CRETTON: Hi, my name is Destin Cretton,
I am the co-writer and director of this movie.
CALLAHAM: Hi, my name is Dave Callaham, and I am the co-writer of the movie.
CRETTON: Dave, have you ever done a director's commentary before?
CALLAHAM: No, I'm not a director,
so I'm not normally asked to
- sit in, but I appreciate it very much. - (LAUGHS)
CRETTON: I guess this wouldn't be a director's...
This'll just be a commentary.
- (LAUGHS) - CALLAHAM: Yeah.
Have you done a director's commentary before, Destin, being a director?
CRETTON: No, this is actually my first.
So let's try it.
Let's see what happens.
(WOMAN SPEAKING MANDARIN)
CRETTON: Well, we're starting on a flag.
With the Ten Rings logo, we could talk about The Ten Rings.
CALLAHAM: Yeah, this is an organisation
that's been set up from the MCU in the past.
Not this far in the past.
And we are telling a deeper section of that story for the first time in here.
CRETTON: I mean, I guess we could talk about, like, the first time...
For some people who are familiar with the Mandarin in the comics,
he was wearing the Ten Rings on his fingers.
There was one point in the writers' room
when we were either watching
36th Chamber of Shaolin
- or Kung Fu Hustle or both... - Kung Fu Hustle.
CRETTON:...and we decided to
take the rings off his fingers and put them on his wrists.
So Tony Leung...
Tony Leung, what did you think about Tony Leung
when you found out that we cast him?
CALLAHAM: It's awesome. He's so legendary
and I wasn't clear on how little Western films he had done.
- I think zero, right? - CRETTON: Yeah, there was...
I remember when Jonathan asked me
who I would want to play Wenwu
and my first instinct was Tony Leung.
But I also said, "There's no way we'll ever get him."
CALLAHAM: Yeah.
CRETTON: And I honestly still can't believe it.
CALLAHAM: I remember that. I remember you had to do a call.
He was one of the early people cast,
which was really helpful because we were
seeing mock-ups of him in costume and stuff
once we had him, which was really helpful.
CRETTON: Yeah, I feel like
bringing Tony on was kind of the tone-setter
for the type of movie that we wanted to make.
He also, that shot of him on that horse
just walking towards the people that he's about to obliterate...
And that was one of the first shots that we shot of the movie
and I remember looking at the monitor,
watching him just trot on that horse
in a close-up and thinking,
"I could watch this man's face for hours."
And it was...
It really was...
I mean, it was just so exciting to have that be the first thing
that we put on film,
and it really became
the tone-setter for the entire movie.
CALLAHAM: He really is amazing. I mean, the first time
I saw some of the stuff you had shot with him,
the sensitivity that he carries, which is so great because,
obviously, this is a villain that is not quite as moustache-twirly
or aggressive as maybe you're used to
in some of the comic book type of properties.
So he just really captures what you were always talking about from day one.
CRETTON: I mean, we... Oh, yeah, this...
I mean, I guess we could talk about
this moving bamboo forest,
which was
created by our VFX supervisor,
Chris Townsend.
Who has done a lot of Marvel movies in the past
and it was such a pleasure to work with him.
(WOMAN SPEAKING MANDARIN)
CRETTON: Fala... We could talk about Fala,
who is the actor who plays our Li character.
When we're looking for the actor to play Li, we...
I mean, it was a big search because we needed to find somebody
who could not only stand up to Tony Leung in a scene but own him.
Fala was somebody who we
saw her audition.
She had actually just finished
studying at Juilliard.
And we saw her audition and,
as you can see, she's such a special actor
and has so much strength behind
every movement, every look.
And when we lined up her gaze with Tony Leung's, it just felt perfect.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
CRETTON: In our movie, it's...
We have a character, Wenwu,
who has lived for a thousand years
and he would have continued to
just obliterate and chase power
for his own glorification,
and he needed something to stop him.
And Li is that...
Is the first person to really
be able to stop him in his tracks, to make him realise that
everything he's been chasing is empty and pointless.
CALLAHAM: The acting here is incredible.
The first time I saw this, I cried.
Because I think it's beautifully done.
But also, when we wrote this on the page,
it described exactly what you're seeing here,
which is that it's a fight that turns into a mutual appreciation
that turns into a bit of a dance,
and then an attraction.
And all these various things are happening in this one fight sequence,
and I remember when we were writing it thinking it sounds great.
- But this is such writer BS. - (BOTH CHUCKLE)
CALLAHAM: At some point, Justin has to go direct this
and these two people have to
accomplish this on screen.
It's so complicated and I can't believe how beautifully it turned out.
(LI SPEAKING)
CRETTON: We threw in this shot of
Wenwu and young Shang-Chi, late in the game
and it actually stuck.
Because it
became a bit of an iconic shot of what
the core of our movie is about.
CALLAHAM: The Great Protector.
CRETTON: Yeah, what about the Great Protector?
CALLAHAM: I think we'll probably talk about the Great Protector more in a bit.
This was an idea that was with us from day one.
CRETTON: Yeah, the Great Protector...
I mean, we always knew that we're going to have
a dragon in our movie in some way.
And I really love where we landed on what the dragon represented
and that it wasn't just a flashy dragon to have in our movie.
That the dragon became rooted in something a bit more emotional
and more connected to who Shang-Chi is,
and the person that he becomes by the end of the movie.
CALLAHAM: I don't remember if this is how we ended up on that name.
But I do remember talking to my mom,
who is Chinese.
When we started this process,
I'm telling her there's probably going to be a dragon in this movie.
And she was like, okay, but it has to be a good guy.
And I said, why?
And she said, because dragons are protectors.
CRETTON: Hmm! CALLAHAM: I thought okay, good note.
CRETTON: Thanks, Mom. CALLAHAM: Scratch out "Shang-Chi
"punches a dragon" out of the third act.
- (CRETTON LAUGHS) - CALLAHAM: Cancel that.
CRETTON: There's Simu.
Finding Simu was a big search as well
and Simu really rose to the top,
not because he can punch and kick and do a backflip.
He did do a backflip in his first audition,
but that was not why we chose him.
We chose him because of his acting purely
and because of this chemistry with Nora.
And honestly, I could not think
of a more perfect person to play Shang-Chi.
I think Simu has a very unique ability
to cross over between
American and Western culture and Chinese culture.
He's fluent in Mandarin,
and his background
really spans both cultures fairly evenly.
So he's a very unique actor
and I feel very lucky to have him.
Most career wins in all of NASCAR history?
Please get out of the car.
CALLAHAM: Yeah, that code switching the super important because
it's a theme that we wanted to cover
in the first Asian American-led Marvel movie.
