Shang-Chi Trailer: Marvel’s First Asian Superhero Has Major Daddy Issues With The Mandarin

The Shang-Chi trailer is here. Early on Friday — just prior to a big NBA playoffs game — Marvel Studios unveiled a two-minute trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, its first movie with an Asian superhero in the lead. That’s Kim’s Convenience star Simu Liu, who seems to have some pretty big daddy issues if the new Shang-Chi trailer is any indication. After all, his father is Wenwu / The Mandarin (Tony Leung) who runs the terrorist organisation Ten Rings that was first glimpsed in 2008’s Iron Man. Shang-Chi wants to distance himself, but it’s not going to be easy. A tease of a big father-son fight suggests Leung will also serve as the main villain.

“Throughout my life, the Ten Rings gave our family power,” Wenwu explains to a young Shang-Chi. “If you want them to be yours one day, you have to show me you’re strong enough to carry them.” Elsewhere, Jiang Nan (Michelle Yeoh) tells an older Shang-Chi: “You are a product of all who came before you. The legacy of your family. You are your mother. And whether you like it or not, you are also your father.” We then see Shang-Chi training as a teen, and later being put to the test against his father’s own men — that naturally doesn’t sit well with Shang-Chi.

The father-son duo has never seen eye-to-eye it seems, and the Shang-Chi trailer confirms that as the boy tells dad over dinner: “You’re just a criminal who murders people.” He gets a telling off from Wenwu (Leung): “Be careful how you speak to me, boy.” Shang-Chi is essentially trying to run from his past, as he says later: “I thought I could change my name, start a new life. But I could never escape his shadow.” The Shang-Chi trailer also gives us a peek at Jiang Nan’s superpowers, and what seems like a duel of sorts with Wenwu and his Ten Rings.

At the very end, the new Shang-Chi trailer reveals that Abomination (Tim Roth) — from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk — will be involved here. In addition to Liu, Leung, Yeoh, and Roth, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings also stars Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s American friend Katy, Meng’er Zhang as Shang-Chi’s estranged sister Xialing, Fala Chen as Jiang Li, Florian Munteanu as mercenary Razor Fist, Ronny Chieng as Shang-Chi’s friend Jon Jon, and Benedict Wong as Wong from Doctor Strange. There’s also the masked villain Death Dealer, though the actor remains unknown.

Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12) is the director on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, working off a screenplay he co-wrote with David Callaham (Wonder Woman 1984) and Andrew Lanham (Just Mercy). Kevin Feige and Jonathan Schwartz served as producers, alongside Victoria Alonso, Louis D’Esposito, and Charles Newirth as executive producers. Bill Pope (The Matrix) is the director of photography.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is out September 3 worldwide, though it’s “coming soon” to India thanks to COVID-19. Until most cinemas haven’t reopened, we won’t know when Black Widow — the next Marvel movie — releases in India. Shang-Chi will only arrive after that.