If you have been reading my last couple recaps in this never ending
series that is the MCU...first of all, I'm sorry...but second you might have
seen Chrissy repeatedly rag me for making references to Star Trek
properties. I don't apologize for it, especially since I've seen Kevin Feige
do it in interviews too, but Chrissy started insisting I should recap the
Kelvin Timeline movies. I am still resistant to taking that on on top of the
increasing MCU workload, but we made a deal. If I could get through the next
recap or two without making any random Star Trek references, she would quit
bugging me to recap those movies.
Chrissy:And then I realized you had
said you weren't even doing full recaps of the next couple MCU things.
Diandra: Which is why I have decided to add one movie to the brief
recap since "Shang Chi" sort of piggybacks off of "Iron Man 3".
Chrissy:I still say it isn't really a fair deal, but it should at
least be entertaining to watch you try to suppress that instinct for ten
hours. I'm starting to doubt you are capable.
Diandra: Well, now I just want to prove you wrong.
Anyway. Here goes nothing.
Iron Man 3 (or: We Weren't Doing Subtitles
Yet)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwenyth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Jon Favreau, Guy
Pearce, Ben Kingsley, the voice of Paul Bettany
Part of my justification for skipping directly to The Avengers when I
started recapping the MCU was that the Iron Man trilogy - being the first in
the series before anybody knew whether crossovers would work - pretty much
stood on it's own. I did go back and do the first one, but that was mostly
for the fun of it. The other two weren't really necessary for the larger
story. Technically Shang Chi isn't either, but if I'm going to do a quick
run through of that, I suppose I should back up and explain just what it is,
exactly, that they felt needed retconning from this.
The story starts on New Year's Eve 1999, when our biggest worry was that
computers would jump us back 100 years because nobody thought to teach them
to start dates with "20" yet. Tony is at a party acting like his former
playboy dickish self, trying to get into his then-assistant's pants and
cluelessly shaking Yinsen's hand and promptly forgetting he ever met him.
Happy has terrible looking long hair (and an earring) and so does Guy
Pearce, who introduces himself as Aldrich Killian and generally gushes like
a fanboy over Tony before offering to work with him because he runs a start
up tech company. Tony lies that he is very interested in talking to him and
sets up a meeting on the roof that he has no intention of actually going to.
The "assistant" has come up with a drug that "accesses" the part of the
brain that repairs the body and "chemically recodes" it. She calls it
Extremis. Except it has a major flaw that causes it to explode or something.
Happy barrels into the bedroom at the resulting explosion and tackles Tony
to the bed. It's...awkward.
Chrissy:You're sure Happy ended up
with Pepper in the comics, right?
Diandra: Yeah, but Pepper was the one with the arc reactor at some
point, so...it's complicated.
And then we skip to the present after the whole origin story, introduction
of Black Widow and invasion of New York that led to the formation of The
Avengers. Tony is working on injecting microchips or something that will
allow him to summon the suit in pieces that will form themselves around him.
This ends up being a recurring source of comedic relief basically for the
entire movie as the results range from it arriving late and splattering on
the ground before it actually gets to him to it nearly slamming his head off
his shoulders like his AIs have decided to take out years of pent up
aggression by lobbing projectiles at him. "As always, sir, a great pleasure
watching you work," JARVIS says after the first attempt results in him
groaning on the floor surrounded by bits of metal.
Chrissy:I miss JARVIS.
Diandra: We all do.
In what is probably the only time this series has really addressed this
well, Tony spends pretty much the whole movie dealing with PTSD from the New
York battle, not sleeping and having panic attacks because if he does sleep
he has nightmare flashbacks and accidentally calls his suit to attack
Pepper.
The Mandarin is introduced as the principal bad guy and he is seemingly
played by Ben Kingsley as a total Bin Laden terrorist stereotype. He's
introduced through some propaganda videos for the Ten Rings, the
organization that kidnapped Tony in the first movie after Obediah Stane
hired them to kill him. The government responds to the vague terrorist
threat the videos present (and the actual terrorist bombings they are mostly
keeping from the public) by introducing Rhodey's War Machine persona as
"Iron Patriot", which...er...was a completely different person, but okay.
[ETA: Turns out Rhodey did take over the title eventually, so I guess we're
skipping right to that]
Guy Pearce is reintroduced, his character having made himself...hotter, but
also smarmier. He has turned Extremis into a rapid healing...thing...via
questionable science that he tries to sell to Pepper, who he apparently
worked with at some point. It still has the glitch though, apparently, as
demonstrated when Happy witnesses one of Killian's goons regenerate body
parts that were blown off when another goon explodes. Unfortunately, the
incident puts him in a coma, so he can't tell anyone what happened and The
Mandarin takes credit for it. In what is probably the most spectacularly
stupid move he made of his entire MCU run, Tony responds to this by giving
his home address to the world press and acting surprised when the goons come
after him and bomb the place to shit. He escapes to somewhere upstate and
leaves a message for Pepper in one of his suit helmets. The woman who
invented Extremis - Maya - reappears to reveal that she works for Killian,
which explains how that happened, but she contacts Tony and Pepper because
she says she believes HE works for the Mandarin. Except she actually helps
Killian kidnap Pepper to try to coerce Tony into helping them get Extremis
on the market. Yeah, the plot's...kind of a chaotic mess.
Tony uses Rhodey's log in to get into the government files on Project
Extremis, determining that Killian's goon squad of supersoldiers were
volunteer guinea pigs sold on the idea that Extremis would "fix" them. This
works for some as there is video of a woman regrowing a blown off arm, but
possible side effects include literally going nuclear.
Tony tracks the source of the propaganda videos to Florida, where "The
Mandarin" turns out to be a construct Killian (the real Mandarin) invented
played by an actor named Trevor Slattery. As Tony's talking to the idiot, a
goon knocks him out and he wakes up zip tied to a bedframe tipped upright,
hostage of Maya and Killian.
Chrissy:This is ALMOST like a fantasy
I once had...
Diandra: Yeah, I kind of suspected this would be the scene you'd
get the most mileage out of.
