Marvel's Shang-Chi Film in Development
 

Never heard of him.

Sounds like a very "important" movie.

Yeah, no kidding. Is he tied to Iron Fist? I thought I saw him mentioned in an Iron Fist discussion somewhere, back during the "OMG Netflix is canceling everything Marvel!" stuff.

... Uh yeah, Shang-Chi...

To be fair, he did have an ongoing series that ran for 125 issues over 30 years ago. I've never read it or the 14 total issues he had since and i doubt I ever will, but at least he has something?

It does feel really weird that they're picking this character. I knew they were kind of reaching the middle of the character barrel when they started making movies about Doctor Strange and Ant-Man, but that's no excuse to shove the hand straight to the bottom.

Same here.

I seriously doubt this is anyone's passion project. This is Disney scratching off the "We have an Asian-led MCU movie" box so they can't get flak for not having one later. The major and recent (domestic) success of "Crazy Rich Asians" is probably no coincidence either.

Who is this Shang Tsung?
Never heard of him.

Nice. Nice. :lol:

Last I heard of him, it was a one-shot written by CM Punk

..Wait, who?:lol:

Ahhh yeah, I forgot he did that.

Which reminds me of the time Raven wrote a Spider-Man comic.

Any more of those things happen? You'd know better than I, ZarBro.

Yup. Apparently nobody wanted to watch... oh, geez, I can't even remember his name. Benedict Wong in Doctor Strange, that dude. Nobody wanted to watch a spin-off movie starring him.

The guy from Mortal Kombat who can transform into every other character. It's interesting how he was the final boss of the very first MK game but since then became a sub-boss or just a regular character.

****ing Motaro in MK3 made Shang Tsung from MK1 look like peanuts in comparison. I've never gotten past Motaro.

Lookit you not getting the joke. :lol:

It's okay, it was very dry. I enjoyed it, though.

I did get it, but I know jack about this Shang-Chi fella but know quite somethings about Mortal Kombat, so I felt like saying smth about it.

Ooooooooooooh. :|

Well I'll just take my sass-mouth and f*cking LEAVE, then.

Have you ever beaten Motaro in MK3/UMK3? I know you're good at MK.

And make everybody happy? Don't you fvcking dare. :trazz:

Fine, you twisted my arm. Make sure it's the left one; I don't work Lucha, bitch. :trazz:

WOOOOOAHHH, slow your roll, tiger. I have NEVER claimed to be good at ANY fighting game! :lol: I play 'em sometimes, I can beat the CPU most times, but that in no way means I'm any good. Your Mom could probably beat me, at least half the time. Just being honest.

I know for a fact I never played MK3 long enough to get that far, though. I mostly skipped 3 and 4. I played 'em, but only for a few minutes apiece.

I'm most familiar with I, II, Deadly Alliance and everything after. My wife's played the most recent two far more than I have. Because I'm not "allowed" to play them until she's done with it. :lol:

II could be hard af as well. The cheap AI. Also, why is Baraka ALWAYS the first opponent I face in that game? :lol:

Well, the way I did it was cheap. I duck down around the middle of the screen, and time my uppercuts when he comes in close or does his flying jump move. The only thing you should watch out for is his tail trip or throw. Its cheap, but it works.

D'you know where they make a lot of 'superhero movie tentpole franchises with an Asian protagonists'?

Come to think of it, Mortal Kombat was/is a 'superhero movie tentpole franchise with an Asian protagonist.' Huh!? Wasn't that over 20 years ago? Disney wouldn't overstate the significance of a project just to sell it to a demographic that wouldn't otherwise give a poop about kung fu movies would they?

This is probably some kind of vague apology letter for the mentor in Doctor Strange and all the nonsense flak they got for having the evil Japanese ninja clan in Daredevil season 1 and 2 all being Japanese. SJWs are the worst.

