In a little over two weeks, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings premieres only in theaters, but the bad news is that it isn’t guaranteed to hit the same box office heights we’ve come to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. People are still unwilling to head back to theaters in big numbers, and a lot of fans have already made it clear they’re happy to wait 45 days to see it on Disney Plus instead of packing themselves into a cinema at their own risk.
As a result, Destin Daniel Cretton’s fantasy martial arts comic book blockbuster is tracking for the MCU’s lowest opening weekend ever, even if $35-55 million would still put it in the higher end of pandemic-era debuts. Hopefully that doesn’t affect any chances of potential sequels, because the first reactions have been rolling in after last night’s world premiere, and they’re overwhelmingly positive.
As you can see below, the vast majority of the praise is being directed at a star-making performance from Simu Liu, the connections to the wider mythology and perhaps most important of all, what looks to be some of the most exciting and inventive action sequences we’ve ever seen from the MCU.
Kevin Feige has been planning on making Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings for two decades, so he was always going to ensure that every possible stop was pulled out to deliver the best version of the story. On that front, the movie appears to have delivered and then some, so we can only cross our fingers and hope that enthusiastic buzz has an effect on the public, convincing them to catch it on the biggest screen possible.