Chrissy:I mean, usually the bed isn't vertical, but I can work with
this. Who wants to go first?
Diandra: MOVING ON.
Killian has injected Pepper with Extremis, which might kill her or might
turn her into a superhero. At least until this particular movie is over, at
which point this entire plot will be forgotten about immediately and never
mentioned again. Maya realizes he's a psycho and threatens to kill herself
and take all her knowledge of how Extremis works, exactly, with her and
Killian just...kills her himself.
Killian's goons also kidnap Rhodey for...reasons that aren't immediately
clear. Did I mention that Killian is himself infected with Extremis? Yeah,
at one point he actually breathes fire at Rhodey, whose 'what the fuck, man'
response is probably the moment when the movie becomes most self aware of
just how batshit it is.
Tony fights off Killian's goons using just one gauntlet and one boot of his
suit because the rest of the suit doesn't reach him until after it's over.
Which is probably why he started working on the nano version of it that he
was using in Infinity War.
Meanwhile, Rhodey hears an alert that Tony has broken free of their captors
and fights his way out as well. Without his suit. Which is flying off
without him. He calls Tony and they both return to the part of the compound
where Trevor is. Trevor sort of...helps them, but he doesn't have much of a
clue, so he mostly helps them hijack a boat so they can stop...some sort of
plan to kill the president. Who I guess we kind of sort of cared about in
this universe at the time as he is fictional. Rhodey calls the Vice
President and tells him his "bodyguard" Iron Patriot has been hijacked by
someone plotting to kill the President. Except the VPOTUS tells no one
because he is in on it.
The goon in the Iron Patriot suit attacks Air Force One, stuffs the
President inside the suit and sends it on autopilot to Killian, then sends a
dozen people flying out the blown out door. Tony blasts a hole right through
him and catches everyone in a human chain (that he actually likens to
playing Barrel of Monkeys out loud) to soften their water landing in a
practical stunt achieved with actual skydivers as the plane explodes. Or his
suit does all of this without him because Rhodey already identified the
"Dark Knight" scenario wherein they could rescue either the President or
Pepper, but not both and this is how Tony could be in two places at the same
time. He tells JARVIS to activate the House Party Protocol, which is the cue
to activate all the suits still under the rubble where his house used to be.
Luckily for Tony, the President and Pepper end up in the same place. Killian
plans to kill the President via oil fire in a tanker shipyard. All the suits
arrive as backup and Tony instructs them to take out the goons by shooting
at anything that has an Extremis signature (which...you'd think the problem
with this would be obvious, but okay). There's a ridiculous fight sequence
with a lot of explosions. Tony tries to simultaneously fight Killian and
save Pepper while Rhodey saves the President, without the aid of a supersuit
(because they're all coded to Tony's DNA). He's...pretty badass.
Chrissy:You know, he and Sam would
make a pretty badass team.
Diandra: Yeah, there's something to be said for the people with
military combat training being able to hold their own without super
strength.
Chrissy:It also helps that they have weaponized flight suits and
are often surrounded by or paired up with supers.
Pepper falls into some burning wreckage and is presumed dead for a while.
Tony has another suit malfunction on it's way to him and just uses it to
magnet Killian to a beam and self destruct. Of course, it's only a temporary
solution as Extremis has made Killian practically unkillable. Pepper
reappears to save Tony at the last minute because her superpowers
conveniently activated. She manages to take out Killian by ripping an
attacking Iron Man suit out of the air, taking one of its gauntlets and
using it to blow a stick of dynamite in Killian's face. I think. Which
somehow works.
It all ends with Tony exploding all the extra suits, curing Pepper
completely (instead of just fixing Extremis like he must have done in the
comics so we never have to speak of this again) and finally finding a doctor
who can remove the remaining shrapnel from his chest so he doesn't need the
arc reactor to keep him alive. The Vice President and Trevor are both
arrested. Happy recovers. And the whole thing is framed by voiceovers that
it turns out Tony is telling Bruce without realizing that he fell asleep,
like, two hours ago. Bruce apologizes that he isn't THAT kind of doctor and
Tony just launches into another story going back to his childhood and we
close on Bruce's exasperated face.
Chrissy:You'll miss him when he's
gone. Just keep reminding yourself of that every time he acts like a giant
dick.
Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Starring: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Meng'er Zhang, Ben
Kingsley, Fala Chen, Michelle Yeoh, Florian Munteanu
The main reason I elected not to do a full recap of this one is that it is
an origin story that doesn't directly tie into the continuing MCU yet. Which
is why I skipped "Ant Man", "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Captain America" and
"Thor". But I figure I can probably boil down everything you might need to
know about the character since he probably will show up in whatever group
they end up cobbling together with everyone who is left now.
We correct the whole Legend of the Ten Rings right away with a Chinese lady
explaining that it is actually a centuries old story about this soldier (Xu)
and referred to actual rings he wore on his wrists that gave him magic
powers and made him immortal. Nobody really knows where they came from as
the legends vary, but one of the theories is "crater", which would make
sense as it would be on par with the origin story of Black Panther.
Chrissy:The other theory is "stolen
from a tomb", which would put it on par with "Moon Knight" and are you
going to address that series at all?
Diandra: My understanding is that that doesn't tie into the rest of
the MCU at all. So no.
Unfortunately, Xu was corrupt so he used the rings to take thrones by force
with his merry band...army, who became known as The Ten Rings. And they
wreaked havoc for centuries in all sorts of places. In 1996 he caught wind
of a "hidden" village called Ta Lo, full of mythical creatures and "ancient
magic".
Chrissy:So in the way that Doctor
Strange was a sort of magic version of Iron Man, this is the Asian answer
to Black Panther.
Diandra: Yeah, comic writers like to recycle material.
Getting to the village requires crossing a bamboo forest that is capable of
turning itself into a maze from hell and sending cars right off cliffs. Xu
is the only survivor of the expedition he forced to take him there and he
faces off against a woman capable of controlling the wind Crouching Tiger
style, which quickly turns more into a courtship ritual than a fight. She
slams him into a tree and drops him face first in a pond, then disappears.
