Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten RingsSave

A thousand years ago, in northern China. The voiceover (Ying Li, in Mandarin with English subtitles) narrates the legend of the Ten Rings: ten mystical bracers-of-power that were discovered in a meteor crater by a young Chinese warlord named Xu Wenwu. The rings granted Wenwu superhuman strength, near-immortality, and energy projection. He used them to conquer kingdoms across Asia for nine centuries. He overthrew dynasties. He founded the Ten Rings organization, a black-ops mercenary order that operated quietly in the shadow of every empire from the Yuan dynasty to modern times. He never aged. He never died.

1996. Xu Wenwu, looking exactly the same as he did in 1023 — Tony Leung, the legendary Hong Kong actor in his MCU debut, in his sixties looking forty — has heard rumors of a hidden village called Ta Lo where the secret to even greater power resides behind a sealed gate. He travels into a mystic forest in central China. There he encounters Ying Li (Fala Chen), the village's guardian, a martial artist whose elegant Tai Chi-fluid style stops Wenwu's Ten Rings power dead. They duel in the bamboo forest. She wins. They marry. He gives up the rings. They live for ten years in a simple Beijing apartment. They have two children: Shang-Chi and Xialing. The Ten Rings organization is dormant. The world is at peace.

Then the Iron Gang. An old enemy of Wenwu's — a rival warlord he had displaced centuries earlier — discovers Wenwu's address and sends a kill team to the apartment in 2003. Wenwu is away on business. Ying Li, in her white robes, holds off the assassins long enough to save her two children but is fatally injured in the fight. She dies on the kitchen floor in front of seven-year-old Shang-Chi. Wenwu returns. He buries his wife. He puts the rings back on. He spends the next four years tracking down every member of the Iron Gang and ending them, with seven-year-old Shang-Chi watching. By the time Shang-Chi is fourteen, his father has trained him to be the most lethal assassin in the Ten Rings organization. Xialing, his sister, has been excluded from all training because she is a daughter; she trains herself in secret by watching her father's instructors. At fourteen, Shang-Chi is sent on his first solo kill — the head of the Iron Gang. The kill goes smoothly. The boy is broken. He flees the Ten Rings compound that night, lies about his name to immigration, and starts over in San Francisco under the name Shaun.

Present day, San Francisco. Shaun (Simu Liu, in his MCU debut, mid-thirties) is working as a hotel valet alongside his best friend Katy Chen (Awkwafina, the comedic anchor of the film). They share an apartment. They drink karaoke nights. They have never advanced in their careers in a decade — they're both stuck in early-twenties valet life despite being in their thirties. Katy is sober about it. Shaun is not. He's been hiding from his father for ten years. His Mandarin is rusty. He has not spoken to his sister Xialing since he was fourteen.

Bus attack. Shaun and Katy are on a routine 10 AM commuter bus when a group of armed mercenaries — led by Razor Fist, a Ten Rings enforcer with a literal machete welded to his right wrist — board the bus. They demand a jade pendant Shaun has been wearing under his shirt since age seven (his mother's last gift). The fight on the moving bus is the film's first signature set piece — Shaun, in his street clothes, throwing perfectly choreographed Wing Chun, Tai Chi, and bagua zhang combinations across moving seats while Katy hangs off the back of the bus. The bus careens through downtown San Francisco. Shaun loses the pendant. The Ten Rings forces escape with it. Shaun realizes his father has been searching for the pendant — his sister Xialing also wears a matching pendant — because the two pendants together form a map to Ta Lo, where Wenwu believes Ying Li is still alive, imprisoned by the village.

Shaun confesses everything to Katy in their apartment. He tells her about Wenwu, the Ten Rings, his mother's death, his sister Xialing. He tells her that his father's mercenaries will be back for the matching pendant his sister wears. He has to find Xialing before his father does. They book flights to Macau, where the postcard return-address on Shaun's only contact with Xialing in ten years leads.

Macau. They find Xialing (Meng'er Zhang) running an underground martial arts fight club out of a scaffolding-wrapped construction tower in the city center. She has built her own criminal empire in ten years using her secretly-acquired Ten Rings skills, taking bets on a cage tournament. Shaun spots his sister in the crowd. Xialing recognizes him. She sets him up to fight in the next match before talking to him. The next opponent: Razor Fist, the bus attacker from San Francisco. Shaun fights Razor Fist on a scaffolding above the cage. The fight tumbles up the construction tower's exoskeleton, through balconies, across high-rise spans, with Katy and Xialing watching from a tea balcony. Xialing finally intervenes. They escape together through the city's high-rise canyon. Wenwu arrives at the tower minutes later with his full Ten Rings army and recaptures all three of them.

Ten Rings compound. Wenwu's lavish compound in the Yunnan mountains is now a haunted mansion of grief — abandoned hallways, empty banquet rooms, dust on the Ying Li shrine. Wenwu, in his rooms, explains his decade-long obsession. He's been having dreams. In the dreams, Ying Li is speaking to him. She says she's not actually dead — she's been imprisoned by the people of Ta Lo for marrying him a thousand years ago, kept alive behind their sealed gate. Wenwu intends to use both pendants (the map to Ta Lo) and the Ten Rings (to blast the gate open) to rescue her. He plans to genocide Ta Lo to free her. Shaun and Xialing both know — having seen their mother die — that Ying Li is dead. Their father has been hallucinating for ten years, manipulated by something they don't yet understand.

