"Shang-Chi" - Menace of 'The Mandarin' ?

While The Walt Disney Company continues to acquiesce to demands concerning the tourist outreach of Shanghai Disneyland, or the marketing of "Mulan", the upcoming Marvel Studios superhero feature "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings", opening July 9, 2021, will likewise 'tone down' their depiction of  'The Mandarin' (Tony Leung) leader of the 'Ten Rings' terror organization, whose father was fictitious Chinese warlord 'Fu Manchu', created by writer Sax Rohmer in 1912, selling tens of millions of books on the premise Western civilization was being infiltrated by a ruthless 'yellow peril': 

Marvel Comics' 'The Mandarin' debuted in "Tales of Suspense" #50 (February 1964), written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Don Heck.

 

"...the Mandarin's father was one of the wealthiest men in pre-revolutionary mainland China, as a descendant of 'Genghis Khan', while his mother was an English noblewoman. Their son was born in an unnamed village in mainland China before the Communist revolution.

"Both of the boy's parents died soon after his birth, and he was raised by his (paternal) aunt, who was embittered against the world and raised him with much the same attitude. The family fortune was spent obsessively training him in science and combat, until he was completely broke upon reaching adulthood. Unable to pay the taxes on his ancestral home, he was evicted.


"Hoping to find a means of avenging himself upon a society that had taxed him into becoming homeless,  the Mandarin explored the forbidden 'Valley of Spirits', where no one had dared to set foot for centuries.

"There he found the remains, in a crashed starship, of 'Axonn-Karr', a techno-advanced reptilian alien from the planet 'Maklu IV', who had come to Earth centuries ago. salvaging what he could from Axonn-Karr and the craft, he studied and mastered 'Makluan' science.

"He also learned how to use the ten rings he found within the starship which were apparently its propulsion source. He discovered that each ring had a special purpose, that would reveal more of itself over the years including a 'black light', a 'disintegrator' beam,'vortex' power, 'sonic' blast, poison gas, 'white' light, flame burst, electro-blast, mass hypnotizer and ice blast.  

"He subjugated all the villages around the Valley, and, through his advanced science, rapidly became a power that not even the Chinese Army could successfully challenge, embarking on a series of attempts to achieve world domination, with his acquired  alien technology the surest means to achieve his goals."

 

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