And a woman identified as "Li" concludes that that was "the first time I met
your father." And we skip right to Li telling a child Shang Chi that there's
more he needs to know about the ten rings when he's older. Oh, and she won
that fight because her people are "empowered by the magic of the Great
Protector" but she left those powers in Ta Lo with the dragon so she could
have a kid. She gives him a jade stone that she says will help him find his
way "home" if he is ever lost.
And then we skip right to Shang as an adult living in San Francisco and
working as a parking valet at a fancy hotel with his buddy Awkwafina (Katy),
who does what she does in anything she's in and completely steals the show.
She also drops some exposition that his name is now Shaun and they've been
friends for ten years like that doesn't make for some awkward dialogue.
Chrissy:Yeah, I know I periodically
remind my friends of how long I've known them.
Diandra: Just in case they forget, you know. Speaking of which,
here's my friend Emilio, who I've known for twenty five years. Did you
call him?
Emilio: Yeah, she said something about needing me to know if you
were making Star Trek references or not.
Diandra: Dude. I've known you for twenty years and you don't trust
me not to pull a fast one on you?
Chrissy:We've been recapping for twenty years. I've known you
longer, which is why I KNOW you would.
Diandra: I'm sorry, my brain kind of stopped working after you said
we've been writing these things for twenty years.
Chrissy:Well, the good news is that no one will be able to tell the
difference.
Diandra: ..................you're so going to pay for that.
Because that wasn't enough of an exposition dump, we have Shaun and Katy
explaining to a friend's boyfriend at a restaurant that they met in high
school when his parents immigrated to the states and she stopped a bully
from beating him up by screaming the lyrics of Hotel California in his face.
"It's the art of confusion," she explains. "Works great on stupid people."
The friend is having a bit of an existential crisis based on the fact that
half the planet just disappeared for five years and she thinks the two of
them aren't living Their Best Life.
Emilio: This is a conversation that
really resonated with everyone who lived through the never ending
pandemic.
Diandra: Yeah. I forget which social media site produced the meme
about people watching "Endgame" in 2019 and scoffing that everyone would
just go on like this massively traumatizing global event never happened
and then in 2022..."...oh."
Katy is like 'okay, thanks for that, MOM' and rants at Shaun later about it
before kind of proving the friend right about them not being responsible
adults by going to an all night karaoke bar when they have to work in the
morning.
Further character establishment says Shaun picks Katy up in the morning for
work and has breakfast with her multi-generation family, including Grandma,
who answers his questions in English with Chinese like they can totally
understand each other without either of them needing to switch languages.
Until she asks when he and Katy are getting married and he explains that
they're Just Friends.
They are taking the bus to work when some thug recognizes the jade pendant
Shaun still wears and tries to take it by force. A fight worthy of Jackie
Chan breaks out to dubstep music (which would make Deadpool proud, I'm
sure). A thug with a retractable heated sword for a hand cuts the brake line
on the bus at one point, of course when it's on one of the downhill streets
and the driver is knocked unconscious by the steering wheel. So Katy has to
try to steer while Shaun continues the epic fight both inside and outside
the runaway bus. Sword Guy cuts the accordion part of the bus at one point
and Shaun gets all the bystanders in the front and has Katy make a hard turn
to snap the back end off with Sword Guy still inside it.
Chrissy:What is the best fight scene
of the MCU and why is it this?
Diandra: Yeah. Unfortunately, I can never recap action shit, so I
was never going to do it justice.
And after they do a shit ton more damage before finally getting the bus to
roll to a stop, Shaun realizes Sword Guy got the pendant anyway.
All of this is shocking to Katy, who realizes she doesn't really know that
much about Shaun. Shaun is like 'yeah, it's about to get weirder because
those guys were totally sent by my Chinese Mafia father and are going to go
after my sister I never told you about next and I need to get to her.' Katy
is like 'okay, I am DEFINITELY GOING WITH YOU AND YOU WILL NOT ARGUE WITH
ME.'
Shaun explains in flashback that Daddy Dearest started him becoming a
martial arts master when he was a kid and his mom died. Did we skip that
part?
Emilio: I just assume that mom always
dies in Disney movies.
His sister (Xu Xialing, who I'll just call Sue I guess) kind of learned in
tandem, but wasn't pushed as hard by Daddy Xu. Which is pretty much on
brand. Fun fact: I took martial arts classes until my teacher became so
focused on this one guy in class he felt was good enough to be his
apprentice that he basically ignored the rest of us. Especially the girls.
By the time Shaun was 14 and able to kill someone with any ordinary object,
his dad gave him an "assignment", which is totally code for made him a Mafia
hit man. Except he just ran away. And changed his name from Shang ("shong")
to Shaun, which gives Katy a good laugh at his deep cover skills.
Once they get in country, Shaun and Katy end up at an Asian Fight Club for
some damn reason where Wong is fighting some sort of monster in the main
ring because the writers are just coming up with shit by random dice rolls
at this point.
Chrissy:Hey, SOMEONE had to earn a
living after you handed a goddamn infinity stone to a genocidal maniac and
spent the next five years as a pile of dust.
Diandra: This again? It's called STRATEGY. I totally knew it would
work out in the end and wasn't just pinning my hopes on an exact series of
circumstances playing out that would lead to the ONLY scenario I saw us
winning.
Emilio: I like how you just went with that like 'Chrissy's playing
Wong now? Okay.'
Diandra: Yeah, I kind of figured she would once I realized the
bickering married couple dynamic had carried from "Infinity War".
Chrissy:This is definitely going to be a thing in the next two
movies, just so you know.
Diandra: Great.