And obviously Shang-Chi
has to code switch in a way that is a little more acute
than the average human being whose father isn't a supervillain.
So it's great that he was able to do that.
I was getting picked on a lot,
for all the reasons we all get picked on a lot.
Plus, I had just moved to the U.S...
CRETTON: We keep trying to break us many stereotypes
as possible in this movie, one of which is...
Asian females,
there's sometimes a stereotype that they're not good drivers.
So, in our movie,
Nora's character Katy is the best driver in San Francisco.
So one by one, we're breaking those stereotypes.
CALLAHAM: Yeah, she might be the best driver in the world.
- Honestly. - CRETTON: Yes, probably.
That's true. You were.
- What? - I was just in the back seat.
- That's a part of the car. - That's still a part of the car.
How have you never told me this story?
You know, before she was a lawyer, your girl was pretty wild.
What happened?
I grew up.
What's that supposed to mean?
Yeah, what's that supposed to mean?
That maybe there's a point where you're supposed to stop going on joyrides
and start thinking about living up to your potential.
Please tell me you're kidding, Soo.
SOO: Look,
we're now living in a world
where at any moment half the population can just disappear.
Life's too short and too fragile.
Katy, you're a valet driver with an honors degree from Berkeley,
and Shaun can speak, like, four languages.
CRETTON: One of the things that I actually
showed in my pitch to get this job
was a scene in a bar with four friends
talking in a bar and I just said,
"Just imagine this scene with all Asian Americans."
And instantly, it becomes something
that we haven't really seen before on screen.
SHAUN: driving skills... KATY: Soo can't even parallel park.
CRETTON: When I shot that scene on set,
it was really emotional for me.
There's not a ton of emotion happening in the movie
besides people just having fun. But I was...
I got really emotional 'cause I thought
these are my friends, this is my life.
And it's the first time I've ever really seen it on film before.
CALLAHAM: Can you talk about the song selection
in this karaoke sequence, Destin?
(CRETTON CHUCKLES)
CALLAHAM: Got Old Town Road in there.
I heard I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing, right?
CRETTON: Yes. Yes. CALLAHAM: Love that.
CRETTON: They were basically all of my favourite
running tracks that I listen to every time I go for a jog.
CALLAHAM: I was hoping those were your karaoke jams.
Your personal karaoke jams.
CRETTON: Some of them are. Some of them are. (LAUGHS)
We actually started with eight
and we went into the room with them
and we had a roaming camera and let them go.
And we just chose the highlights
and put them in the movie for your viewing pleasure.
CALLAHAM: Here's Katy's family,
which has become Shang-Chi's
adoptive family in America.
He's Shaun here, by the way.
He has not revealed his true name.
This was also really critical.
You talked about wanting to do a version of this scene from day one.
SHAUN:...Funyuns and cigarettes back to the afterlife?
CRETTON: Yeah, I think for both Dave and I,
it was really important for us to see
an Asian American family and how the generations interact.
How you can clearly see the influence
of American culture growing stronger with each new generation,
and all of that not only informs the character of Katy
but also informs Shang-Chi and who he is.
There's also an underlying emotional story
that's happening from Shang-Chi's perspective.
And if you watch him throughout this scene,
the way that it was edited by Nat and Harry and Elizabeth,
our editors, was finding little moments
where Shang-Chi is clearly looking at this family
and seeing what he misses, what he longs for.
What he finds is empty in his life.
So it's a bit of a set-up of what's to come.
CALLAHAM: So, this entire commentary
is going to turn into me talking about
how a huge percentage of this finished film
is actually a lot of ideas were there from day one.
Destin, on the very first time we were in the room together,
I remember, you said that you wanted to do a bus fight.
I don't know where that idea came from, but here it is.
CRETTON: (LAUGHS) It was actually like...
The idea of this sequence was in my pitch.
One, I've never done an action sequence in any movie before.
But I do know what I love,
are action sequences that are crafted around
a unique location or unique scenario.
And as a what-if scenario in my pitch,
it was, rather than have two people fighting,
what if a fight broke out on a runaway bus in San Francisco,
zooming down a hill, that can't stop?
So the stakes are raised tenfold because of that,
and then it turned into this really fun sequence that...
Holy shit.
Who are you?
CRETTON: I can't believe that that tiny idea
turned into this crazy fight.
CALLAHAM: It's great, though, because at some point
the accordion bus idea came into...
I don't remember where that came from specifically.
But then once we realised we're going to chop this bus in half
and that we had this man, Razor Fist, who has a razor fist for an arm,
it all started... Cutting the brake line, all these ideas
started to really fall together pretty easily.
CRETTON: The one thing we wanted for this fight was to introduce,
the Jackie Chan style
of fight sequences into this movie.
Very loosely inspired by Jackie Chan movies,
but also also loosely inspired by Buster Keaton movies.
There's a lot of set-ups and payoffs, a lot of physical gags in this.
Every time I've tried to drive a bus, I get yelled at.
CRETTON: Our second-unit director, Brad Allan,
one of his heroes is Buster Keaton and I love the way that
these set-ups and payoffs are sprinkled throughout.
So the story is all told through physical gags
and movement.
CALLAHAM: Worth pointing out here, the guy filming this,
he's called Klev in the script.
He is doing a live stream that comes back later.
He's also in one of the Spider-Man movies,
so he is now a recurring character in the MCU.
(ALL YELP)
CALLAHAM: This is awesome.
CRETTON: This sequence was primarily headed
by fight coordinator Andy Cheng.
He was in Jackie Chan's stunt team.
I mean, he has crazy stories of doubling for Jackie Chan
on some of the craziest stunts
that we've seen in those movies.
So he was the perfect person to create this really fun vibe
throughout this fight sequence.
This shot in particular
was very loosely inspired by a pretty iconic shot from Oldboy,
which is one of my favourite films and we wanted to play
the climax of this fight sequence out in a pretty simple oner
that comes out of the bus and tracks with Shang-Chi
as he makes his way down
to the final beats of taking out these bad guys.
CALLAHAM: And this was all shot in a moving bus in San Francisco.
Is that correct, Dustin? In one take.
CRETTON: We had 12 cameras
set up throughout the bus.
It was mainly shot like a documentary.
I'm not sure we can say that kind of stuff.
We're being sarcastic.
(BOTH CHUCKLING)
CALLAHAM: Here's Katy again, the best driver in the world.
Just jumps behind the wheel of a bus, which, very different skill set.
CRETTON: I remember, this moment we had this major problem,
which is after this whole ordeal,
how does Katy stop this bus?
And we were in San Francisco location scouting,
and I stood up in the bus that we were on
and looked back and I yelled to Brad Allan,
"How do we stop this bus, Brad?
