MARVEL Cinematic Universe announced the cast of its first Chinese superhero film on Sunday, quelling a week of online speculation but stirring new discussions among Chinese netizens. Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu, best known from the sitcom “Kim’s Convenience,” will play the title role in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” The cast includes “Crazy Rich Asians” star Nora Lum, better known by her stage name Awkwafina, and award-winning Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Hawaii-born director Destin Daniel Cretton, who emerged with the 2013 indie favorite “Short Term 12,” will direct the film, which is scheduled to hit North American theaters Feb. 12, 2021. Shang-Chi, a character who first appeared in a 1973 Marvel comic book, has a Chinese father and a mother who is a U.S. citizen, according to Hollywood Reporter magazine. Last week, U.S. entertainment industry magazine Variety reporter Justin Kroll tweeted that Marvel was testing actors of Chinese ancestry in their 20s for Shang-Chi, with the news going viral on Chinese websites. Chinese netizens named their top picks for Chinese actors to play Shang-Chi, but few mentioned Liu. Marvel’s casting announcement set the web abuzz. On the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, topic #TonyLeungChiu-waistarringnewMarvelfilm# quickly accumulated 410 million views and spawned nearly 64,000 posts. Leung plays Mandarin, a supervillain and Iron Man’s archenemy. It will be the second time Mandarin has featured in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film — English actor Ben Kingsley played the villain in “Iron Man 3.” News about the film also sparked controversy on Chinese social websites. Some said the role, created in a 1964 Marvel comic book based on a novel character Fu Manchu, is “insulting to Chinese.” Leung, 57, has not replied to the flood of criticism, but his wife the actress Crina Lau said on Sina Weibo on Sunday reading “Keep calm and relax cos life is beautiful.” Some of Leung’s fans complain that their idol — a Hong Kong cinema giant — will play a supporting character in a film starring a less well known Chinese-Canadian actor. “Liu is not popular in China. Many fans had never even heard his name before Marvel announced the cast,” said Marvel superhero fan Wu Zhaojie. Jiang Yong, an entertainment industry analyst, said China has a huge Marvel superhero film fan base. Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” was the highest-grossing foreign film in China. “Leung is one of a few Chinese stars who is recognized by Western audiences. The Marvel superhero films are shot for the global market, so the casting is seemingly a decision to also attract viewers in the rest of the world,” Jiang said. Film critic Raymond Zhou said one of the main reasons Marvel’s first Chinese superhero film will be shot is because of “Crazy Rich Asians,” one of the most commercially successful Asian-themed Hollywood films in recent years. As for the choice of Shang-Chi, a little-known character even to Marvel fans, Zhou said Marvel had made similar decisions on films about lesser known characters that paid off at the box office, such as the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films. (China Daily) Who is Shang-Chi? ALSO called the Master of Kung Fu, the China-born superhero Shang-Chi will be first Asian superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). He was raised as a master of martial arts by his father, known as Mandarin in the movie, but later turned on him after learning he was evil, becoming a martial arts master who fights for justice. The character, while a superhero, does not have any superpowers beyond controlling the life force called chi, but is the master of hand-to-hand combat. To give you an idea, he has taught the likes of Wolverine in the art. Now that MCU is teeming with immensely powerful superheroes like Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch, it is not clear how the character will fit in the universe. And with his Chinese background, the makers might choose to create a link between Shang-Chi’s origin story and Mandarin. (SD-Agencies) Who is Fu Manchu? THE character Fu Manchu comes from British novelist Sax Rohmer’s novel “The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu” in 1913. Fu was seen as the representative of the “yellow peril” in the West and eventually made his way into other mediums such as TV series, films and comics. In Marvel’s comic book “Shang-Chi: The Master of Kung Fu,” Fu is the main character Shang-Chi’s father. However, due to copyright issues, Marvel later became unable to use the name Fu anymore and so changed his name to Zheng-Zu. In “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” the role of Shang-Chi’s father is named Mandarin. Still it irritated some Chinese Internet users as it kept the antagonists that were created under the influence of the “yellow peril” theory. (SD-Agencies) | 