Wong wins by using portals to get the monster to literally punch himself
out. And then Shaun has to fight his sister because sibling relationships in
the MCU. Shrug. Also because she later points out that even though they
refused to train her along with the boys, she was able to teach herself to
do everything they did, only better. Turns out she begged him not to leave
all those years ago and he lied that he would come back for her in three
days. And after six years she realized that was bullshit and now she owns
the fight club. And she has an identical jade pendant, which after she kicks
his ass and they retreat to her office to talk he warns her the Ten Rings
are after. And then ninjas attack the building and Sue runs off and leaves
Shaun to fight his way out and Katy nearly falls to her death until Sue
comes back and saves her and joins the fight because she was just teaching
him a lesson about abandonment. Or something. Random dice rolls, I'm telling
you. One of the ninjas gets the pendant from her and Shaun nearly defeats
him before dad shows up to "take them home."
In yet another flashback, Daddy Xu tells Shaun he will have the rings of
power and immortality when he shows him he's strong enough to "carry them".
This is followed by Daddy Xu explaining away the whole Mandarin thing in the
present. A terrorist appropriated the name of The Ten Rings for a
"boogyman", but didn't know Xu's name so he went with "The Mandarin", which
is stupid because it only refers to either an orange or a chicken dish using
said oranges.
Chrissy:Or...like...the most
prominent Chinese dialect.
It turns out Daddy Xu has gone by many names in the centuries he's been
living including the Warrior King and Master Khan but his real name is
Wenwu, but Li was the only one who ever called him that.
We go back to the man eating forest for a montage of their courtship while
he rambles about how she CHANGED him that ends in her leaving the village
and him putting the rings in a box. He claims he finally found "something
worth growing old for" as we go through them getting married and raising the
two kids. And then she died. And the teenage kids ran away. He started
researching Ta Lo again and discovered what they are guarding: some sort of
gate where he is convinced Li is waiting for them. Because he heard her
voice telling him as much, as well as begging him to "save her from her
people." He is convinced she would still be alive and they would all be
together in that village had the villagers not refused to let him in because
he was deemed unworthy and that they now have her locked behind a gate as
punishment for leaving.
Chrissy:Maybe it's time we had the
discussion about putting dad in a home. I mean...he IS over 300. 500?
Diandra: Young in Asgardian years, anyway.
Wenwu plugs the jade pendant stones into the eyes of a dragon sculpture. The
eyes glow and it "vomits a magical water map" (Katy's words) on the floor
containing the key to getting through the moving bamboo forest. Apparently
the one path only opens at a specific time, conveniently in three days.
Emilio: Really like the number three
don't they?
Diandra: It's comforting. Most people stop at three.
Chrissy:Hello, "Sherlock" reference I wasn't expecting.
Diandra: No, but seriously, it might be a lucky number. And four is
unlucky. Unless that's just in Japan.
The kids and Katy regroup to talk about whether the stories mom told them
about her village were true and whether it makes a difference one way or
another since dad is so determined to get to her that if the villagers try
to reject him again he is threatening to burn the whole place down. And then
they find Trevor in the basement, who was brought in because Wenwu tried to
hunt him down and kill him after the whole Mandarin debacle until he did a
spontaneous Shakespeare monologue that entertained his men and he ended up
hiring him instead. Look...just...go with it, okay? And then this bizarre
little fuzzy winged creature that looks like the footstool in "Beauty and
the Beast" ambles out and jumps in Trevor's lap and he's surprised to find
out that Shaun and Katy can see "Morris" too because he thought it was a
hallucination.
Chrissy:Five bucks says the writer
who came up with this was speaking from personal experience.
"Morris" talks to Trevor, who understands him somehow and explains that
Wenwu smuggled him from the village where he knew Li and he would like to go
home now. And again, conveniently, he can guide them there. Through the
forest maze of death. Trevor says he's "90% confident" in his ability to do
this, then the footstool trills and he corrects that he actually said "19%".
"I've done dumber things with worse odds," Katy says.
The siblings, Katy and now Trevor all escape Daddy's clutches with the
footstool dog and go to the forest of death. They have to sit in the car at
the edge of the forest for a while listening to Trevor ramble stupidly about
how he got into acting because he thought the actors in The Planet of the
Apes were actual monkeys because Morris says they need to WAIT for the right
time. And when that comes, Trevor translates Morris' directions through the
moving trees. And then they go through a waterfall that portals them to a
clearing in magic land with firebirds, anime foxes, more footstool dogs and
some multicolored goat horse things. They arrive at the village proper where
they are met with open hostility and what looks like some Chinese lion
statues that have come to life until Michelle Yeoh tells everyone to stand
down and introduces herself as their auntie.
Emilio: In this universe anyway.
Diandra: Yeah, I haven't seen "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
yet, which I assume is what you are referring to and you're not trying to
trick me into referencing the
other
multiversal story she's done recently.
Emilio: Uh...yeah.
Diandra: Chrissy put you up to it, didn't she?
Chrissy:Think of it as a test. If you can avoid an obvious
connection to Star Trek, I've probably already lost this bet.
Diandra: Mmm-hmm. I'm starting to understand why you made this bet
going into this particular movie.
Emilio: I told her about the obvious parallels.
Diandra: Et tu, Emilio?
Emilio: [shrugs] I think it would be kind of fun to recap those
movies with you two.
Shaun says they don't have time for lengthy reunions because their father is
coming and he's bringing his army. Auntie Michelle takes them to a river
bordering the town with a giant cliff on the other side, which she says is
where the "Dark Gate" the people of the town have been guarding for 4,000
years is located. Shaun reminds the audience that Daddy thinks mom is behind
the gate. Auntie asks where the hell he would get that idea because they are
all told it holds in something evil. Sue says he claims Mom is talking to
him. Auntie asks if he's wearing the rings by any chance. Shaun says yeah,
why?
So she takes them on a tour through the history of Ta Lo, which was attacked
many many years ago by the "dweller in darkness", which is depicted in a
mural by an army of monkey/bat/squid creatures.
Chrissy:Yeah, Batman really went off
the rails.
