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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I think the Mandarin would be inspired by the Infinity Stones to forge some powerful ten rings for himself. Heck, it might be a subtle way to reference the fact that the Mandarin is originally Iron Man's Arch-Enemy.
In the comics, the Mandarin is a master martial artist who can use Ki Attacks, and a super-scientist, and the owner of ten alien rings that each grant a different superpower. It's the sort of Combo Platter Powers a kid would make up when explaining why their character would never lose to anyone else's character.
An idea might be to go with just the martial artist (and maybe super-scientist) stuff for the Shang-Chi movie, but if he comes back as the villain in a teamup movie, have him acquire the rings to make him more of a threat.
I'm calling it know, The Stinger for Shang-Chi will feature Fin Fang Foom. His race was responsible for creating the Mandarin's rings in the comics.
Martial arts movies - especially those of Shang Chi’s theming - have had normal warriors fighting wizards and gods and what have you for decades. Regular action movies have as well. It’s never been a restriction.
Hell, Disney’s about to do it in Mulan (the villain of the live action version is going to be a sorceress). Shang-Chi will be just fine.
They’re unlikely to skimp out on fully adapting Mandarin after the uproar that came from not doing it before: there wouldn’t be any point in using Mandarin in this case if they weren’t doing so, since it’s a Rogues' Gallery Transplant in the first place.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 29th 2019 at 5:31:58 AM
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Except in the MCU the Ten Rings is the name of the terrorist organization that kidnapped Tony Stark and made him invent the Iron Man armor.
Though, looking up the rings' exact powers, most of them amount to "shoot destructive beams of energy at people", only differing in the exact kind of destructive energy. That'd actually be pretty easy to adapt.
If organizations like HYDRA or The Hand can control terrorism and espionage down to the smallest level and still have the big picture of these huge sci-if/mystical super organizations, there’s no reason Mandarin can’t do the same thing.
In fact, given how Shang Chi’s origin story goes, I’m expecting it.
An offshoot of the Ten Rings being mundane Iron Man doesn’t preclude them from doing anything else with Mandarin. It’s not like Raza was Mandarin’s right hand man or anything.
I've said before that the Ten Rings don't really work well as a power-set for Mandarin if he's supposed to be the evil magic counterpart of Iron Man, he should just have Goku's power-set. However, if he's not fighting Iron Man, the Ten Rings could be fine. If it's Shang-Chi a relatively normal martial artist vs the Mandarin, wizard with ten rings of power, thst could make for an awesome final battle.
This is the MCU. They have never had a movie were a person defeats a superpowered foe without having some kind of supernatural backup, powers of their own or advanced technology.
Looking at the trailers, it looks like Mulan will have Supernatural Martial Arts on her side. Don't know if Shang Chi will have that but if he does, he wouldn't exactly qualify as a Badass Normal as slimcoder said.
Then again, the Mandarin doesn't have the rings in the comics anymore and the MCU tends to go for more recent status quos. Besides, as long as the Mandarin is Chinese this time, I think most people will be okay with him.
I could very easily see Raza's branch to just be a front organization that's core purpose is mostly just to cause havoc and attract attention away from the Mandarin's real plans and capabilities.
Raza might not of even been aware of how literal the Ten Rings were. He was probably aware that there was another level or two of the Ten Rings above him, which I'm sure he was trying to break into. But to the Mandarin he was just another pawn on the board who happened to serve a more public-facing role.
Shang Chi fights on equal foot with supermans fairly regularly, and his kung fu is explicitly so good as to allow him to perform some mildly superhuman feats via chi (like punching through solid steel and dodging bullets). He's effectively Kung Fu Captain America, with chi taking the place of the soldier serum.
Mandarin's powerset is only slightly out of his league, and that is something that can be worked around (like making Mandarin a Squishy Wizard once you get past his Rings).
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Well, they’re about to.
Seriously, though, all that says is that they haven’t done it yet. That doesn’t follow to them being incapable of doing so.
Keep in mind also that the only reason that’s true in the first place is because they haven’t had non-superpowered stars at all until recently. Shang and Widow will be the first ones.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 29th 2019 at 7:40:52 AM
I can totally see the final battle with Shang-Chi stealing some rings in the middle of the battle and using them to fight the Mandarin.
Hell, I can see Shang keeping some of the rings for the team up movies, so that he can keep up with the other heroes and add some diversity to the abilities of the team, instead of having him to compete with other non powered avengers, like Sam amd T'Challa, and possibly Kate Bishop, that at least bring something to the table with their tech.
And spraking of Sam, I cannot wait to see the Disney+ series, as I'm intriged to see how they going to implement the shield to his repertoire and, because I'm worried that they simply gonna show him trowing the shield with the same strenght that Steve without him having the super serum and without any explanation (like any tech, or a super suit), and that's going to ask a lot of Suspension of Disbelief to me, so I'm hoping they do something really creative with him to diferentiate him from Steve and Bucky.
Edited by eligram on Sep 29th 2019 at 10:43:59 AM

I'll be surprised if the Mandarin has the Makluan rings in the movie. They are far too powerful for a hero whose only skill is martial arts and a number of characters in the MCU have been hit with Adaptational Superpower Change or Adaptational Wimp already.