Let's Talk About Shang-Chi

why Marvel Studios are the real villains of this movie

Written by Stephanie O.

Some data may not be up to date.

I'm a big fan of Marvel movies. My friends and I are probably in our seats on opening day, waiting for another superhero action movie to start. And that will be the case when Shang-Chi, Marvel's newest installment comes out on September 3rd. But I'm starting to think we might be the only ones watching.

Promotion Predictament

I can't be the only one who's wondering where the ads are. From personal experience, I've barely seen any advertisements and posters for this movie. And I'm not alone. Users on Tiktok and Twitter alike have noticed this. There's no hype, no usual Marvel marketing.

And there's a reason for this. Disney CEO Bob Chapek has called Shang-Chi a marketing experiment during an earnings call for Disney. That's right, Marvel's first Asian-led movie is now an experiment for big bucks. And if that isn't infuriating enough, the whole point of the experiment is delaying Disney+ streaming access for 45 days after the movie's theatrical release. Meaning, if you want to support the movie, but don't have safe, non-COVID access to a theater, you have to wait 45 days.

Simu Liu, the lead actor, has called out the CEO for his comments in a Tweet. And we're with him. This movie needs all the support it can get. Marvel has also been promoting its other movies and television shows at the same time Shang-Chi is being promoted. That itself isn't a large problem, but it becomes a problem when other media is promoted more. And we have the facts to prove it.

Internal Conflicts

We did the math. Marvel has been known to simultaneously known to promote multiple pieces of content at once. But the real question is: how hard are they promoting one thing over the other? We've looked at both their Twitter and Instagram to see how Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and What-If are being promoted.

All data was collected on August 15th.

On Twitter:

Here are a couple of notes to remember.

-Shang-Chi started its consistent promotion on July 28th.

-What-If, a Marvel Disney+ TV show, started its consistent promotion on July 28th, the same day.

Up until today, Marvel has promoted or tweeted about Shang-Chi 20 times. What-If has been promoted 22 times. It may not seem like a larger difference, but Black Widow was still being promoted the entire time Shang-Chi and What-If had their promotion period (from July 28th to today). And we're not counting July 1st through July 27th, when Black Widow was promoted 52 times.

On Instagram:

Here are a couple of notes to remember.

-We collected data by the week.

-We collected data by the number of Instagram posts Marvel created for What-If and Shang-Chi.

-Shang-Chi started consistent promotion 5 weeks ago, while What-If started consistent promotion 4 weeks ago.

Shang-Chi has been promoted a total of 8 times, while What-If was promoted 12 times. In addition, What-If was promoted 4 times in one week, but Shang-Chi was only promoted 1 time the same week.

Simply a Smokescreen

It's no secret that Shang-Chi is Marvel's first Asian-led superhero film out of their 24 films in the MCU. However, some, like me, have suspected that Shang-Chi is simply a smokescreen for Marvel to promote diversity.

Here's where they set themselves up: they chose to not promote a movie with important representation, and yet pride themselves on diversity and change. And this leads to further problems, as being only the second movie to have a person of color as the lead, Marvel won't create these movies UNLESS they do good.

That's how it works with most corporations. Wonder why Marvel didn't produce Black Widow until now? Wonder why Marvel didn't start creating woman-led and POC-led films up until now? Because they weren't popular, mainstream, and their audience before 2016 didn't want that. The successes of Captain Marvel (despite some reviews) and Black Panther (especially) pushed the company to produce films like those. But if Shang-Chi doesn't do good, (because they didn't market it well) the executives become less inclined to make movies like that.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, Disney/Marvel is a very powerful company. We've seen how they pushed back with Scarlett Johansson's suing. But I urge you to watch this movie! The Asian representation aside, I think it looks pretty good and exciting! The fight scenes are well-executed, and the added fact of it being martial-arts based (something a little untraditional) makes it better. If you are able to, go support in theaters, or wait for it to come on Disney+.