She kind of acknowledges the multiverse here because this all happened in
another universe and the Army of Darkness was threatening to cross over into
THIS universe where the people of Ta Lo were able to hold them from
portaling over with the help of The Great Protector, who is totally a
dragon. And a she. Ultimately, they trapped the dark dwellers behind the
gate and their descendants have been guarding the gate to make sure they
don't escape again ever since. The Dark Dwellers (who Shaun is now calling
Soul Eaters like where the hell did that description come from?)
periodically lure people to try to bust them out, which is definitely what
is happening to their dad. And they're targeting him because the power of
the ten rings actually can open the gate.
Katy is recruited to join the archers because why the hell not? And Shaun
and Sue are given suits their mother kept waiting for the inevitability they
would return. And Sue is given an arrowhead on the end of a rope weapon. And
Shaun asks Auntie to show him how his mother defeated his father in combat.
Chrissy:Uh...by flirting? Are you
sure about this?
She shows him some "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" moves and says "your
mother knew who she was...do you?" They do some of the moves that look more
like dancing than fighting before she does the wind summoning trick and lays
him out flat. Then she maybe sort of tells him that he doesn't need her help
because he is the "product" of both of his parents, plus every other
ancestor they are the product of.
He has a flashback of mom teaching him to channel light and darkness,
interrupted when some thugs who actually identify themselves as the Iron
Gang come around to make "someone" pay for whatever dad did to them at some
point. It turns out this is how she died because while she took out several
of them, there was, like, two dozen guys. And Shaun saw the whole thing. Dad
concludes that it would never have happened had he not given up the Ten
Rings and now HE has to make THEM pay.
Chrissy:Because that's the thing
about gangs. It just never ends.
Diandra: Until a couple kids from opposite gangs fall in love and
die tragically. Yeah.
Wenwu takes Shaun to the Iron Gang's hidey hole so he can positively ID them
before using the rings to slaughter them. Also right in front of Shaun.
Because he HAS TO LEARN SOMETIME THAT THIS IS HOW WE DO THINGS. So the
"mission" he was sending Shaun on when he was 14 was killing the man who
sent those guys to kill his mom. And Wenwu promises they will both rebuild
the entire Ten Rings army thing when he gets back.
In the present, Shaun tells Katy that he lied to her when he said he
couldn't actually kill the guy his father sent him after. He totally did and
then he tried to start over in America with a new, Americanized name and
pretended like none of that dark shit ever happened. But now he realizes his
dad ultimately killed his mom and now he's hell bent on destroying the place
she came from, so...he has to die.
So we have a battle sequence sort of like the Asian version of the one in
"Black Panther" with those weird lions instead of armored rhinos. Wenwu just
walks past everyone fighting and Shaun follows to fight him one on one.
Wenwu wipes the floor with him a bit before getting him good and riled with
the accusation that he could have done something to prevent his mother's
death. Somehow. And then Shaun suggests that maybe mom wouldn't want
anything to do with him anymore even if he could bring her back and Wenwu
magic ring punches him into the river. Then he goes to the Evil Gate and
starts...magic punching his way through that. One of the demon creatures
escapes and heads for the ongoing battle in the village, where Sue delivers
this clunky ass line to Machete Arm Thug: "those things are gonna kill us
all if we don't work together!"
Emilio: Yeah, that's another
continuing theme of the Marvel universe.
Machete Arm is like 'nah, fuck that' and then one of the demons sucks the
soul out of another thug and latches on to him and nothing either of them
does has any effect at all, but Auntie kills it with a special stick
designed specifically to vaporize the demons and he's like 'okay, yeah,
sure. Sounds like a great idea.'
For the audience benefit, Auntie explains that any soul those things rip out
gets taken back to feed the Dweller in Darkness until it gets strong enough
to break the gate.
Katy tries to join the fight and the lead archer initially refuses on
account of she just got here and barely knows what she's doing, but after a
while gets desperate enough to let her. Everyone gathers at the river -
including Trevor for some damn reason - to face off against the soul
suckers. Obviously they don't quite know what to do with him and he doesn't
know what to do with himself either because Morris finds him playing dead on
the battlefield a couple scenes later and flops onto his back next to him
like an adorable, cuddly abomination.
Meanwhile, Shaun wakes up underwater and comes face to face with an actual
goddamn dragon. Because that's what The Great Protector is: a giant white
Chinese CGI dragon. Which he hops on and rides to the surface, where it eats
some of the soul suckers. He jumps off on the ledge with the gate to go
another round with Daddy Dearest. At one point, Daddy slings five of the
rings at him and he somehow...recodes them, turning them from blue to yellow
and then taking control of them so the fight is more even matched. And then
Wenwu punches him into the ground and when the dust settles ALL of the rings
are yellow and floating around Shaun. He gathers them into a spinning ball
and just...throws them on the ground and goes back to pleading with dad to
see reason.
And then the evil soul sucker queen dragon bursts out of the gate and
Wenwu's last act is to shove Shaun out of the way before it catches him and
sucks out his soul. And to officially transfer all ten rings to him. There's
some CGI bullshit as the two dragons fight each other with Shaun and Sue
riding the white one. The black dragon catches the white one and starts
sucking out ITS soul, which the lead archer notes will make it completely
unstoppable before he is killed by a demon. Katy manages to hit the black
one with an arrow, shaking it's hold and returning them back to their CGI
battle. Shaun manages to kill the thing by firing all ten rings down it's
throat and turning them into a spinning ball again that explodes.
Chrissy:Y'know...as cleanup in this
universe goes...disposing of demon dragon chunks at least makes for an
interesting story.
Diandra: Tell that to whoever had to get the giant dragon head out
of the control center on the Rainbow Bridge.
The remaining population of Ta Lo have a lantern ceremony to honor everyone
they lost, including Shaun and Sue's parents. And the white dragon forms
half of a yin yang symbol underwater in case you didn't catch on to that
symbolism earlier.
Shaun and Katy return to that bar and tell their friends about this crazy
adventure where they had to save the universe and their friends are like
'yeah, okay, cute little bedtime story there. Whatever.' And then Wong comes
out of a portal, getting the attention of everyone in the bar, and tells
Shaun to come with him and bring the ten rings. Oh, and bring Katy. She's
important now. This is explained...sort of...by a mid credit scene where
Wong is inspecting the rings, with the help of Bruce, who is inexplicably
back in human form, and Carol, whose hair is long again and ARE YOU HAPPY
NOW? Wong notes that the rings don't match anything the sorcerers know of.
