Epic Martial Arts Movies to Watch While You’re Waiting for ‘Shang-Chi’
There’s a week till Shang-Chi and The Ten Rings arrives in theaters – here are some movies to watch in the meantime.
Enter the Dragon
The movie that introduced Bruce Lee and high-energy martial arts to the west – and Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin. The influence of Bruce Lee and Enter the Dragon had on the creation of Shang-Chi and the stories in his comics is very clear. In the 1990s Stan Lee even pursued making a Shang-Chi movie starring Brandon Lee, Bruce’s son, in the lead role.
Bruce Lee plays a martial-arts expert determined to help capture the narcotics dealer whose gang was responsible for the death of his sister. Lee enters a kung fu competition in an attempt to fight his way to the dealer’s headquarters with the help of some friends.
House of Flying Daggers
The Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings trailers have shown some big, sweeping scenes (epecially that training scene in a ring of lush, green bamboo forest) that remind me of this movie. The MCU movie definitely takes some cues from the epic historical movies of China that use saturated colors and plenty of wire work to create dream-like fight scenes.
The Tang Dynasty is fighting to keep control over China, a battle they are losing to several rebel groups. One such group is the House of Flying Daggers, who steal from the wealthy and give to the poor. Two police deputies working with the government (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau) are ordered to investigate the dancer Mei (Zhang Ziyi), who is rumored to be working with the House of Flying Daggers. But both men fall under her charms and decide to help her escape instead.
A Jackie Chan classic. I’m sure we’ll see some of its style and use of comedy in Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi and the fight scenes in the upcoming movie.
From a land where honor and tradition reign, comes the legend of a martial-arts hero unlike any other — the “Drunken Master” — who can turn just one drink into devastation and humiliation for his enemies. His technique is fast, furious… and powerfully funny.
Yes, Madam!
Michelle Yeoh is playing Xialing and Shang-Chi’s aunt, Jiang Nan. The actress has a long resume of amazing martial arts projects that started with this movie. It also happens to be a personal favorite. If 1980s action-filled crime stories are your thing, also check out Supercop and Supercop 2.
A relentless inspector (Michelle Yeoh) and a Scotland Yard detective (Cynthia Rothrock) investigate a murder linked to microfilm.
From the MCU: The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 3, Doctor Strange
To be fair, you could watch all three Iron Man movies because they all have mentions of the Ten Rings. They were his captors in Iron Man, and were instrumental in getting Ivan Vanko into the car race where he fights Tony in Iron Man 2. The Mandarin makes his first appearance in Iron Man 3 – even though it’s a ruse and we don’t get a lot of Ten Rings beyond their iconography it’s still an introduction of the character. The actor hired to play him Trevor Slattery (played by Ben Kingsley) is on the cast list for Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, so we haven’t seen the last of him.
Other folks we haven’t seen the last of – Abomination (played by Tim Roth) and Wong (played by Benedict Wong) are both making appearances in Shang-Chi. Marvel creative director Kevin Feige confirmed that the two were in a cage match in one of the trailers.
In an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, Feige talked about how the new movie ties back into the first phase of the Infinity Saga.
“That’s what’s fun about the MCU at this stage. We can do something like Shang-Chi, introducing a brand new hero into the MCU and into the world at large. But that subtitle, The Legend of the Ten Rings, actually connects it back to the very beginning of the MCU, the Ten Rings being the organization that kidnapped Tony Stark at the very beginning of Iron Man 1. And that organization was inspired by a character called the Mandarin in the comics.”
It’s going to be interesting to see how these call backs to phase one fit into the kick off movie of phase four. Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings arrives in theaters (and only theaters) September 3rd.
