Marvel made a few major announcements at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con International last week, revealing its entire slate for Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That includes Shang-Chi, Marvel's very first Asian-led comic book movie.
While Marvel revealed the film's official casting with Tony Leun taking the lead role, the studio's dropped very little information about the upcoming movie. Now, speaking in an interview with Cinema Blend to help promote his upcoming feature, Hobbs and Shaw, writer Drew Pearce, the same scriptwriter for Iron Man 3, talks about what he wants to see in Shang-Chi.
Saying that he "couldn't be more excited" for the upcoming series, Peace says that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings could very well be "one of the most exciting pieces of casting in American cinema in the next three years.
Bringing the Mandarin to the big screen, of course, is going to be a bit tough, but Pearce has his own idea.
"You know, and there are modern interpretations of The Mandarin that I think can work in the context of, particularly of a Marvel movie that has a much more grounded basis in Asian culture and has, frankly, Asian filmmakers and other Asian actors in its ensemble, and driving the story," the writer explained, "In our Iron Man movie, as you and everyone else knows, it was my feeling that if we did The Mandarin in many of the forms that he is most commonly known as we were playing into the racial stereotypes that generated the character in the beginning. Yellow peril, you know. … That idea was what inspired our take on the Mandarin."
A modernized version of the Mandarin doesn't sound that bad. Not only would it give the character even more edge, but it would also help fit in the current timeline of the MCU.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is set for release on February 12, 2021.
Read: The Real Mandarin Reportedly Set As Primary Villain In MCU Film Shang-Chi