Escape. Shaun, Xialing, Katy, and a fourth prisoner — Trevor Slattery, the British actor from Iron Man 3 (2013) who'd been hired to impersonate the Mandarin and had been captured by Wenwu after the Iron Man 3 events for revenge — escape the compound via a hidden passage. Trevor has been imprisoned at Wenwu's mansion for years. He's accompanied by Morris, a one-eyed pet hundun (a Chinese mythical faceless creature that resembles a six-legged dog-with-wings). Morris can speak Mandarin to Trevor only. Morris is the navigator: he knows the way to Ta Lo because he was originally from Ta Lo. Trevor, Morris, Shaun, Xialing, and Katy escape on dragon-scale armored boats Trevor has been hoarding.

The journey into Ta Lo. The boats travel through a magical labyrinth of bamboo forest where the trees move and rearrange themselves to test travelers. Morris navigates with his bird-of-paradise screech. They emerge on the other side into a hidden valley filled with Chinese mythological creatures — fenghuang, qilin, baku, dragons. The village of Ta Lo is real. Shaun's aunt Ying Nan (Michelle Yeoh) welcomes him for the first time. She explains the truth: the village is not imprisoning Ying Li. Ying Li died in 2003 as Shaun knew. What Wenwu has been hearing in his dreams is the Dweller-in-Darkness, an ancient soul-eating dimensional entity that has been imprisoned behind Ta Lo's gate for centuries. The Dweller feeds on grief and amplifies it into delusion. It has been manipulating Wenwu for years using Ying Li's voice. If Wenwu opens the gate with the Ten Rings, the Dweller will escape and consume every soul on Earth.

Training. Shaun spends seven days in Ta Lo training in his mother's fighting style under Ying Nan's instruction. He learns Tai Chi, water-grounded combat, breathwork, and the Great Protector dragon technique. The Great Protector is a giant water-dwelling dragon (the size of a city block) that has been guarding the Ta Lo gate for centuries. Shaun bonds with the dragon. Katy trains with the village archers and develops a perfect bow draw. Xialing learns Ta Lo's defensive martial arts from her aunt. They prepare for Wenwu's arrival.

Wenwu's siege. Wenwu, with his full Ten Rings army of mercenaries, arrives at the Ta Lo gate. The battle is enormous — Ten Rings ground forces with energy weapons vs Ta Lo's dragon-scale-armored warriors with spears and bows, riding qilin into combat. Katy lands her one-shot bow draw on a Ten Rings sniper, saving Trevor's life. Xialing and Ying Nan command the village defense. Shang-Chi (no longer Shaun) engages Wenwu personally on the surface of the Ta Lo lake — surfaces of water itself becoming combat terrain. Wenwu uses the Ten Rings; Shang-Chi uses the Great Protector's water-element style. Wenwu is winning. He blasts Shang-Chi underwater. Shang-Chi sinks into the lake.

The Great Protector rises. The dragon, awakened by Shang-Chi's near-death, surfaces from the lake bottom and lifts Shang-Chi back into the air. Shang-Chi, with the dragon's life-essence flowing through him, attacks Wenwu and pries the Ten Rings off his father's arms in a slow-motion centerpiece of the film. But Wenwu's earlier energy blasts have already weakened Ta Lo's gate. The Dweller-in-Darkness — a flying jellyfish-octopus-vampire entity the size of a stadium — bursts through the rift and starts pulling souls from every villager in sight. The Dweller heads straight for Wenwu, who has just been freed of the Rings and is grief-paralyzed seeing his son's grief mirror his own.

Wenwu's redemption. The Dweller grabs Wenwu by the throat and starts pulling his soul out. Wenwu doesn't fight back. In his final breath, he hands the Ten Rings to Shang-Chi by sliding them down his forearm to his son's wrist, transferring them peacefully for the first time in a thousand years. Wenwu disintegrates in the Dweller's grasp. His soul vanishes. Shang-Chi puts on the Ten Rings. He summons the Great Protector. The dragon and Shang-Chi together pull the Dweller's central core out of its body and the Great Protector incinerates the entity. The Dweller dies. The Ta Lo gate seals again. The villagers and the surviving Ten Rings warriors stand on the lakeshore in stunned silence.

Aftermath. Shang-Chi has buried both his parents in the same week. He returns to San Francisco with Katy and a new pair of Ten Rings on his forearms. Xialing returns to Macau to take over the Ten Rings organization in her father's place. The film closes with Shang-Chi and Katy back at the valet stand in San Francisco trying to act normal. They make eye contact. They burst out laughing. Then a magic portal opens in their living room and Wong, Bruce Banner (in human-Hulk hybrid form), and Captain Marvel walk through.

Mid-credits. The four of them — Shang-Chi, Katy, Wong, and Bruce Banner — discuss the Ten Rings in Wong's Sanctum Sanctorum. Bruce tells Shang-Chi the rings' origin is much older than they thought — they predate Earth, possibly older than the Infinity Stones. Wong has been trying to identify the energy signature for weeks. "They're broadcasting a beacon, but we don't know to whom." Carol Danvers warps in to confirm she's been hearing the signal from across the galaxy. "Welcome to the circus, kid." Cut to the post-credits scene. Xialing, back at the Ten Rings compound, has integrated women into the previously all-male combat training rosters. She's redesigning the organization from the inside out. The women in her new training class outnumber the men. End credits.