Bruce says they're not vibranium. Carol says they aren't from any alien
species she knows of. She asks how long Shang's dad had them. Shang says a
thousand years. Bruce says they're MUCH older than that according to some
"scientific" reading. Wong belatedly explains that he summoned them because
they could FEEL Shang using the rings all the way in Kamar Taj because the
rings have some sort of beacon inside them that is sending a message
to...someone. Somewhere. Not really sure yet. Something bleats at Carol and
she says she has to go, but Bruce can give them her number. She disappears
and Bruce is like 'yeaaaaaaaahhhhhhh, she always does that. I don't know her
number' like, nice of them to vaguely note just how much is going on between
movies here. He welcomes the new kids to "the circus." And Wong gives them a
speech that could probably be read as 'Marvel owns your ass now.' And then
the three of them go sing karaoke. No, I'm not kidding, unfortunately.
Chrissy:In my defense, I probably
drank too much "tea".
Diandra: That was in a different universe.
Chrissy:What, he can't do that here too?
Emilio: I feel like it might explain some things in "No Way Home"
if he did.
Diandra: God, this really is going to be a thing in that recap,
isn't it?
Emilio: Yay! Something to look forward to.
And in the post credit scene we find out that Sue was left to shut down
their father's operations and instead takes over while the completely
unsubtle lyrics "out with the old, in with the new" play us out.
Part of me regrets not making that one a full recap, but on the other
hand...that was a lot of fight scenes. I don't think making it longer would
have done more than make those tedious. Now...moving on to one I don't
regret shortening at all...
"Hawkeye"
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, Vera Farmiga, Florence Pugh, Tony
Dalton, Fra Fee, Alaqua Cox, Linda Cardellini, Clayton English
So here's the thing. When Chrissy realized I managed to avoid the Star Trek
reference in the ONE PLACE in this abridged recap when it was most likely,
she absolved Emilio of his duties so he wouldn't have to sit through six
hours of "Hawkeye" with us. Then we took a break. And then the highest court
in our country announced its intentions to turn us into the Republic of
Gilead. Which not only is the first time EVER they have actually taken away
rights from a large swath or people instead of granting them, but I
discovered is a direct first amendment violation on Jews like Chrissy
because "freedom of religion" only refers to the one "true" religion as far
as Republikkkans are concerned. It is tempting for me to escape into fiction
instead of recaps, especially since my main WIP takes place in early 2016
before the world went to shit. But I'm remembering the person in the
comments of one of my stories back in 2016 telling me to treat this sort of
thing like the terrorist act it is and not let it disrupt our lives. Any
more than is unavoidable anyway.
So. I can't promise this will be pretty or that either Chrissy or I will be
able to keep our bitter rage in check. But we're going to do it anyway. Here
goes nothing.
We begin by traveling back to 2012, where a little girl named Kate overhears
her parents fighting and talking about moving and using foreshadowing
statements like "things don't just fall from the sky". She is getting a
board game from her room to play with mom when the Chitauri attack and
everything wobbles with explosions outside the apartment and giant metal
dragons and superpowered people fly past windows. She runs to her dad's
office, where the wall has been blasted away entirely, revealing the nearby
tower that still reads STA-K. A Chitauri spots her and starts flying toward
her and is hit with an exploding arrow. Before her mom drags her away, she
sees Clint firing arrows and jumping off a nearby building.
At her dad's funeral, Kate worries about the possibility that those aliens
might attack again and decides that she needs to protect herself and her
mom. And because of all of the Avengers, she specifically imprinted on
Clint, she decides she needs a bow and arrow and archery lessons to do that.
Chrissy:Her mom should just be glad
the first thing she saw wasn't the Hulk.
Diandra: Although maybe that's where we're going with She Hulk. I
don't know.
We flash ahead to the present...or after the whole Thanos Blip thing,
whenever that's supposed to be. Grown up Kate demonstrates her mad archery
skills by accidentally destroying the bell tower on her college campus
because somebody bet she couldn't make it ring using arrows or something.
Typical dumb college kid stuff, really.
This entire series takes place in the week before Christmas, which is
presumably why Disney felt pressured to release "Black Widow" without being
able to do it in theaters, Scarlet Johansson's contract be damned. COVID
already fucked up their timelines and they weren't about to wait another
whole year or do it in the spring or something.
And this is where we introduce to the MCU the insane bullshit that is
Rogers: the Musical, which I like to present as the following thought
exercise. Imagine if somebody pitched an idea for 9/11: the Musical in the
real world. I don't mean telling the story of how it impacted a family
living a couple boroughs over, which I think actually exists. I mean the
actual terrorist attack with first responders dancing and singing and noting
how attractive they are. How fast do you suppose that person would be kicked
from the room? Because that's the in universe equivalent here. Clint and his
kids actually go to see this bullshit and probably the only thing keeping
Clint from having a meltdown watching people doing a fucking musical about
the New York attack while dressed like his friends is the fact that we're
finally doing the "Hawkeye is deaf" story from the comics (reinterpreting it
as hearing loss from all the explosions he's been around) and he has his
hearing aids switched off.
Chrissy:It's actually sort of
tolerable that way.
Diandra: Yeah. Sort of.
Chrissy:Wasn't there a Titanic musical a while back?
Diandra: Yeah, in the 90s, after basically everyone who would have
been through it was dead. That would be the other way this would maybe be
less offensive.
Apparently there's some fan wank about why Ant Man is a character in this
travesty, but I don't care. To add insult to injury, some guy tries to get
Clint to do a selfie for his kids who love him for some reason while they're
both standing at urinals in the bathroom. Because I guess New Yorkers in the
Marvel Universe are just...massively clueless. Thankfully, Clint's kids seem
sane enough to realize how crazy it is and they all leave early, going to a
restaurant where he is treated more reverently by getting thanked by the
waiter and their meal comped.
