I've got some more to say about ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING this week, but I wanted to break in here at the top of the week with a little piece about Marvel's SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS, which I finally saw over the weekend and liked a ton more than I expected to.
I'm a little burnt out on super hero storytelling, and maybe also the Marvel method of an origin story, which normally involves the main character a) making a big mistake which motivates their drive to be a hero; and b) some family member and/or person with the same power as them being the villain.
Both of these things in fact do prove to be true in SHANG-CHI (sigh), but there's some pretty creative differences in the way the film does the origin story, too. If you're looking for some ideas on how to mix things up in your own work, here's what writers David Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Lanham came up with.
1) Bury the Lede: The typical super hero origin story literally follows the hero through the whole process of getting their super power and everything that ensues from that.
SHANG-CHI looks like it's going to do the same. When we meet the adult "Shaun" he's just a hapless hotel car attendant. It's all very Spider-Man. But then suddenly after we've got to know him and his friend Katy, he's attacked on a trolley car and reveals to us--and her--that he is this bad ass martial artist.
Basically, the writers know our expectations, and play into them, precisely so they can then surprise us.
2) Disrupt the Story: Another typical move you see in hero movies is some sort of flashback narration about what happened before, how the character got to this point.
And once again, the writers lean right into that expectation so as to mess with us. Shang giving a very serious monologue over flashbacks of him learning to be an assassin and then being sent on his mission.
But before we can find out what happened, we cut to him and Katy on the plane to Macau and the airline attendant asking their meal order. And it's not a momentary gag. It has three beats actually--the query; finding out the airline doesn't have what they requested; and then the query again. By the time it's over there's just no going back to the story. Which actually ends up delighting us, precisely because it is so unexpected.
3) Vary the Conventions: So again, there are two big conventions in the Marvel origin story: the hero has some reason to redeem himself; and his enemy is a relative or someone with the same powers.
SHANG-CHI has both, but varies them in some interesting ways. It hides that Shang has anything to redeem for a very long time. He actually tells Katy he didn't kill anyone as an assassin, and his training is painted as his father's doing, when in fact he agreed to it (though as a young and traumatized child). It's not until the end of Act Two in fact, that the truth is revealed. Which as the low point of the story, and the moment Shang has to make the decision to step up, is a great place for that kind of reveal anyway.
And then on the flip side, while the dad is presented early as a straight up villain, Act Two then keeps turning over cards that humanize him further and further. First we find out he thinks their mother is still alive somewhere, and that's the motive for him stealing their pendants and them. And that could be enough, really, to make him more than the standard bad guy. Certainly you walk away from the first half of Act Two thinking you've been told all there is to know.
But then we get the reveal that his dad loved his mom and them so much he actually gave up being a supernatural crime lord, after 1000 years of doing it. And it was only the murder of his wife that set him back on that path.
So where the beginning suggests we're in GODFATHER territory, basically, the bad family coming to take back their son, the story keeps flipping over cards to say actually no, this father figure is much more interesting. He's a guy who found his way to a kind of redemption and then lost it.
As Marvel has honed its storytelling this kind of approach to a villain has become more the norm. Think: Thanos or Vulture. But even so, SHANG-CHI represents innovation in that it only shows us Shang's dad's goodness gradually.
