes problematic. As a result, early Shang-Chi comics were filled with Asian stereotypes and caricatures.
As our views on race have matured and evolved, Marvel has handled Shang-Chi with more care. The 2021 film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings gave Marvel the opportunity to remake the character from the ground up, with a fresh set of eyes.
During a spotlight panel at Fan Expo Canada, Shang-Chi star Simu Liu spoke about how Marvel Studios tackled the character’s problematic past. “Shang-Chi the comic book character was created in the ‘60s and ‘70s. There was a kung fu craze that was gripping America, and David Carradine was on a show called Kung Fu…great show. He did play an Asian character. It was in that environment that the character of Shang-Chi was birthed. Shang-Chi was created by non-Asian people. He was an Asian character but told through the lens of someone who was not Asian.”
“There were elements of his backstory, and the way that he spoke and his mannerisms that didn’t quite feel authentic,” Liu continued. “When it came to this movie, our fantastic director Destin Daniel Cretton, Kevin Feige and Jonathan Schwartz, our producer…all pretty great amazing people. They all kind of got together and this idea of bringing Shang-Chi into the modern age, and really infusing him with layers, and dimensionality, and authenticity that any Asian person growing up in this modern age would have.”
“That’s where the current character came from. An evolution of sorts from who he was in the ‘60s and ‘70s, speaking broken English and Chinese proverbs, and he was very much a kung fu caricature.”
While some of the changes took away his edge, Liu felt it made him more relatable. “In a lot of ways maybe they made him less badass by making him a valet worker in San Francisco, but at the same time I think it made him a lot more relatable to a lot of people. Whether we grew up feeling like Shan and Katy, with our families and the intergenerational trauma, and the crazy grandmother, there were elements of that which we hoped would resonate across a wider audience and would also pay respect to the culture and heritage that Shang-Chi represented.”
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