SHANG-CHI’s Destin Daniel Cretton never wanted to direct an MCU movie – here’s why he changed his mind

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings co-writer and director Destin Daniel Cretton never wanted to direct a Marvel movie. In fact. he explicitly told his agents not to submit him for any Marvel projects, fearing he wouldn’t have a good handle on them. That is, until he heard the pitch for the Shang-Chi film, opening in theaters on September 3.

Shang-Chi stars Canada’s own Simu Liu as Shang-Chi alongside Awkwafina, Meng’er Zhang, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh, and Tony Leung, and is the first MCU film to feature an Asian character in the titular role and throughout the supporting cast, a welcome moment of representation that also inspired Cretton to push for the project. A mixture of thrilling martial-arts action with a dramatic father-son narrative at its heart, Shang-Chi feels uniquely different from any Marvel film that has come before it.

Speaking at a virtual press conference last week, Cretton (Short Term 12) explained why he never wanted to direct a Marvel movie, and why this film made him reconsider that stance.

“I did have a giant personal fear of stepping into a movie like this,” says Cretton. “The truth was, it was a few weeks before they announced that they were looking for directors for this movie that I made a very real decision and called my manager and my agent and said ‘Don’t ever let me do a Marvel movie.’ So, I said this … in the pitch, and then explained to them that when they made the announcement for Shang-Chi something sparked in me that made me have to go in and just take a meeting, and that turned into this.”

The origins of the Shang-Chi character also spoke to Cretton. Shang-Chi is a former assassin in the Ten Rings organization who attempts to flee his violent past by settling in San Francisco under a new identity but soon learns that he will have to face up to his past, regardless of the consequences.

“I really personally connect with Shang-Chi’s journey,” Cretton explains. “I love that this is a superhero that doesn’t get splashed with chemicals to get his superpower. That it is a journey of self-discovery, of growing up, of learning how to finally deal with pain that he’s been running away from his entire life. And that when he is finally able to look inside into his past and embrace good, bad, the joy, the pain, and accept it all as a part of himself, that’s when he finally steps into his big boy shoes. I think that’s kind of what we’re all doing as humans in some way or another, so I really connect with that.”

To help alleviate some of his fears of tackling such a major project, Cretton reached out to someone who understood the stress all too well — Black Panther director Ryan Coogler.

“The thing that Ryan said to me, which really eased my mind, was the pressure is hard,” reveals Cretton. “‘It’ll be the hardest thing potentially that you have done up to this point, but none of that pressure or none of those complications come from the people that you’re working with or for.’ And that’s what I found. This is a very special place to work, and not to toot [Marvel President Kevin Feige’s] horn, but there is an environment of curiosity, of exploration that comes from the top down. There is no fear-based mentality at this studio, which has really allowed us to take risks and chances and be able to instill that same fearless exploration with everybody involved in this film, and I think that’s a huge reason that the movie turned out the way that it did.”

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings arrives in theaters on September 3, 2021.