La Ron S. Readus
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Is Wenwu's Revenge JUSTIFIED? (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-12-15 21:00:04 +0000 UTCI said I was gonna make this video, but you didn’t believe me! WHYYY DIDN’T YOU BELIEVE ME?!?!
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Readers, when it comes to Shang-Chi’s Wenwu, there’s a lot about his character that I respected as I watched the movie.
Yes, removing the problematic aspects about his old Fu Manchu identity from the comic books and instead having him be the root of Killian’s Mandarin myth was definitely one of those things.
/Not only do I think that was pretty well handled, but the jab the movie took at white american appropriation as a result was spot-on/ (they named me after an orange)
Is there a part of me that wishes we got to see Tony Stark and Wenwu duke it out? Yes, of course. But I truly have to give the writers of Shang-Chi credit for how they were able to craft Wenwu considering what they had at their disposal
But one of the things I appreciate about Wenwu other than what I previously mentioned is that he’s allowed to be complex without you having to forget that he’s a villain for a reason when you watch him display said complexity.
/And to me, the best example of this is the murder of his wife Ying, and how it “caused” him to put on the ten rings once more./
Now before I continue, know that this video will contain spoilers for Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It’s currently available on DVD, Blu-Ray and Disney Plus, so I would advise you watch it on any of those platforms before continuing this video if you care about spoilers. Cool? Cool.
So if you’ve seen my video explaining what I’d add to Xialing’s end credit scene, then you know that Shang-Chi was the first movie I decided to see in theaters once they decided to open back up to the public.
I went with friends, we attended a matinee to deal with the least amount of people possible, masked up and social distanced, the whole nine yards.
And outside of possible ways the movie tied in to the entirety of the MCU as a whole -- especially taking into consideration the events of Loki and how they could’ve factored into Shang-Chi’s storytelling process -- one of the things I was interested in witnessing was how different they decided to make Wenwu from his Mandarin and Fu Manchu counterpart.
/The result was having him decide to change his ways during his search for Ta Lo, by finding love in Ying -- Shang-Chi and Xialing’s mother./
Now one of the aspects about this decision to try and make a character like Wenwu possibly redeemable was thanks to the tried and true yet admittedly overused trope of “I Can Change My Beloved.” Now most commonly known by its meme name, “I can fix him.”
As both its actual and meme titles entails, “I can fix him-slash-change my beloved” involves one individual in a relationship seeing certain faults in their partner that have possibly grown to the point of being dangerous for them, and intolerable to others or society as a whole and believing that -- to quote the actual TV Tropes page...
/The power and strength of their love will send said individual through a metamorphosis that will remake them into their perfect partner./ (Simpsons Episode clip)
This is displayed multiple times over the course of Shang-Chi, more specifically through the point of view of Wenwu.
/The declaration of the Ta Lo finding Wenwu unworthy of living in their village upon them becoming an item/ (they found me unworthy)
/And the mutual decree of giving up what they knew in order to be together/ (she gave up everything to be with me, and so did I)
/But what solidified Ying falling victim to the trope and Wenwu being her “project” is what Wenwu said aloud to a grieving 7 year old Shang-Chi the night of Yin’s murder:/ (She told me I could change, that I can leave the past behind, but she was wrong)
Now while my takeaway from the importance of this scene is also necessary to understand the situation, that is Wenwu’s mentality as a whole...
Just like one other turned my concerns over Xialing’s end credit scene into a positive, I never would’ve been able to properly piece it together if a friend of mine didn’t make me aware of one specific detail about his development after the movie was over.
/And that detail was when the Iron Gang murdered Ying upon seeking their revenge on Wenwu, and this exchange was had/ (My husband is no longer the man he was. We don’t care.)
As you can imagine, this situation accompanied by the result of the trope “I Can Change My Beloved” is actually a one-two combo that perfectly reflects how villains are, and CAN be affected by it.
When one individual seeks to bring about change in their partner in this way, a common and unfortunate result in a good amount of fiction that features this trope is that they think the metamorphosis will in fact take place. Only to end up being wrong.
Not to say that characters that utilize this trope never succeed or that there aren’t stories that exist that show that they do. I’m just saying it’s a more common result since change only occurs in the individual when THEY want it. Not when others want it FOR you.