So they don't have to hear anything about this ever again. Whether it loses money or breaks sub-Ant-Man numbers, it's probably worth it to them for the insulation for when the next "why are these Asians being evil?" in the next Hand or whatever thing. They can point to this.

Psst, I maintain my own Russian MK Wikia since 2010.
Just don't tell anyone. :D

Just combo him. His AI eventually will stop blocking.
Of course, it depends on the game you are talking about.In console version Motaro doesn't block much. In arcade version and Trilogy - he is a block whore.

Mortal Kombat was a cultural phenomenon, but by the end of the 90-s it ended up in a sharp decline - MK4 was a disappointment, especially compared to its rivals, like Tekken and DOA and MK Annihilation was such enormous disaster, that it had killed MK movies for good.

Since than it was mostly relevant only as a video game and due to the story, since Deadly Alliance, Liu Kang was no longer main character and has ended up being sidelined by other heroes.
So, since 2002 MK was no longer a franchise with Asian character as a lead / main protagonist.

What was wrong with MK4? If anything, I remember people being disappointed that the characters weren't photo-real anymore (something that made MK1-3 unique)... but the 3D combat was a nice evolution. So ridiculous that they stripped away the 3D gameplay and regressed things down to 2D after Armageddon. I think as things got into "Deception" and all that, it just got a little bit too much, I think. So many movesets, so much to keep track of. Plus by that point we'd all played enough MK that it didn't really seem that fresh anymore.

And the MK movies were never good. Movies about games that revolve around gruesome ways to murder your opponent -- Fatalities -- and they're all rated PG-13? How ridiculous. Why even make the movies, then?

1) There was almost NO 3D gameplay in MK4.
The only 3D elements of the gameplay were sidesteps, which could be largely ignored and special throws, where cameras was flying around. The core of the MK4 gameplay was 2D and basically the same as in UMK3, just worse, because, developers had removed individual combos.

They had attempted to create system where people could create their own combos, but it only made apparent one BIG problem with MK original gameplay - all characters in the game (sans bosses) had the same gameplay. Unlike other fighting games, in MK characters hadn't major differences in height, speed and play styles (old MKs didn't had grapplers for example).

Individual combos, introduced in MK3 made this problem a little less glaring, but when they have been removed in MK4, it made apparent that the core gameplay of MK is VERY shallow, compared to pretty much every other fighting game on the market and that it was not evolving much.

As such, MK4 (deservedly) went down as one of the worst games in the series (bar Mythologies, Special Forces and MK Advance) and it was outclassed by pretty much every other fighting game at the market, in terms of variety, replayability and fun.

2) MK Armageddon was ****. In the bad way.
Fighting styles system introduced in Deadly Alliance was not perfect, but was step into the right direction to add individuality to the characters. Deception started stripping those individual elements by shortening movesets and given characters universal moves like in old MKs. MKA had completely **** all over styles by even more shortening movesets, randomly assigning styles to random characters and making styles generally look and feel the same, ironically making MKA as close to the 2D games as possible. Which was not good.

3) Returning MK games back to 2D was a right decision. MKDA-MKA gameplay were interesting experiments, but they had never worked properly and degraded with each subsequent game.
In case of MK - 3D was not an evolution, but more a detour, to jump on the bandwagon of the likes of Tekken. It had failed for many reasons.
MK9 and MKX finally gave MK what it had deserved - each character had their own unique fighting style, with their own quirks and gameplay overall was properly balanced, fun and didn't had things, which existed for purely existing, like weapons in MK4 or Areal Kombat in MKA.
2D or 3D it doesn't really matter, what matters is individuality of the characters and quality of the gameplay and both latest games had delivered these in spades.

First MK movie was fairly good for its time.
And lack of gore was not really that noticeable. And it was compensated by having fun characters and cool fights.

You can sidestep in MK4. Which is huge. If the only way to avoid a punch in a fighting game is to go backwards or crouch or jump, you're playing a game that's still living in 1992.

