For the last few months I’ve had fairly minimal expectations for Shang-Chi, but after people starting giving it praise upon release I was pretty excited. This film lived up to the hype and it was the best original marvel movie we’ve had in years and I had a great time with it. The characters are all interesting and I liked the relationship between Shang-Chi and his whole family. Unlike a lot of other marvel films, it had a memorable, dynamic soundtrack, which worked well for the tone of the film. The absolute standout here has the be the action scenes which are some of, if not the best, in the entire MCU. The pacing is nearly perfect as well. Other than some slower parts in the middle third, the exposition and action scenes were spaced out very well in a way that made it exciting while still giving us needed backstory. The visualization of Shang-Chi’s powers in the climax was the coolest part and the ending has me very excited to see what they do next with this character.