Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings may have lacked the level of hype of the MCU’s past box office hits, but Simu Liu’s breakout performance has just put Shang-Chi at the top of a coveted ranking: the Rotten Tomatoes audience score charts.
Funnily enough, Shang-Chi’s premiere came at a time when blockbuster movies are still struggling to find a footing in theaters and several studios have resorted to dual streaming releases to make up for lost box office earnings. However, if Shang-Chi’s opening weekend is any indication, its massive $146 million worldwide haul has already proved people are hungry for more movies like it, and at the same time, it’s almost ensured Shang-Chi will turn a solid profit for Marvel Studios and Disney.
Regardless of it being impossible for Shang-Chi to topple the billion-dollar earnings of past MCU blockbusters, at the time of writing its 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes would make it the absolute king when it comes to such ratings on the site for comic book-inspired films. Currently, the highest-ranked film of such kind on the Tomatometer is Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse at 97%, and while Shang-Chi’s 92% rating from critics put it behind in that category, the former still pales in comparison to Marvel Studios’ latest flick, where it’s audience score is currently sitting at a towering 98%.
To put things into perspective, the MCU’s box office king, Avengers: Endgame, holds a 94% on the Tomatometer and 90% in audience score, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight boasts 94% in both categories, the first Iron Man has 94% and 91%, respectively, and, even the Black Panther origin story has a lopsided 96% critics’ score paired with a 76% audience rating. For any Shang-Chi haters and doubters out there, such a metric will surely drive home the idea that this movie is the real deal.
Shang-Chi is already an interesting story because of the way Marvel Studios and the film’s writer had to adapt its source material, which is mostly comprised of early ’70s comic books filled with racial stereotypes that have been slowly retconned in recent years. The result is not only a Shang-Chi with some of the best MCU action out there, but a movie that -just like Black Panther- manages to tell a self-contained origin story that’s really hard to dislike, all without the pulling too much on its readily available MCU connections.
Even if Rotten Tomatoes scores are a fickle metric to judge by, being freed from the duties and fan service obligations of an Avengers team-up allows Shang-Chi to thrive in the MCU’s more matured Phase Four, just as Eternals and Spider-Man: No Way Home are right around the corner to introduce more multiversal madness before Doctor Strange’s sequel drops next year.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is now playing in theaters.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
