-Awkafina as Fah Lo Suee in Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi
In the comics, Fah Lo Suee has been Shang-Chi’s sister, but in this new updated version of the story, Awkafina will be playing The Mandarin’s daughter, as well as a potential love interest for Shang-Chi.
The Basic Plot
Shang-Chi has a special power in this film, and because of it, he was raised in an orphanage for kids that are trained to fight. This special orphanage is run by The Mandarin. Shang-Chi eventually escapes the school/prison and begins living on the run, trying to stay out the Mandarin’s clutches his entire life.
The Mandarin does eventually find the grown-up Shang-Chi again, and offers him a chance. The Mandarin promises Shang-Chi money and power, along with a promise that he’ll finally stop chasing him if he will fight in an epic and magical tournament that every kid in the orphanage has been training for their entire lives. Whoever wins this tournament gets the legendary 10 Rings, which grants even more power, which clearly The Mandarin wants. However, The Mandarin is currently too old to fight so he enlists Shang-Chi.
The tournament will have new characters from all corners of the MCU that include wizards, aliens, fighters, and well known comic book characters which we don’t want to spoil. Imagine a Marvel-infused Mortal Kombat movie!
In this film, Shang-Chi’s special power is the ability to clone himself while fighting. This is a slightly different approach to a power he had in his more recent comics run.
While in the comics Shang-Chi can create clones of himself to do anything, in this film, Shang-Chi only projects versions of himself during fight sequences. This gives the character something special to do, but also gives the filmmakers a way to Marvel-ize fight sequences. When we asked our sources on this story, if the film has more The Raid level hand to hand sequences, or more stylized magical fighting sequences over-using this cloning effect, they informed us it has both.
One cool thing that we won’t get too much into, is that the film clearly knows that Mandarin fans are still upset and confused over Iron Man 3. Without spoiling it, they do address this issue at one point.