"Can you can you figure out how to stop the bus?"
And he talked it over with some of his team
in the back of the bus and literally three minutes later,
he came up and he pitched this idea to me.
He said, "What if there's a garbage truck
"that comes into play
"and Katy ramps up onto a pile of cars and wedges herself
"between the garbage truck and the line of cars
"and the the intense friction between them
"is what takes us to a stop?"
And that's what we do.
Those guys are going after my sister next,
and I have to get to her first.
You have a sister?
Look, I know this is confusing.
I'll explain it when I get back, I promise.
No, no.
CRETTON: We've got some...
We've got Kung Fu Hustle on the wall back there in this scene,
which was one of our favourite movies
and we drew
a lot of inspiration from that movie in a lot of ways.
CALLAHAM: It's a nice apartment.
CRETTON: Yeah, Shang-Chi lives out of a garage.
There's clearly a garage door there.
This is the moment that Katy realises her best friend has been lying to her
over the past 10 or so years that they've known each other.
It's a big turning point in their relationship.
I think it's also a big character reveal
of who Katy is and how supportive she is.
CALLAHAM: Yeah.
CRETTON: She's also choosing to stick with him.
- (MEN GRUNTING) - (STICKS CLUNKING)
SHAUN: After my mom died...
CRETTON: There is something that we are tracking throughout
this training montage of Shang-Chi.
The obvious thing is Shang-Chi being trained by his dad
and the very complicated relationship
that is being built there
that's a mixture of love and abuse.
But we're also more subtly
tracking his sister Xialing's story
and getting glimpses of what her life was like,
being pushed into the shadows
as all of the focus is put on her brother.
CALLAHAM: This is also our first look at Death Dealer,
in the blue with the mask.
CRETTON: Now, Death Dealer in the comics was...
His design
was a lot more inspired by skulls.
In our movie, our visual development supervisor, Andy Park,
and his incredible team came up with a Death Dealer
that is inspired by Chinese opera masks.
And I think the upgrade
that they gave Death Dealer is pretty cool.
I can only offer you beef or vegetarian.
BOTH: Um...
- Vegetarian would be great. - Yeah, same.
- FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Okay. - Thank you.
So...
CRETTON: This aeroplane joke was something that
Dave Callaham pitched very early on,
and it's stuck around all the way to the end.
- (CALLAHAM CHUCKLES) - CRETTON: We always hate...
I think it was like
we just really hated the expository,
here's the serious exposition of what my life was like
being raised as an assassin,
and Dave's very smart joke pitch
was to hard cut to an interruption on the aeroplane
that snaps us back into reality.
I'm sorry about your mom.
CALLAHAM: Yeah, this killed two birds for us
because you always get these scenes.
All of these movies end up having these deep backstory expository scenes
which are very hard to write without them starting to go on,
and sometimes the characters are having these conversations
in locations like this, and it seems totally bonkers
that these two people are having this conversation,
and there's people sitting around and whatnot.
So this seemed like a fun way to have fun with that idea.
And it also allowed us to get to Macau, because we also,
Destin and I, both were concerned about how characters will suddenly
just appear in the next location on the other side of the world
without seemingly having had any conversations at all.
So here we have... For all those fans of travel in movies.
CRETTON: At one point, didn't we have a whole sequence
where they were just travelling
and time-jumping through a 13-hour trip to Macau?
CALLAHAM: Yeah, there's versions of that conversation
that are much longer, for sure.
I love these shots.
CRETTON: Yeah, I really love how this turned out.
It was very difficult to shoot this sequence during COVID times.
It's a combination of a few teams.
Some of it was shot in Sydney.
Some was shot in Macau and some was shot in Hong Kong remotely.
CALLAHAM: I love the look on Katy's face there.
That was always something we wanted for her to present.
Just her excitement at seeing the vibrancy of this Asian culture
that she's never gotten to experience in this way.
Just... I love that.
CRETTON: Yeah.
CALLAHAM: This guy's tattoos are based on my tattoos, I think, right?
CRETTON: I think they're... (LAUGHING)
CALLAHAM: Is that me? CRETTON: No... You'll laugh about that,
but I actually think I gave a photo of you to Sue Chan to... (LAUGHING)
CALLAHAM: It was like, "Hey, can this scumbag look like the writer?"
CRETTON: Ronny Chieng as Jon Jon.
I just love Ronny so much.
Ronny has never looked like this before in his life.
I remember when I showed him the photo of the haircut
I wanted to give him
and watched him just use all of his acting ability
to act like he thought it would be cool.
CALLAHAM: I think it is cool.
CRETTON: He looks great.
- I think he looks great. - CALLAHAM: Looks really good.
Some fun MCU Easter eggs during this walk
for the fans.
CRETTON: Spike Face is not one of them.
CALLAHAM: No. But could be in the future.
CRETTON: Yes.
CALLAHAM: Spike Face, Disney Plus spinoff.
(BOTH CHUCKLE)
CRETTON: Here we have one of the Black Widows
from Black Widow
that you may recognise, and...
- What's that other guy? - CALLAHAM: Fighting...
It's a soldier representing the Extremis plot line
of Iron Man 3.
And here, a more obvious... Easter egg is probably not the word,
but this here's the Abomination fighting Wong,
which got a lot of attention in the trailer.
You want me to show you how it feels?
CRETTON: Did they name Wong after Benedict Wong?
CALLAHAM: No, that's his name in the comics. (LAUGHS)
(CROWD CHEERING)
CROWD: (CHANTING) Wong! Wong! Wong!
Go, Wong!
I always bet on Asian.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, look, I'm not going up there, okay?
- I'm just trying to... - Whoa, whoa, whoa.
It's too late to back out now.
- You already committed, bro. - SHANG-CHI: What?
JON JON: You signed the contract, remember?
Your name's on the roster.
The bets are piling in.
- Really? What's our cut? - Oh, it's huge.
It doesn't matter.
It matters.
Dude, I saw you fight five assassins
and a giant Romanian with a razor for an arm
on a moving bus.
This is just one guy.
Just do it. Then we all get paid,
and then I'll help you find whoever you're looking for.
Come on. You got this.
- JON JON: You got this. - Don't be nervous.
Thank you.
- KATY: Yeah. - Yeah.
CRETTON: This fight club is...
It's all real.
This was one of our bigger sets that Sue Chan built
and you can walk through the entire thing.
This isn't chopped up and put in different locations.
You can... This is one giant set
that was all built out of metal and giant shipping containers.
It was a really beautiful set.
This fight ring is also all real.
JON JON: It's Bus Boy!
(SCATTERED CHEERING)
What happened to your shirt?