What do you mean? In Deception I remember you could tap the trigger buttons and literally toggle through whole different movesets for each character, including one with a melee weapon. Way too much to ever be able to memorize.

Where do you come down on MK vs. DC Universe? Obviously it's tame with gore and all that, but I found the MK side of that really fluid. And it still retained 3D gameplay (I believe it's the last MK game to have it).

You leave a thread alone for two days, and when you come back you find its become a Mortal Kombat discussion. :lol:

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

I really liked Morktal Kombat 4. It looks pretty ugly, but I find it less cheep than MK2, and more playable than MK3 which was frenetic to the point of absurdity. More importantly, they tried to make the fatalities cool again. MK3, UMK3, and MK Trilogy were very, very silly.

In fact, I remember after you did a torso rip Fatality in MKT, the lower portion of the other character's arms were still floating awkwardly beside their legs. Almost 70% of the Fatalities were body explosions, which gets pretty repetitive, especially since the CPU would do Brutalities at every opportunity. When you finally exploded after listening to 'ahh oo ahh ee ahh ooo' for way-too-long, there would be three pelvises and multiple rib cages lying on the ground. Silly!

You could move in 3D since Virtua Fighter, which was released in 1993. And before that you could dodge enemy attacks by side-stepping them in some 2D fighting games like Fatal Fury.

So ability to just sidestep in MK4 in 1997, when you had complete 3D movement in Soul Blade, Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive was absolutely non-event.

Besides, those sidesteps were badly realized and like weapons in this game were just additional gimmick, added to the outdated gameplay formula.

And as I said time and time again, 2D fighting games is no worse than 3D ones. They are different and it doesn't make them worse or outdated. By this logic any 2D platformer is outdated which is ********.

MKDA had even bigger movesets and they were actually better realized.

I didn't play MKvsDC universe.

MK4 was equally frenetic, just much worse when it came to the general gameplay.
Fatalities, atmosphere and music were the only highlights of the game.

I also liked MK4 because there was no Kabal and his bull***t-ass spin attacks. Screw that guy.

Scorpion and Sub-Zero are both Asian, though. Scorpion is Japanese and Sub-Zero is Chinese. People might not notice because they wear masks and your average joe does not know their real names. But you see Scorpion unmasked in MK X and get to know his real name is Hanzo.

Going back on topic, I wouldn't mind a modern day martial arts film. As long as the character is likeable and the movie has sweet kung fu action, I'd be happy. After GotG and Ant Man, Marvel can even make this guy look good.

Didn't we get to meet him in the Mortal Kombat comic from like 25 years ago?

Neither is protagonist though.
Scorp and Sub are like Ryu and Ken - they usually have very little to do with main story, but they are faces of their series.

His real name and real face have been revealed in his ending in MK1.
In MK comic he was already ninja specter and didn't play important role.

I don't think any of the comics are canon, anyway. Same with Street Fighter. There's been too many and they all contradict each other, and the games, to a serious degree.

The best was the original Street Fighter II comic, which was so bad Capcom pulled the plug after like three issues, and issued a statement within the pages of the book itself, essentially saying "Sorry this was crappy." :lol: I wanna say it was by Malibu, but I could be wrong.

Nope, it was indeed from Malibu and I still own all three issues.

https://markepicblogofrandomness.blo...n-started.html
https://markepicblogofrandomness.blo...r-issue-2.html
https://markepicblogofrandomness.blo...r-issue-3.html

Aside from the apology, the third wasted time having Honda fight one of their original characters, that looked like a more feral Aquaman. And they gave a brief summary of what some of the character storylines would have been had the story continued.

As a kid I thought they were awesome because OMG the violence, OMG the blood, and their promised 'ultraviolence so intense one of the characters might not survive!!!!'. I bought the first 2 issues day of release, but didn't find issue 3 til years later at a con.

No, first two "Official" comic books were canon and have been written (and drawn) by one of the game creators. They are even referenced in MK9.

Malibu series is non-canon, of course.