I'm not sure I really followed the actual plot of this show between fight
scenes (something about Kate's mom's fiance being rich and his uncle being
murdered and him possibly having an organized crime ring of Russian goons)
and I really don't want to get into anything that even remotely smacks of
politics right now, so...I'm mostly going to focus on the character moments
here.
Kate picks up a stray dog, who of course steals every scene he's in and
possibly for that reason is completely forgotten about for a couple whole
episodes.
Kate is a master bullshit artist who, when confronted trying to pose as a
waiter at a party with a black market auction going on in the basement by
the guy she claims hired her, bursts into tears and says she quits because
"you don't even know my name." The auction is attacked by some thugs looking
for a watch and she ends up grabbing the sword Hawkeye used during his
Purple Arrow Ronin phase because the writers needed some reason for the two
of them to get together and him seeing her posing as the Ronin works as well
as anything. Also, some thugs attack her thinking she IS him and set fire to
her apartment, so there's that.
Clint is perhaps unsurprisingly really good at caring for battle injuries.
And there's a mildly amusing nod to his replaceability at one point when
they run into some Avengers cosplayers on the street and Arrow Person is
clearly Katniss Everdeen, not him. And again, Ant Man is in there.
Chrissy:He's the most beloved
character even though those kids didn't recognize Scott in "Endgame".
Diandra: Yeah, that's definitely not it.
And this is where we introduce Maya, Kingpin's deaf, one legged adopted
daughter. If you don't know who Kingpin is, just go in any nerd group
anywhere online and ask. Assuming you're willing to wade through the shit
you will be bombarded with.
Chrissy:I just know him as the bad
guy from "Into the Spiderverse".
Diandra: Yeah. Because we weren't watching the Netflix stuff that
is slowly being integrated into the MCU now. Anyway. Kingpin is the boss
of the thugs who are after the Hawkeyes.
We get flashbacks of Maya with her biological father, a Native American, who
can't afford to send her to a special deaf school, but enrolls her in
martial arts classes to make up for it. Even though it looks like he's going
to die when she's a child, it doesn't happen until she's an adult. So she
might not have been adopted by Kingpin in the MCU. She just thinks of him as
her "uncle".
She is looking for the Ronin, because I guess he was responsible for her
dad's death and she wants revenge. Clint claims Ronin is dead, killed by the
Black Widow and he knows this because he was there when it happened.
So...he's totally speaking metaphorically. They fight and Maya knocks out
his hearing aid and steps on it so he has to spend the majority of the fight
scene effectively deaf, making coordinating with Kate hilariously awkward.
They escape Maya's goon squad and go on a pretty epic car chase while Kate
shoots "trick" arrows that she complains are not labeled so she has no clue
if they're going to explode or release smoke or at one point just stick
uselessly to Maya's windshield because the end is a plunger. They take out a
van with two arrows, one of which has Pym particles or something on the end
to turn the other into a giant arrow and jump on a passing subway train.
Clint gets the hearing aid fixed, but still turns it off so he doesn't have
to listen to Kate prattle. She possibly gets revenge by designing a costume
for him (that a guy in a LARP group they befriended after he briefly
acquired the Ronin suit can put together I guess) that is totally the
classic comic purple Wolverine costume, which he says his wife would divorce
him if he actually wore.
Chrissy:Eh, maybe. She would
DEFINITELY laugh herself into a stupor.
Also, standing out is kind of the opposite of what he needs to do to work
effectively. Also, he enlists his wife for help at one point, which leads to
the reveal at the end of the series that she was a SHIELD agent with a
designation comic book nerds recognize as belonging to Mockingbird.
I'm...not thrilled with this as Mockingbird is a badass who was only briefly
married to Clint in the comics and Laura abandoned whatever badass job she
MIGHT have once had to be known as nothing more than the wife of an Avenger?
Mother of his kids? Please tell me that designation doesn't mean she
actually is Mockingbird and they're just throwing away her whole plot.
Clint is still broken up about Natasha, as well as haunted by those years he
spent playing assassin. This brings us to the moment that was set up in
Black Widow where a mission to get the watch that proves Laura's secret
former identity back from Maya is interrupted by Yelena trying to kill Clint
and giving up for a while when it proves to be too much of a hassle with
Kate and Maya interfering. Or something. It's kind of contrived. Clint tries
to shake Kate if only because her mom appealed to him as a parent not
wanting to lose her child.
So we get a little flashback of what happened to Yelena during the
Snappening, coupled with a sort of recap of stuff from Black Widow, which,
again, explains why that movie had to be released before this. She and
another former widow are on a mission to save one they believe is still
under thrall (Ana), as she has been doing for many since the end of that
movie. She goes to wash her face in the bathroom sink and dusts just as
she's about to throw the handfuls of water. She reforms in an altered
bathroom and finds Ana with her husband and a small child calling her mommy
and Ana has to explain about Thanos and the missing five years. Yelena's
first thought is of finding her sister to tell her she's okay.
Chrissy:Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhh. About
that.
So now that we're caught up, Yelena crashes Kate's place and in a fit of
boredom waiting for her to get back, makes herself some dinner and offers it
to Kate when she gets back. She insists she doesn't want to hurt Kate. She
just wants to kill her mentor. And, like...do some New York sight seeing,
which includes a thing I apparently missed at some point: the Statue of
Liberty in this world is now outfitted with a Captain America shield.
Probably since Thanos' defeat? I'm guessing? Yelena asks why everyone has
just FORGIVEN Clint for everything he's done. Kate says saving the world
probably balanced whatever he did before. Yelena says he didn't though. Her
sister Nat did. And Yelena's wording gets more passive here as she tells
Kate that Nat is dead BECAUSE OF Clint, not that he killed her. Which is
probably telling. She has probably the best line of the series here:
"however he convinced you about who he is or how many people think or call
him a hero...truth is it doesn't matter. We are defined by what we do. Not
by nice words."
Chrissy:This is for all the "support
our troops" and "family values" Republicans who cut funding for veterans
and anything that might help children.