(TRADITIONAL DRUM MUSIC PLAYING ON SPEAKER)
JON JON: And his opponent for tonight,
it's Macau's own fearsome killer...
Xu Xialing!
(CROWD CHEERING LOUDLY)
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
(GRUNTS)
(IN ENGLISH) Wait, wait!
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
(BOTH GRUNTING)
JON JON: (IN ENGLISH) Ooh, that's gotta hurt.
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
CALLAHAM: Tell us how you cast Meng'er.
Because as far as I understand it,
that she's never been in a movie before, right?
CRETTON: Meng'er was found by our casting director, Sarah Finn.
Meng'er was
working in a musical theatre in Shanghai,
and she sent in an audition,
and there was just something really
playful about the way that she performed the character
that was really unique,
and we flew her down to Sydney
to play with Simu,
and they're... I mean, to this day, they are like brother and sister.
Their chemistry is just so great together.
And Meng'er is... I don't know, she's a really special actor,
and she was the perfect person
to play this character that is really a soft child
on the inside that has been hardened by years
of putting up walls in order to protect herself.
And Meng'er, I think, captures that really beautifully.
CALLAHAM: She's great. I love that we're looking at these two siblings,
arguably, two of the centrepieces, obviously of the movie.
They're both pretty new to the world of these blockbuster films,
and you get to watch these careers blossoming.
It's just one of the things
I think is really exciting about this movie and special.
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
(DOOR BEEPS)
(IN ENGLISH) Where'd you get all that money?
CRETTON: This is the moment of the movie that we start to see
the core theme of our movie unravelling.
And we're seeing these siblings
much later in their life,
in the personas that they created
in order to adapt or protect themselves
ever since a giant tragedy happened to them,
and that, at its core,
is what this movie is looking at.
We see a family that is broken
and shattered by a tragedy,
and we're seeing all these characters react to that differently.
And I think the way... In this particular scene,
the way that Xialing plays it, I think, is so subtle and layered.
CALLAHAM: It's really lovely to see it.
XIALING: What postcard?
CALLAHAM: It took us a long time,
I remember, to land on exactly what Xialing had done with her life
and where she was in this moment.
And I think it's great that we ended up where we did,
where these two kids grew up under the same circumstances...
Versions of the same circumstances, and one has run as far away as possible.
And the other, though, has also run away,
but has simultaneously stepped into the shoes of her father in a way,
which is an interesting thing that we all do sometimes.
CRETTON: Do you remember, Dave,
when there is a moment when Jonathan said...
Our producer, Jonathan Schwartz, who was really in the room with us
from day one, the writers' room, day one all the way to the end.
But there was a day that he said,
"What if her club was a fight club?"
Do you remember that?
(BOTH CHUCKLE)
CALLAHAM: We had a lot of problems until the fight club,
because there... Then after that,
one of the days I remember the most was,
we got very stuck at some point,
I don't remember the specific details
of what was going to happen in that fight club.
And then one day it was like, "What if the person he's fighting is his sister?"
CRETTON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. CALLAHAM: We didn't start there.
Which, when you look back now,
it seems insane that there was ever any other idea on the table, but...
CRETTON: Yeah.
CALLAHAM: That opened up the whole story.
And then here we have the bamboo fight scene,
which I don't remember exactly when this idea came,
but it was early.
And I remember seeing fight vis for this early in the writing process.
CRETTON: This was another...
It was another brainstorm as to what is another environment
that we can put our characters in
that would create a fight that is just unique.
So, we came up with these ideas for environments
that our choreographers could just riff on
and create something really cool from.
We have seen bamboo scaffolding fights before.
(SINGING HOTEL CALIFORNIA BY EAGLES) On a dark desert highway
Cool wind in my hair
CRETTON: I think there's one in 36th Chamber, isn't there?
I'm pretty sure there is one.
CALLAHAM: Yeah, there's a couple of 'em. Jackie's done them before.
- And there's one in... - CRETTON: I think Rush Hour has one.
CALLAHAM: Yeah. CRETTON: But we thought
one of the unique things that we wanted to add
to the history of bamboo scaffolding fights,
is putting it really high up in the air on a skyscraper.
CALLAHAM: I do remember that.
Somebody had shown us in the room
these pictures, right, of locations where you'll have
this incredible dichotomy of this incredibly modern structure
that's going up in Hong Kong and places like that.
But they're still using bamboo scaffolding
to accomplish that in a lot of the areas.
That's, I think, part of what we seized on.
CRETTON: Yeah.
There was a time when
there was going to be a giant explosion and all that scaffolding
was gonna peel off and bash into another building.
But we didn't do that.
CALLAHAM: (CHUCKLES) On fire.
CRETTON: (LAUGHING) Yes. CALLAHAM: Make it simple.
The other cool thing about this sequence is,
the challenge, really...
My memory of the challenge was, on the writing side,
that we had the two siblings
the fighting alongside each other sort of,
but they have different fighting styles
and different philosophies on how to handle themselves
in this situation, and we wanted to make sure
that we were demonstrating the togetherness
but how far they'd grown apart
inside of the story of the fight, which...
That was, for me, the hard part,
because I didn't have to choreograph it.
CRETTON: But I do think that was something
that Brad Allan and his team were so good at,
was really asking over and over,
"What is the context of the story of the fight?"
What are these characters going through and what is the fight
telling us about their relationship or where they are in their life?
And there really is not a fight sequence in this movie
that is not doing that.
Even this fight here between Death Dealer and Shang-Chi,
it's not just two people having a knife fight.
This is a fight between Shang-Chi
and the guy who trained him as a young man,
who trained him to kill.
And this scene really is about
Shang-Chi fighting himself, fighting the urge to get back
into who he was as a child and what he was taught.
And there's a moment in here when he almost does.
The guy who taught him his aggression,
and he goes for it, and then he stopped.
CALLAHAM: Before we get into what happens next,
I just want to say, Simu seems like he can run really fast.
In that previous shot of him running down the hall,
he looks like he's moving very, very quickly.
CRETTON: Yeah, every time he was doing his running scene,
I would look at Simu and just say, "Just tap into Tom Cruise.
"You just got to go for the Tom Cruise run."
CALLAHAM: It's just a really good movie run.
I'm just saying, as a fan of movie runs.
CRETTON: It's a great run.
I think this is, I guess, what you would
technically call the beginning of our second act.
CALLAHAM: Yeah.
CRETTON: When Shang-Chi is forced to go back
to the place he started and face all the things
that he's been running from.
It's also important to remember that,
though this is a story that is primarily following Shang-Chi,
it's also Xialing's story and we are...
She's going through very similar emotions that he is.
My son is home.
