'Shang-Chi' Featurette: How The Latest MCU Movie Is Tied To The First 'Iron Man'

One of the greatest advantages Marvel has over its competition is a built-in sense of history and continuity. Only Fox's now-defunct X-Men franchise even came close to matching the MCU in terms of length, but fans have long complained about the fast-and-loose approach to maintaining continuity in those movies led to many a recasting and narrative dead-end. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is Marvel's next installment and #ItsAllConnected is clearly at the forefront of this latest featurette, which you can view below.

"We're going back to the very beginning of the MCU. We have a keystone event. And that event is Tony Stark becoming Iron Man," Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige explains. As fans remember, the very first Iron Man movie back in 2008 included plenty of references to the sinister Ten Rings terrorist organization, who kidnapped Stark and forced him to build weapons of mass destruction for them.

In Shang-Chi, the title character's (Simu Liu) backstory involves the discovery that none other than his estranged father is at the head of the Ten Rings. It would seem the main conflict arises when his father Wenwu (Tony Leung), the "real" Mandarin, expects Shang-Chi to return home for good and side with him. Of course, this also recalls the divisive Iron Man 3 (among hardcore fans, at least), which seemed set to introduce the Mandarin before pulling the rug under us with one of the boldest blockbuster plot twists in recent memory. Marvel subsequently released a short that more or less apologized for the unexpected turn, but Shang-Chi appears to go much further in soothing bruised feelings over a comic character that, let's face it, nobody really cared about before 2013.

The featurette includes more standard talking points praising the film from star Awkwafina, who plays a character named Katy, as well as Liu himself. The lead amusingly remembers posting a tweet a few years back, well before he was ever attached to the role, that ended up proving startlingly prophetic.

OK @Marvel, are we gonna talk or what #ShangChi

— Simu Liu (刘思慕) (@SimuLiu) December 3, 2018

May we all have as much confidence as Simu Liu.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings arrives in theaters on September 3, 2021.

Marvel Studios' "Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings" stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organization. The film also stars Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi's friend Katy and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen, Meng'er Zhang, Florian Munteanu and Ronny Chieng.