/And while that wasn’t necessarily the case for Wenwu as we see in the movie, it was her death at the hands of the Iron Gang that revealed that Wenwu’s decision to change...wasn’t necessarily as genuine as it was romanticized to be./
Ying wasn’t lying when she said that Wenwu could change. We’ve seen him capable of it over the course of the film.
The problem is that Wenwu willingly skipped a few steps in his pursuit of it, because in HIS case, the only way for him to TRULY leave the past behind is to ACKNOWLEDGE it. ALL of it.
When Ying told Wenwu to “leave the past behind,” she was specifically talking about seeking self-forgiveness. An aspect of Wenwu seeking change was learning to forgive himself for all of his misdeeds he did during his early days as the head of the Ten Rings.
That way, as he entered this new phase of his life as a husband and a father, his conscience is clear and he doesn’t have the weight of his past self on his shoulders because he’s come to terms with letting that aspect of himself go.
However, as the movie displayed soon afterward and my friend pointed out in our discussion after watching the movie, that doesn’t immediately negate everything that he did to other people in his past, and shows that just because Wenwu has made peace with himself regarding this change, doesn’t mean that he’s done so with the people that’ve been affected by his past.
That’s because there’s another step that one must take in order to truly leave the past behind -- one that, over his journey for change, Wenwu did not do AT ALL -- and that’s apologizing to those one wrongs and seeking to make things right.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings tries to drive home Wenwu’s mania and villainy by using the paraphrased words of his late wife as a way of justifying returning to his old ways.
/In doing so, we find out that this aspect about himself never TRULY left or that he WANTED it to leave; that he only really gave up the power because he wanted to be with Ying more. This was to be expected considering the two roles his character is replacing from Marvel Comics -- Fu Manchu and the Mandarin./
It also makes things a bit more disappointing, though. Because now that we know his decision to change in order to win Ying’s heart is a bit saturated in the superficial, that increases the possibility that he KNEW the people that suffered under his warlord days would eventually find him.
Yet even then, now with a wife and family, Wenwu did nothing to try and reach out to them; to try and make amends for what he did to them back in the day in order to possibly avert the tragedy that we saw play out in the movie.
/If anything, Wenwu used the fact that his half-baked attempt at change brought about such devastation as an excuse to return to a life he secretly never wanted to give up./ (I could’ve protected her if I never took off the rings)
Because if Wenwu TRULY wanted to live in peace with his family, then more would’ve been necessary than just “leaving his past behind” and moving forward. He should’ve acknowledged what he did in his past, how his actions affected others that were still alive, and sought to make things right in ORDER to move forward.
After all, the one thing I preach on this channel when it comes to turning a new leaf and apologizing is that changed behavior is the true apology.
In Wenwu’s case however, because he’s a more extreme character, his actions in order to prove said change have to be just as extreme.
/It wasn’t enough for him to meet Ying and decide he doesn’t want to be a warlord anymore. He has to try and make peace with those he hurt in the past if he truly wants peace of his own./
Because just because you made the decision to change and be better doesn’t mean that there aren’t people affected by your actions before you made the DECISION to change.
THEY want answers. THEY want justice. THEY want closure. And addressing those desires in ways that will make things right between the two of you -- especially since you were the cause of them once upon a time -- is better than just ignoring them and hoping that they’d go away.
/Because as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has demonstrated, they WON’T just go away. Some of them will grow and fester long enough to come back to bite you./
And even though you’ve changed, even though you’ve dedicated time and effort to be better, you’ll have no choice but to witness the consequences of your own actions that could have easily been avoided if you put in the right time and effort into your decision to change. Not just the aspects that allowed you immediate gratification.
/Not only did Wenwu fall for this trap, but he fell for it HARD. And refused to learn his lesson regarding it, too. So much so, that the consequences of his actions by the time the movie was over was him fucking around and finding out./
But I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what YOU thought of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, a situation you’ve seen in a movie or TV series that mirrors that of Wenwu’s own that made you aware of what happens when you make the decision to change your ways half-assedly, despite not TRULY wanting said change in the first place.
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