Take the girls to their room.
CALLAHAM: It was a lot of fun to think about this fortress, I remember,
because we knew early on that we needed to conceive of the kind of place
where somebody could have been holed up for hundreds of years, building power.
So that was cool.
CRETTON: And a base that he could actually,
believably be orchestrating all of the things
that the Ten Rings have their hands in throughout the world.
He said he couldn't look at me...
CRETTON: This scene was really important
for Xialing and Katy to...
We always knew it was really important to give them a moment.
As the female leads of our movie, to have to have a moment together.
You started an underground fight ring in Macau...
CRETTON: This was a pretty important moment for Xialing as a character.
If my dad won't let me into his empire,
I'm gonna build my own.
Hell yeah.
CRETTON: It's also a bit of a set-up
for where she goes toward the end of this movie.
(SENTIMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
(GRUNTING)
CRETTON: That post...
For those of you who are worried
about our young actor's fist, was made of foam.
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
CRETTON: This shot of Tony was shot in Hong Kong.
This shot was shot in Los Angeles.
This shot was half shot in Hong Kong and half shot in Los Angeles.
That shot was shot in Hong Kong.
That's in LA.
Hong Kong.
...you have to show me you're strong enough to carry them.
CALLAHAM: In retrospect, I wish you had done this for the entire commentary.
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
CRETTON: LA. Now, to blow your mind, Dave,
the background of all those shots, Sydney.
(BOTH LAUGH)
CALLAHAM: Incredible. The future is now.
This was like the other incredibly critical sequence
that we always knew from day one had to happen in this movie,
the family dinner.
CRETTON: This family dinner is, in a lot of ways,
a mirror opposite of the family breakfast scene
that we have in Act 1 of the movie in Katy's house.
And this is the emotional set-up
where, if you're watching
Simu's performance in that Act 1 scene,
the payoff to that is here where
all of the family dynamics that he has buried inside him
comes out.
This is also, I think,
the moment in the movie that we
really see who Wenwu is.
One thing we haven't really talked about
is the baggage that that character
carried into the writing process,
and what we were battling from the get-go.
Dave was on this movie even before I came in.
What did you think of that?
CALLAHAM: Well, yeah. So just to get into that a little bit, in the comics,
Shang-Chi, at one point, initially
was the son of a character called Fu Manchu,
which is an obviously deeply problematic stereotypical character
that was borrowed from previous storytelling.
And then Marvel changed that character to the Mandarin.
Who became very well-liked and known among comic book fans
and then eventually that character
became a character called Zhuang Zhou, I believe.
But all of them were depicted in a way that wasn't particularly helpful,
or it was always a bit problematic.
And so even when we knew
that we were going to be painting
an entirely new picture of this character...
He was going to be named Wenwu,
he was going to be a three-dimensional character
that had really no relationship whatsoever
with those previous iterations.
Part of the baggage that we inherited was that he was still
the leader of The Ten Rings, which meant inside of the MCU canon,
in Iron Man 3 he had been referred to as the Mandarin,
which is a name that itself is considered problematic
and is not particularly helpful to any of us making this movie.
And so we had a lot of conversations,
Destin and I especially, about how do we account for the stuff
that's been put before us, but set that record straight
and come up with a storyline that allows Wenwu to breathe
as this three-dimensional character and simultaneously
establish why he would have been called the Mandarin by certain people.
And what we ended up with was a version where
it's a name that had been applied to him,
but primarily by people who probably
didn't understand him, or his culture as well.
And it's never a name that I suspect
that he ever would have chosen for himself.
CRETTON: When I was talking to Tony about the character,
the Wenwu character, there was a moment on set
when he told me...
We started talking about whether
Wenwu has the ability
to love, genuinely love his family
and Tony emphatically said, "Yes."
He said Wenwu
genuinely, deeply loves not only his wife but also his kids.
But he said his problem is he doesn't know how.
And when Tony told me that,
it's like this character just clicked into place.
And when you watch Tony's performance through that lens,
it really makes so much sense, that this man
is not necessarily evil.
He is lost and broken
and doing things that arguably are very evil.
But I think the way Tony played him is that
rooted in every evil deed
is this pain that is a result of a lost love.
CALLAHAM: That's probably the thing that differentiates this character the most
from anything that we've ever seen in the comics as well.
Because any of those characters
that have been depicted as Shang-Chi's father
have always been... Moustache-twirling might not be the exact right word,
but are very arch, very supervillainy.
Love is not a characteristic that I ever saw
in any of those books in those characters,
and so that's a thing that I think really
sets him apart.
CRETTON: Yeah, I really relate to Tony's Wenwu.
CALLAHAM: This sequence... CRETTON: This is really cool.
CALLAHAM: This is awesome. I don't know how you did it.
CRETTON: I don't know how...
This is Chris and his amazing team
of visual effects artists who are working
on each of these moments.
I mean, they're scattered throughout the world.
The number of people who worked on these sequences
is mind-boggling
and this is one of the first sequences that we worked on,
and it actually could have been
a really lame, expository moment.
But it turned into something that is really visually beautiful
and sets us up for a lot of what's to come in the movie.
CALLAHAM: I remember that being really challenging
because we knew that we're sticking these pendants into the dragon's eyes
and that information was going to be revealed.
But the manner in which that information
would be revealed was a real big question mark for us
for a long time until those guys got involved.
CRETTON: Yeah, because Chris, from the beginning,
because he's worked on so many movies with...
Chris was the VFX supervisor for Captain America,
and he has worked on so many Marvel movies since.
His one request from the beginning for this moment was,
"Can we please not do a hologram?"
And we could not figure out how else to do this moment without a hologram
until Chris came up with the idea,
"What if it was a water hologram?"
And we said, "Great." (CHUCKLES)
Well, this is a big turning point in the movie where
Wenwu realises that his kids aren't going to be
coming on the ride with him, or believe what he's doing,
and throws them in prison.
It's also the first reveal that we have that
Wenwu truly believes that his wife is
speaking to him and calling to him from
wherever she is trapped.
Was that idea something that
we discovered in the edit or in the shooting of... Do you know, Dave?
Was that in the script?
CALLAHAM: That he was hearing the actual voice?
Yeah, we ended up with that in the pages at some point because...
The general idea of it was always in place,
that he believed that his wife was...
He was capable of saving her at some point,
and that was always his motivation.
The manner in which
that information was presented to him,
we went through a lot of different iterations.
- Literally hearing a voice. - CRETTON: Yeah.
CALLAHAM: Imagining it, not hearing a voice.
CRETTON: It was one of the challenges, really getting into Wenwu's head
and what he really believes, and...
