Shang-Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs
Downs...
3. The Inconsistent Visual Effects
It's a common complaint about MCU movies, sadly, that despite their mammoth $200-ish million budgets, there's a surprising amount of sub-par CGI to be found.
Though Shang-Chi is a frequent visual spectacle, one also senses that it could've done with a little more time in the oven to bake, because some of the VFX-driven sequences are rather on the rough side.
The otherwise-spectacular first-act bus fight, for instance, is full of dodgy green screen work and some laughably low-fidelity CGI bus models, pulling the audience out of a scene that gets so much right.
But the film's effects woes are most palpably felt in its more chaotic third act, where it seems that every last cent of the budget was splashed across the screen, yet apparently not quite enough to make the ambitious, large-scale action entirely convincing.
It certainly never looks as ugly or rushed as Black Panther's infamous final battle VFX, but with so much money on the table it should look much better than this.