The untimely death of Shang-Chi’s mother, Ying Li, is an integral plot point in the MCU Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten RingsAnd the way she dies is one of the most shocking moments in the film. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings It revolves around the superpowered martial artist of the same name who ran away from home and reunites with the family he left behind as malevolent forces conspire against them. The only connection Shang-Chi has to his father Wenwu and his sister Xiaoling is their mutual love for Li.
Released in 2021, right when movie theaters were reopening in the post-pandemic world, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings managed to gross $432 million worldwide (via box office mojo), launching Simu Liu and Awkwafina to new levels of stardom. success of Shang ChiBoth critically and commercially, it gave Marvel enough confidence in director Destin Daniel Cretton to hire him. avengers: kong dynasty, what made the direction of craton Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings His ability to balance great action sequences with heavy emotional beats like the flashback to Shang-Chi’s mother’s death was so effective.
Lee is murdered by the Iron Gang
as revealed in a Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings‘ In one of the most harrowing flashback sequences, Lee was murdered by the Iron Gang. Wenwu’s old rivals, the Iron Gang, arrive at the Ten Rings’ headquarters seeking vengeance against their leader. Despite Lee’s insistence that he was a changed man who had given up leadership of the Ten Rings, they were determined to kill him. Li convinces the Iron Gang to spare their children’s lives and tells Shang-Chi and Jialing to wait inside the house. While Shang-Chi’s mother confronts some gangsters, they outwit and overpower her, resulting in her death.
The death of a parent is a common MCU trope. Peter Quill loses his mother, Meredith; T’Challa lost his father T’Chaka; Peter Parker lost the maternal figure who raised him, Aunt May. But Shang Chi Put a new spin on it. The death of Shang-Chi’s mother caused an almost irreparable rift in the family as the loss corrupted Wenwu and sent him back to his old violent ways. Li’s untimely death is one of the main factors making Wenwu a sympathetic villain: he is a grieving widower driven by the vain belief that he can be reunited with his late wife.
Li is the reason why Shang-Chi runs away and why he returns
The death of Shang-Chi’s mother causes him to run away from home – and eventually, to return. After Li’s murder, Wenwu takes Shang-Chi to identify the killers before exacting brutal revenge. The sequence is beautifully shot; The action is reflected in a mirror behind the young, impressionable Shang-Chi, who is watching his father go on a killing spree with the power of the ten rings. The shocking brutality of this massacre changes Shang-Chi’s opinion of his father. He ran away because he didn’t want to end up being a ruthless killer like her.
When the Ten Ring assassins came after the pendant given to them by Shang-Chi’s mother, he feared they would similarly target his sister, who had been given a similar pendant by Lee. As it turns out later, it was all organized by Wenwu, who thought that a mysterious map revealed by the matching pendant would lead him to reconnect with Li. Just as Lee’s death tore Shang-Chi’s family apart, so the hope of bringing him back unites them all. Few MCU characters have had as much impact from beyond the grave as Lee Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,