It was one of the underlying
metaphors of the movie and are connected to The Ten Rings
and what they represent
and how they are connected to, not only Wenwu's obsession with power,
but also just his addiction.
And how they act as a veil
that is keeping him from really seeing the reality around him.
Now we come to
a pretty big reveal of the movie.
CALLAHAM: Here he is.
"Wake Duncan with thy knocking.
"Oh, I would'st though could'st."
CALLAHAM: So this is...
Trevor Slattery, a character that we first met in Iron Man 3.
He was initially presented in the film as the Mandarin.
And then we learn, in a great twist, that he is simply a oafish British actor
who has been hired to portray the Mandarin.
He obviously has an association with The Ten Rings because of that movie,
and because of the great short All Hail the King
that Drew Pearce directed after that film,
which showed Trevor in jail, and eventually being broken out of jail,
presumably by the person whose identity he had stolen,
which in this movie is revealed to be Wenwu,
and that is why he is in a dungeon
- in this fortress. - (BOTH CHUCKLE)
CALLAHAM: We knew we wanted to use him if we could get him.
Very early in the process, right, Destin? He just seemed so fun.
CRETTON: Yeah, and we actually did talk to Drew about the direction
that we were taking the character and we spoke to Sir Ben at length.
And Sir Ben really loved the idea
of a Trevor who has used his time behind bars
and in a dungeon to really turn his life around.
And this is a version of Trevor who is
extremely positive
and really enjoying life.
CALLAHAM: It looks like a Manchester United scarf back there,
which is interesting since he's from Liverpool.
So we should talk about Morris.
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
CALLAHAM: Morris.
I mean, where do we start here?
This was also something that we talked about
before we ever even pitched Kevin the final version
of what we were going to attempt to write.
Should we talk about the origin of Morris, Destin?
CRETTON: Yes, I'm not sure...
CALLAHAM: Should we not? CRETTON: I mean...
CALLAHAM: Is he a mystery that is... CRETTON: Well, Morris.
I mean, I think we should...
Morris was a loose...
Was originated from a loose sketch that was up on our wall.
Our mood board wall.
And we initially pitched the idea up to Kevin
of a six-legged creature
with wings and no face.
And we thought it would get stomped on pretty quickly.
But Kevin said go for it.
And so we did.
And I think really early on,
in the very beginning, Dave and I, we made a deal
- that if... - (BOTH CHUCKLE)
CRETTON: If Morris made it all the way to the final cut of this movie,
you would get a tattoo of Morris somewhere on your body.
CALLAHAM: This is true. This is true.
Yeah. We...
The picture that we had on the wall was really ridiculous.
I remember, Destin... The first day you walked into that room,
you looked at it and you were like, "What is that?"
- That's in the movie. - (CRETTON CHUCKLES)
CALLAHAM: And we all laughed and we worked out
a way that it might end up in the movie,
and then I do remember very specifically
I had made that crack about how,
"This thing's never gonna end up in the movie.
"I'll get a tattoo of it if it does."
And then I was pitching the story to Kevin
and I got to the point where we're going to bring Morris,
and I pointed to the picture and I just saw this look on his face.
Kevin, if he doesn't like stuff, is still super polite about it
and he never really makes you feel bad about your insane idea.
But when he does like stuff, it's very clear.
And I just remember looking over and he was smiling, and I just thought,
"Oh, crap. This thing's going to end up in the movie."
- (BOTH LAUGH) - CALLAHAM: And I...
As of this recording, I have not
procured that tattoo, mostly because of COVID issues.
But I will do so.
And Destin will film it for your entertainment.
CRETTON: Oh, that'll be... I can't wait.
Morris is also... Little-known fact.
Morris is named after
my wife and my dog, who is a Dachshund
whose name is Morris.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
(TYRES SQUEALING)
KATY: What's happening back there?
SHANG-CHI: Doing my best.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Scan hand print for gate access.
- Hurry up! - SHANG-CHI: I'm trying!
Scan hand print for gate access.
Shaun!
Access approved.
(GASPS)
(PANTING)
(DOOR OPENS)
They will come back once I bring her home.
Prepare the men for war.
Yes, sir.
CRETTON: This next scene
was such a pleasant surprise.
It was first
a fairly different version of this scene, which was...
The first draft of the scene
- Was talking about Trevor's... - CALLAHAM: Don't, don't.
CRETTON: Where Trevor's... CALLAHAM: Don't tell anybody.
CRETTON:...birthplace... (CHUCKLES)
Where Trevor's initial inspiration for becoming an actor was.
And then we tossed it over to Dave,
who did,
basically, the version of the scene that you see.
And I laughed so hard when I read these pages. (LAUGHS)
CALLAHAM: Thank you.
CRETTON: And it stuck ever since.
CALLAHAM: This was definitely an "a-ha" moment for me.
I have to say, writing Trevor is an amazing experience.
I'm sure you feel the same way, Destin, because you...
The weirder...
It's very tempting to just go completely off the rails,
especially because in Iron Man, when he's on drugs,
he can never finish a thought without diverging,
and so it becomes tempting to do that with him.
But in this case,
I remember having
the Planet of the Apes idea and then desperately googling
when that movie came out to see if I was actually going to be able to
make it work, and just feeling so happy.
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
CALLAHAM: So happy and then not knowing, are you guys going to want to use it?
Will Sir Ben think it's ridiculous?
CRETTON: Sir Ben loved it and he played it so well.
For me, it's not only a really great long joke
with a great payoff, but...
To me, it's a combination of the joke and the reveal
of what really makes Trevor tick, and the reveal of his soft heart
and his relationship with his mom.
I don't know. There's so much connected to it
that makes that joke really land on multiple levels.
Let's talk about this moving maze.
So we got the set-up of the moving maze in that water map.
And this is the payoff.
This is like a...
According to... I wish I knew the...
The statistics
of how difficult this simulation was for Chris and his team.
But I know how difficult it was, 'cause every time we changed an edit
or I asked,
"Could we make the dust more intense?
"Or have the trees move in a slightly different way?"
The answer was typically a big groan.
Because it was so difficult to create
all of those moving elements in the VFX world,
but I think it turned out pretty fine.
CALLAHAM: It's awesome. I love the way that the ground is buckling,
and there's just... Everything is getting kicked up.
And there's that scarf again.
CRETTON: I also love that Razor Fist drives an electric car.
(ALL GRUNT)
(ALL PANTING)
(MORRIS COOS)
Morris says, "Great job, everyone."
Now, all we have to do is go through that waterfall,
and we're pretty much there.
(SHANG-CHI SIGHS)
CRETTON: Did that waterfall look real to you? 'Cause it wasn't.
CALLAHAM: Oh, yeah. That does look really good.