Diandra: I mean, you can broaden that out to a lot of other things,
but yeah. There was a line in the "Family Guy" spinoff about a character
being a Republican meaning he was too much of a coward to actually join
the military and compensating for that by being very loudly and
obnoxiously "supportive" of people who do.
Once she is satisfied that Kate has lost touch with Clint, she leaves with a
warning for Kate to not get in her way again and that was probably the best
scene of the series.
Possibly at the same time they put decorations on the Statue of Liberty,
they put up a plaque at Pershing Square commemorating the Battle of New York
and the first assembly of the Avengers. Which is where Clint goes to talk to
Nat about why the FUCK she insisted on "winning" that fight over the
infinity stone. Which begs the question...does he not know where she's
buried? He cries a little, says he misses her and apologizes "for what I'm
about to do". Which is arrange a meeting with Maya so he can, in Laura's
words "end this". Which involves threatening her against ever coming for him
and his family, but also explaining that she's being used and it was really
her boss who killed her dad. And then he has to escape before she kills him,
but at least now she has doubts.
Kate and Clint are reunited so everything can come together, which is when
we find out that her mom was trying to disassociate the family business from
Kingpin and also hired Yelena to kill Clint. All because of Kate,
ostensibly. And yeah, it's pretty convoluted. Clint and Kate make a whole
bunch of "trick arrows" using both Stark and Pym tech. He lectures her about
What It Means to be a hero and she tells him about that day the Chitauri
invaded and she saw him "fighting aliens with a stick and a string" and
jumping from buildings despite the fact that he has absolutely no
superpowers. "And I thought if he could do that, then I didn't have to be
scared." And also, it proved that superpowers weren't actually a requirement
for being a hero.
Chrissy:Yeah, you just have to be
willing to toe the line between bravery and insanity.
Diandra: Yeah, what was it he told Wanda? Something about 'yeah,
this is
fucking crazy, but it's my job and SOMEBODY has to do it.'
They all end up at a fancy party where Maya's translator/protector and
Yelena both try to kill Clint. While Clint is dodging the first, Kate tries
to deflect the second, which mostly just slows her down. Clint gets caught
in the Rockefeller Christmas tree while jumping from a building,
necessitating Kate shooting the whole thing down with an acid arrow. And
they have a big fight scene right on the skating rink with both Clint and
Kate wearing matching purple and black suits wherein they somehow manage to
use just the right trick arrows at the right moments without looking at what
they're grabbing from the quivers. Or sometimes...looking at what they're
shooting at either.
A lot of other bullshit happens here because this plot is chaos. Maya and
her interpreter fight and she has to kill him. Kingpin tries to kill Kate's
mom and has apparently gained superpowers that even the people who saw him
in Daredevil were confused by. But Kate manages to subdue him by setting all
the explosive arrows off at once. Or something. Although maybe Maya was able
to kill him a few minutes later. It's not really clear. And mom is arrested
for killing her fiance's uncle and framing him.
Yelena catches up to Clint and he tries to convince her that her sister
sacrificed herself willingly to save everyone. He finally gets through to
her with a totally awkwardly contrived recurrence of Nat's call and response
whistle that Clint proves he knows because Nat talked about her little
sister and how much she loved her all the time. And they share a good cry
over how much they miss her because this series is apparently where they put
all the closure for Nat that was missing in "Endgame".
And the whole thing ends with Kate burning the Ronin suit and spending
Christmas with the Barton family. Which is probably the most cheerful ending
of all the Disney+ series so far.
And after not having any mid credit scenes the entire series, they have ONE
at the very end that they totally waste on the complete version of that
Steve Rogers musical number. I don't think I will ever NOT be annoyed by
that.
Chrissy:Let's talk again about how COVID affected this franchise
before we get to the two movies that were probably most affected by the
shakeup.
Diandra: Yeah, it's becoming clear that the initial wave that
triggered full lockdowns and shuttering of theaters happened at the worst
possible point in the planned order of releases. Although, as tempting as it
is to assume that this was supposed to be released around Christmas of 2020,
closing off the Infinity Saga BEFORE "WandaVision", "Multiverse of Madness",
"Loki" and "No Way Home" (in that order) went skipping off in a new insane
direction, it was announced as a 2021 release months before the pandemic
even broke out.
Chrissy:Making it the only thing that was actually released on
schedule while everything else around it was pushed back, reshuffled and
generally thrown into chaos.
Diandra: Yeah, it looks that way. Although "Loki" wasn't that far off
the original plan either. I wonder if we should start thinking of these as
two separate branches of storyline. One that continues as normal from
"Endgame" and includes "Widow", "Falcon", "Hawkeye" and probably "Love and
Thunder" and "Shang Chi". They can mostly be separate from all the
multiverse stuff with the three magic users and the order is a bit less
important aside from "Hawkeye" coming after "Widow" because of Yelena's
through story.
Chrissy:So it's okay that you lumped these three together. Could
probably have done "Eternals" here too.
Diandra: I thought we agreed we were pretending that movie doesn't
exist?
Chrissy:Right. Okay, well, I guess "No Way Home" is next then.
Diandra: Or we could take a break and do something else first. I
mean...I'm catching up faster than usual by not doing full recaps, so we
have time.
Chrissy:Like?
Diandra: The Star Trek movies?
Chrissy:But you won the bet. The terms were if you didn't make a Star
Trek reference you didn't have to do those.
Diandra: If you'll recall the beginning of this recap, I said if I
managed not to make a Star Trek reference, you agreed to quit bugging me
about making Star Trek references from now on. I never said anything about
whether or not I would recap them.
Chrissy:....................goddamn you.
Diandra: Or we could do "Night Manager".
Chrissy:Okay, now I think you're just messing with me and will NEVER
do those movies.
Diandra: Or we could do that second SNL Benedict hosted since I
already did the first.
Chrissy:......................yeah, okay.
Diandra: Wow, you're actually agreeing to that?
Chrissy:Well, if I remember that first one, I kind of involved myself
anyway, so it might be fun to just join you from the start.