Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings full trailer sets up father/son rivalry for the ages

We got the first action-packed full trailer for Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings today, and it suggests that Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) has a lot to work out with his father.

The two-minute clip has hang-Chi fighting humans, beasts and — most of all — his father, the current bearer of the magical Ten Rings that have given his family power for generations.

Check it out here:

The new footage delves into Shang-Chi’s past, specifically the legacy and the burden he bears from those who came before him. “You are your mother,” Michelle Yoeh’s character, Jiang Nan, tells Shang-Chi, “and also your father.”

Shang-Chi’s father, played by Tony Leung, is called Wenwu, aka the real Mandarin and head of the Ten Rings criminal organization (Ben Kingsley played a phony Mandarin in Iron Man 3). The trailer reveals that Wenwu and Shang-Chi aren’t getting along — the father has sent his men after his son, and there’s even a scene at the end where it looks like Shang-Chi is using magic to potentially get the Ten Rings (or at least some of them) from his father.

“Shang-Chi’s main problem in his life is rooted in not knowing who he really is,” co-writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton said in a statement. “He has to learn how to own every part of himself. If he doesn’t allow himself to look at all of it — the good, the bad, the light, and the dark — and to own it all, he won’t be able to reach his full potential.”

In order to reach his full potential, it looks like Shang-Chi will have to get thrown out of a bus, come face-to-face with a dragon-like beast underwater, battle a green orc-like giant in a fighting pit, face plant into some scaffolding, get drenched with some magical slow-moving water, and — of course — face his father. And that’s just from the two-minute trailer!

It’s clear Shang-Chi will have his hands full in the upcoming Marvel movie. We’ll have to wait until September to see how he fares, and whether he —as Cretton hinted — becomes all he can be.

In addition to Liu, Leung, and Yoeh, Shang-Chi stars Awkwafina, Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu, and Ronny Chieng.

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