the Ben Kingsley thing is him summarizing the entire plot of Iron Man 3. Which I think was good and worth watching now, although now the main twist in that movie is spoiled.  :)

At least there was Tony Leung being a romantic, commanding, confident absolute paragon of manly beauty with a stirringly realized love story. Granted he’s also the villain. But he’s not a villainous lover. Take away his villainy and his qualities that won Leiko’s heart desite everything he represented would still be th…

It’s pretty glaring If you look at the other Avenger’s storylines. And I absolutely do not think he and Katey should get together. Showing men and women as friends Is great. My wish would be Yelena - they both lost their childhood being trained to kill people, but Shang-Chi had his 10 years to be normal, which he…

That, and his “death scene” later in the movie killed me. He’s so unbelievably stupid, and I love him for it. 

I loved the little moment where Tony Leung addresses her as “American girl.”

She’s an excellent candidate for “I’m a criminal not a villain” tropes. Is she the bad guy sometimes? Of yeah, for sure. Is she ever going to do something like trigger an apocalypse or do a genocide or have any confusion where she stands in the face of a galactic-level threat? Of course not.

I think the idea is that it was the secrets keeping that from ever happening before and there was too much going on for either of them to have the bandwidth during the events of the movie, but that’s where things are headed now that things have calmed down. Their body language towards each other had changed by the…

Wong understands how important it is for a hero to have friends, and friends who understand (through experience) what they’re going through. And he also understands that sticking around super people when you have no powers of your own is heroism of another sort not to be tossed away lightly.

I loved their friend dynamic and obviously that was the goal. HOWEVER, while their smashing Asian stereotypes, they also need to smash never having an Asian man as the romantic lead or object of desire (see also gratuitous Steve Rodgers/Thor shots). They gave us that one In the cage fight, but I would like there to be…

Shout out to Shang-Chi for managing to have a female lead who wasn’t reduced to romantic interest.

She had multiple chances to bail, when things got crazy....?

I know he wasn’t in the post-credits scenes, but can we all address the severe lack of Trevor Slattery in them?

I loved both of these scenes. I’d been waiting the whole movie for someone to explain the origin of the Ten Rings, considering how many flashbacks we got explaining other things, including Ta Lo. I thought maybe there’d be some kind of connection to the Guardian or the evil monsters. But there was nothing...until the…

On one had there is nothing glamourous or chivalrous about being sold into slavery by the Portuguese. On the other hand he was the servant of Oda Nobunaga, Japan’s Abraham Lincoln who unified Japan in the 1500's. Yasuke was basically a guard dog who somehow survived the battle of Nijo Castle and possibly was later…

I found Lamar’s death was ok because he wasn’t the only significant black character in the narrative. There are other reasons that “the black person dies first” trope is problematic, but the most egregious examples seem to be when the only black character in a story (or the only black character of any importance) are…

After Karli accidentally murdered Lemar in the heat of the fight

I mentioned this on another thread, but it still strikes as kind of odd how we’re supposed to read Karli as somehow “accidentally” killing Lamar, as if otherwise the fight scene was just a school yard tussle where someone accidentally hit much harder than your “supposed to.” By this point, Karli has killed at least…

Great, now I’m imagining Zemo and Walker trying to kill each other in MAD Magazine’s Spy v. Spy style hijinks.

I would argue that Lemar’s death had little to do with motivating Walker. Of course he had an emotional response, but if anything, Lemar was holding him back from going to lengths he was already motivated to go to.