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Walt Disney celebrated Simu Liu’s 32nd birthday this morning by offering the first trailer and poster for Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The hook, that our hero has lived in the regular world for ten years divorced from his dad’s criminal empire, is amusingly the exact opposite of CW’s recent Kung Fu reboot. That (pretty enjoyable) action show features a protagonist (Olivia Liang) who must return home to her normal family after a few years in a monastery. That goes to show that there are only so many narrative templates for these superhero/super heroic action properties (the Kung Fu pilot played like a Mad Libs variation of the stock CW action/superhero series premiere). 


The trailer is fine, an announcement teaser closer in structure to Ant-Man than Black Panther, and I’m guessing a lot of the more colorful and big-scale beats are from flashbacks or digressions (think Brett Ratner’s Hercules or Zack Snyder’s Justice League). I was honestly expecting something a bit more fantastical, but this is a grounded, real-world pitch. There’s at least one more trailer to go for this one and going all-in with magic/supernatural elements may not have helped since the teaser will presumably be playing before New Line Cinema’s Mortal Kombat this week. For that matter, the movie is the movie and director Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, The Glass House, Just Mercy) tends to make exceptionally good movies.
While the trailer was preceded this morning by a feature story in Entertainment Weekly, I expect that this will be the last of the big marketing drops for a while. Either we’ll get another trailer in July for Black Widow or this trailer was dropped right now specifically to allow Marvel to drop the teaser for Eternals for that next MCU movie. Offhand, I’d expect the “final trailer” to drop either July 30 with Disney’s Jungle Cruise or August 5 with Warner Bros.’ The Suicide Squad, which would begin the final lap of saturation-level promotion (interviews, profiles, talk show appearances, etc.) leading up to the September 3 release. Yes, this MCU spectacular is opening on Labor Day weekend. 
First, presuming the summer movie releases don’t crash and burn in theaters, we can expect this one to go “in theaters only” instead of the “in theaters and on Disney+ for an extra $30” path chosen by Mulan, Ray and the Last Dragon, Cruella (May 28) and Black Widow (July 7). If all goes well for the likes of F9, Space Jam: A New Legacy and/or A Quiet Place part II,  then Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt’s Jungle Cruise will be the first “just theaters” Walt Disney theatrical release (not counting the Fox stockpile) since Pixar’s Onward in early March of 2020. Heck, if all goes *really* well, Dune and Matrix 4 might forgo the HBO Max release and debut only in theaters. 
I am amused that this almost surefire blockbuster is going to be the first mega-hit release ever for Labor Day weekend. The holiday weekend, which usually marks the end of summer, has not been home to anything much bigger than Rob Zombie’s Halloween or Jason Statham’s Transporter 2. Warner Bros. tried it with Tenet last year, but the Chris Nolan actioner did okay overseas ($305 million) while bombing domestically ($58 million). With one half of all American adults now at least partially vaccinated and 1/3 entirely vaccinated, there’s little reason to presume that Shang-Chi won’t open amid somewhat conventional circumstances. We’re looking at one of the summer’s very biggest hits. Yes, I’m counting Labor Day as summer, if only during this skewed season.
As I’ve noted a few times of late, most of the summer movies are relatively B+-level franchise titles. Of what remains in season, only F9, Black Widow, Hotel Transylvania 4, The Suicide Squad and Shang-Chi are what I’d consider (in conventional times) A-level franchise offerings. The Suicide Squad is a wild card due to a lack of Will Smith and the Joker, while Transformania won’t have Adam Sandler reprising, so easy money rests on the Fast &amp; Furious sequel and the MCU movies. That both are the biggest Hollywood franchises in China (F7 and F8 both earned $392 million while Captain Marvel grossed $154 million and Spider-Man: Far from Home earned $200 million) and among the biggest everywhere else doesn’t hurt.

The likely success of Shang-Chi in China is probably as much about it being an MCU movie as being an MCU movie with mostly Chinese actors. North American pundits will talk about representation and diversity, but a Chinese martial arts movie isn’t exactly a big event in China. As we saw with Mulan, Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell and Abominable, sometimes such a movie is just “Tuesday” for actual Chinese moviegoers. Aside from making sure the movie doesn’t offend governmental censorship boards, I can only hope the movie is fantastical and imaginative enough to play to the marketplace that spent $550 million on The Mermaid, $699 million on The Wandering Earth, $269 million on Venom and $298 million on Aquaman. 
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Meet the first-ever Labor Day weekend box office blockbuster.

Marvel Celebrates Simu Liu’s Birthday With First Trailer And Poster For ‘Shang-Chi’