CRETTON: Apparently, according to Chris, the team that did that waterfall,
they are the best water team on the planet.
CALLAHAM: I love that. I love specialisation.
(WHOOSHING)
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(ENTHRALLING MUSIC PLAYING)
CRETTON: Ta Lo is referenced in the Marvel comics.
TREVOR: I think those birds are on fire.
- (MORRIS CHITTERING) - Really? Oh.
Morris says it's normal.
They're old mates of his.
CRETTON: Took it in a slightly different direction from the comics
and gave it a little more context.
(PUP YAPPING)
(MORRIS CHITTERING AND CHEERING)
(ALL CHITTERING AND CHEERING)
- (KATY GASPS) - (CAR HALTS)
That's a weird horse.
What's it looking at me for?
(SNORTS)
(SOFT TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYING)
(MUSIC RISING)
(CREATURE GRUNTING)
(GROWLS)
(MORRIS CHITTERING)
CALLAHAM: So here's... You can see the two Fu dogs in that shot.
Fu dogs are
pretty traditional figures in Chinese and other Asian mythologies.
They are always in twos,
and they typically are set on both sides of a place
as guardians of that place.
Fun to get to see them
realised in this way.
CRETTON: If you look closely, you can see
that they are slightly different colours.
The darker shade,
I'm not even going to guess
which one is the male, and which is the female. (CHUCKLES)
But one is a male and the other is a female.
Guang Bo.
The commander-in-chief of the Ta Lo Army is played by Master Yuen Wah.
Who you might recognise from Kung Fu Hustle.
He's one of my favourite characters in Kung Fu Hustle.
And he is such a legend and a joy to work with.
As is Michelle Yeoh.
- (LAUGHS) - CALLAHAM: That was... There you go.
A good segue.
CRETTON: One thing people may not
realise about Michelle...
Not only how much of an incredible actor she is
and how much depth she brings to her performances,
she's also just really silly and fun.
She was such a joy to have on set. She really
just brought so much life to the set every time she stepped on it.
Made the movie-making process so fun.
YING NAN: Our people have been here for over 4,000 years,
preparing for something we hope will never happen.
CALLAHAM: She's such a critical character here, too, because
Shang-Chi and Xialing don't get to interact with their mother
as adults inside of the movie.
Obviously, we see them in flashbacks as children,
so Nan represents
the connection that they have to their mother.
A lot of elements that remind them of her.
Is he wearing the rings?
SHANG-CHI: He hasn't taken them off since she died.
CRETTON: Dave, what did you think of the visuals of Ta Lo
when you first saw the village itself?
Did it feel in line with what you had...
CALLAHAM: Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's beautiful. It's so much more colourful than I imagined,
not because I imagined something super dark, I just...
I love all the different colours that we brought into it,
or that you brought into, excuse me.
And that gate.
I always loved the idea of that looming gate that looks over everything
and has this vibe to it.
Talk about this, though.
Because this came in fairly late and the visuals are really cool.
CRETTON: Yeah...
This backstory to Ta Lo,
and the purpose of why Ta Lo exists,
I think, is... There's a small mention in this moment
that Michelle talks about Ta Lo
not just being the village that we see in our movie.
That Ta Lo extends far beyond.
Far beyond the shores of their village,
and that there are...
Ta Lo is a region, Ta Lo has cities
and technology that far surpasses anything that we see on Earth
or in our realm.
This portion or this village of Ta Lo
has a bit of a monk-ish mentality where they have
set aside technology and modern advances
for the single purpose that they are here to serve,
which I think that was really important context to give to Ta Lo,
that they're not just this
village of people who are holding
sticks and shields.
(KATY GASPS)
Oh.
CALLAHAM: Yeah, there's a much wider world around it, I think,
that we hint at, which is really exciting.
What? Okay.
CRETTON: It is really exciting to be able to explore that one day.
CALLAHAM: Yeah, good luck to whoever does that.
CRETTON: Yeah, good luck.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
Let's go see your mother.
CALLAHAM: This is like the badge of Marvel writers.
Every time I read an interview with another one of them.
They're all great, but a lot of them at this point are like,
"Yeah, at some point that's going to be someone else's problem.
"I just did what I did."
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
CALLAHAM: Like The Ten Rings became our problem.
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
It's like every time I get moderately good at something,
I just quit and start something new.
CALLAHAM: I love this.
CRETTON: It's really fun writing open-endedly like that, right?
CALLAHAM: I think both ends of it are super fun.
I don't know how you feel about this, Destin,
but I really like problem-solving writing,
when someone has already
laid something out in front of you. In our case,
the history of The Ten Rings that we inherited,
and now you're playing the game of how do we
weave that story in with ours.
I like that kind of writing.
It's super fun, and then, yeah, you're right.
At the end, you can just say, "Now you deal with it."
CRETTON: You ever see that documentary, that Lars von Trier documentary,
The Five Obstructions?
CALLAHAM: No. What's that about? CRETTON: Well,
he basically finds what he considered to be the perfect short film.
And he tracks down the director.
He remembers the short film from ages ago
when he was a young filmmaker. He tracks down the director,
finds out the director hasn't done anything since that short film
and has been stuck in a creative slump since then.
So then Lars von Trier creates five obstructions for him
to basically replicate his same perfect short film five different times.
But every time he gives him a very big obstruction.
One is like, he can't use dialogue.
One, every shot has to be no longer than a second, I believe.
Anyway, he has all these obstructions.
And it not only
helped force this director
to make really interesting versions of this short film,
it just got him out of his creative slump.
All to say, I also love obstructions.
I think they're very helpful.
(BOTH LAUGH)
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
(STIRRING MUSIC PLAYING)
(IN ENGLISH) Guang Bo, you saw that?
That was tight!
(SOFT FOLK MUSIC PLAYING)
My mother was the only one who could beat him.
CRETTON: This sparring match between Michelle Yeoh and Simu,
between Nan and Shang-Chi,
was a very important one to nail tonally.
Because obviously, neither of them are trying to harm or kill each other.
But Nan is very clearly
trying to teach Shang-Chi a lesson
and tear down his pride a little bit to open him up
to hear what she needs to tell him.
This was really beautifully choreographed by Junchang,
who really found a pretty amazing,
pretty great balance between the playfulness
that Nan brings to it.
But also you'll see the transition here
when it goes from conflict
to a mentor really dancing...
Leading the dance with her student.
And then you start to see a shift when Shang-Chi starts to catch on
and tap into some of the things that Nan is teaching him.
One of things to remember is that Nan isn't teaching him
something he has never encountered before.
She's reminding him of things that were taught to him
when he was a child by his mom,
which I think helped us
with fact that Shang-Chi is learning it so quickly.
