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Shang-Chi Was Inspired by Marvel’s Biggest Crossover Ever

With Black Widow released in theaters and on Disney Plus for several weeks now, hype has already begun to build for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next feature film: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, set to release under a month from now on September 3rd. And one of the most highly anticipated elements of the film is its main villain: Shang-Chi’s father Wenwu, better known as the Mandarin.

The title of the Mandarin is sure to be familiar to longtime MCU fans — it’s the name of Iron Man’s longtime archenemy from the comics, who was ostensibly meant to make his big-screen debut played by Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3, all the way back in 2013. But in an infamous plot twist, Kingsley’s Mandarin was revealed to be nothing more than an actor hired to serve as a scapegoat for the real mastermind, Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian. This decision proved to be controversial among fans who hoped to see a comic-accurate Mandarin in the MCU, but it seems that they’ll be getting their wish over seven years later — just not in the way they expected.

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Shang-Chi has never been the most popular hero in the comics, but for fans familiar with the character before his film was announced, the decision to feature the Mandarin as his archenemy likely came as a surprise. Throughout Marvel history, the Mandarin has strictly been an Iron Man villain, rarely ever doing battle with other heroes. And though Shang-Chi’s comic nemesis is indeed his own father, said father wasn’t originally the Mandarin, but the infamous literary and cinematic villain Fu Manchu.

In recent years, this connection has been retroactively removed from canon due to both rights issues surrounding Fu Manchu and the character’s racist connotations. In the main Marvel Comics continuity, Shang-Chi’s father is the ancient sorcerer Zheng Zu, who simply used the name Fu Manchu as an alias. However, there is one notable comic where the role of Zheng Zu was taken by none other than the Mandarin, and it has a surprisingly important place in the wider Marvel canon.

The Master of Kung Fu mini-series ran for four issues in 2015, depicting a self-contained alternate universe story that takes influence from both the established lore of the Iron Fist comics and classic martial arts movie tropes. The mini-series follows Shang-Chi, who goes from a drunken outcast in the city of K’un-Lun to a wise and mature master to a school of young warriors — who also happen to be variants of the New Mutants. At the climax of the story, Shang-Chi participates in a tournament against several deadly opponents, including alternate versions of Taskmaster, Elektra, and Namor. And of course, Shang-Chi’s final enemy at the end of the tournament is the Emperor of K’un-Lun: his own father Zheng Zu, aka the Mandarin.

The concept of the Mandarin being reinterpreted as Shang-Chi’s father had never been done before Master of Kung Fu, which is by all accounts a relatively obscure mini-series that recieved little attention upon release. As such, it’s unexpected that the MCU Shang-Chi would borrow one of its major plot points — Shang-Chi’s familial relation to the Mandarin — from such a little-known series. However, despite not often being brought up in fan discussion, Master of Kung Fu has a surprisingly important place in Marvel Comics history. Though the story itself is a self-contained alternate universe tale, it was originally released as a tie-in to the biggest crossover event in Marvel history: 2015’s Secret Wars.

Secret Wars 2015, not to be confused with the 1984 series of the same name, was created by comic writer Jonathan Hickman as the culmination of a six-year story arc that he’d been gradually building up in the pages of The Avengers, Fantastic Four, S.H.I.E.L.D., and more. The series begins with the Avengers failing to stop a cosmic disaster from tearing apart the multiverse, nearly destroying all of reality. The last remnants of the multiverse are salvaged by none other than Doctor Doom, who manages to fuse them into a patchwork reality nicknamed Battleworld, which he rules over as self-proclaimed God-Emperor.

Each province of Battleworld is a fragment of a separate universe, allowing characters from completely different timelines to coexist on the same planet under Doom’s rule. One such province is the city of K’un-Lun, governed by the Mandarin as part of Doom’s empire. Master of Kung Fu is just one of many mini-series released during 2015 that explore the Battleworld setting, showing what each of the planet’s many multiversal territories is like in self-contained stories separate from the narrative of the main event. So though the story of Shang-Chi and the Mandarin doesn’t have any bearing on the greater Secret Wars plot, it still exists as a small part of Marvel’s most ambitious comic storyline ever.

Of course, it’s unlikely that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be building up to a Secret Wars adaptation in any meaningful capacity. It’s more probable that the creative team behind the film stumbled upon the 2015 Master of Kung Fu mini-series while researching Shang-Chi’s comic history and decided to borrow the idea of the Mandarin being Shang-Chi’s father. However, the fact that the book was on Marvel Studios’ radar at all means that they aren’t afraid to adapt elements of the Secret Wars storyline into the MCU. Don't forget that Joe and Anthony Russo themselves, the directors behind Infinity War and Endgame, have previously expressed interest in eventually returning to the MCU to helm a Secret Wars adaptation. Borrowing a single plot point from a little-known tie-in book may not seem like much, but it’s still a tiny bit of hope that Marvel’s most epic storyline ever could one day be brought to life on the big screen.

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