Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

This was so close to the home run the rather humdrum and wildly uneven Phase 4 needed. SO. CLOSE. 80% of this movie is pure magic. The kind of fresh approach Marvel has needed for the MCU. The reverence for Chinese culture without fetishizing it as "mystical" or "foreign". The action scenes are among the best the MCU has had perhaps ever, due to the choice not to carve up a 30 second fight scene with 367 cuts. It's filmed almost like a dance, lending a beauty and grace to the action. The direction is lush and grand, paying just as much mind in how to capture and present big cities as it does pastoral countryside villages. And the acting! Oh man, the acting and the story being told here about complicated family dynamics, self-identity, and processing grief, are done with the deftest of hands. This is the kind of movie the old geezers like Scorcese and the self-important fart-sniffers like Villeneuve refuse to believe exist. The story and the acting from everybody here is masterful. I know one of the big fears of all these new characters in Phase 4 was "why should we care about new people?", but this movie does a fantastic job giving you a reason why. And then there's the ending. You came SO CLOSE, Shang-Chi. You came so close, but then you remembered you're an MCU movie, and the CGI two-armies-fighting and laser beams and the destruction porn kicked in. Don't get me wrong, it's well done, it isn't boring by any stretch. But when the rest of the movie before it is SO strong, and SO different, and the climax couldn't be more standard-issue, it feels so jarring and so disappointing. The ending feels like a huge corporate mandate; "WE MUSTN'T DEVIATE FROM THE FORMULA!", I can hear someone screaming. I know it's been a criticism of the MCU for a while now, and I could forgive it when the movies were staying within a certain lane. But when more than 3/4's of this movie strives to be different, you can feel the movie struggling against this template that clamps down on the climax. I still would say the movie is worth watching. It still stands out against a lot of its brethren in the MCU. It still has a wonderful feel and look. I just wish it didn't have to put itself in a box at the end after spending so much time out of it.