CALLAHAM: This is also a little bit about...
A little bit of what you were talking about at the beginning of the movie,
where Wenwu and Li are fighting.
Where some of those moves and techniques that you saw in that fight,
this is where you start to see them come back,
in a couple of these sequences.
CRETTON: Yeah. A lot of the techniques
that Li was using in the beginning were...
YING NAN: It is all a part of who you are.
CRETTON: The idea that the Great Protector
lends it its power to everybody in Ta Lo
is threaded throughout this movie,
so you'll see hints of that throughout.
CALLAHAM: I'd like to have this office.
This is my vibe.
CRETTON: Oh, yeah? CALLAHAM: Yeah.
CRETTON: I love that head.
CALLAHAM: Mm-hmm.
CRETTON: Just like that human head there.
And that head in the background, too.
It's pretty cool.
CALLAHAM: The emotion here in Tony's face blows me away.
CRETTON: It's such a simple moment.
This is one of my favourite scenes.
Even though we wrote it together,
it was not one of my favourite scenes on the page.
But once Tony lended his performance to it,
it became one of my favourite scenes in the movie.
(LI SPEAKING MANDARIN)
CRETTON: There was a lovely surprise that was discovered
in the editing room
that really tied
Wenwu's struggle, inner struggle,
to his son's inner struggle.
So that this flashback here, which is the ultimate reveal
of what happened to Shang-Chi's mother, Wenwu's wife, Li.
It's almost like a shared flashback between the two of them.
It's implied that it's the thing that both of them
aren't only thinking about right now in the movie,
and the moment in the movie.
But it's implied that this is the thing that they are constantly thinking about.
I love the way Fala played this scene.
She's just so
soft and tender
with Shang-Chi,
and then when she turns to face her enemy,
there's so much strength in that turn.
CALLAHAM: It's also worth pointing out,
I'm sure the people that have watched the movie have noticed this,
but this space that they're in as a family
is the same space that the Mandarin... Excuse me.
This space that they're in as a family
is the same space that Wenwu,
as a warlord, inhabits before and after Li comes into his life.
And if I'm not mistaken, the difference is
there's a lot more plant life and vegetation, just life in general,
inhabiting the space when she is with them.
And it becomes a cold, barren place when she's not.
CRETTON: Yeah, it was really an amazing
jigsaw puzzle that Sue Chan
and our AD, our assistant director, Jeff Okabayashi, put together
was scheduling the transformation of this one set
over a thousand years of transformation.
So pretty, pretty amazing to see.
Every time you see a completely different version of this set,
it was actually on the same stage going through that transformation.
YOUNG SHANG-CHI: Mama.
(BREATHES SHAKILY)
CRETTON: One person I haven't talked about
was working with Bill Pope, our director of photography.
Bill is a legend in his own right.
He not only was the cinematographer
for The Matrix and the entire Matrix trilogy,
he has also worked on a lot of Edgar Wright's movies,
including one of my faves, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
He also has worked in the MCU before
with Spider-Man 2.
And he did Clueless, did you know that?
CALLAHAM: I did not.
- Also a legendary film. - CRETTON: I know. I love Clueless.
- This scene... - CALLAHAM: This is my favourite scene.
CRETTON: This scene in particular is really...
I think it's a great example of what it's like to work with Bill Pope.
Because he is not only looking for the coolest camera angle
or where to flaunt himself in what he does.
He's always looking at it from a character standpoint,
and for this scene, we were trying to figure out
how we could shoot this scene differently than other fight sequences
And it was Bill in a brainstorming session
that said, "How about we never let the camera
"leave Shang-Chi's perspective?"
So that the fight takes place completely from the POV of young Shang-Chi.
We leave the fight as it's happening.
We see glimpses of it in the reflection
while we're also experiencing it
through young Shang-Chi's face and performance.
It was really difficult to do.
It required a lot of intricate collaboration
between Bill Pope and what we were shooting
and Chris Townsend
and quite a bit of VFX had to happen in order to pull that shot off.
But I really, really love how it turned out.
And it really is an anchor
to the dark side of Shang-Chi's past
and the root of where a lot of his pain birthed from.
We will rebuild The Ten Rings to what it once was.
CRETTON: Our gaffer or lighting technician, Reg Garside,
who works primarily in Sydney...
This was the first time that Reg and Bill Pope
have worked on a movie since doing The Matrix trilogy.
So this is a pretty momentous occasion
for the two of them,
coming back together since doing The Matrix.
And I was like
just a little kid with wide eyes watching the two of them work together.
They have such a cool shorthand
in creating looks for each scene
that are really lovely, like this scene.
CALLAHAM: This is also a good place to give a shout-out to Andrew.
Let's give a shout-out to Andrew.
You're only hearing my voice and Destin's voice.
But we had a secret weapon in the writing of this movie,
which was our third co-writer, Andrew Lanham,
who came in and was critical in getting us over a lot of humps,
and especially a lot of this stuff you're seeing here in the third act
and the stuff that you'll continue to see in the third act.
Andrew really helped us all through at times
where we were stretched pretty thin.
- So, what up, Andrew? - CRETTON: What up, Andrew?
Andrew came in, flew out to Sydney,
and became the man on the ground
while Dave was in LA.
So, I was prepping a lot of these scenes
while Dave and Andrew were bouncing ideas back and forth
and Andrew was relaying
the constant changes and obstacles that are happening during prep time
to Dave to give context on how we can shift
and adjust to create scenes that are shootable.
CALLAHAM: That's the tricky part about filmmaking, isn't it, Destin,
that you eventually have to shoot the movie.
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
CRETTON: Shoot the movie within...
Much more than five obstructions
that are put in front of you to shoot, though. (LAUGHS)
I think Simu did such a beautiful job in this moment.
And Nora.
Nora's performance in this as a genuine, caring,
loving friend is something
that you don't really see too much in film,
and I really love what she does, and...
I also really love what Simu does in that scene
and how vulnerable he gets.
CALLAHAM: Nora has an amazing ability.
I mean, Simu does as well, but Nora's been doing this a little bit longer,
so I think she's more known for her comedy.
But she does have this incredible ability
to be able to do comedy like that, and then
transform into this intensely empathetic character actor
inside of the same scene.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
CALLAHAM: I want to throw in here a little detail.
Credit to Jonathan Schwartz, the producer, and Destin.
I had this idea that I'd never let go of in the room
that Wenwu, in addition to this army,
would also have a couple of giant praying mantises...
- (CRETTON LAUGHING) - CALLAHAM:...that he had been raising
at his fortress.
I don't know why I had that idea.
This sounds like a joke, but it's not a joke.
And I was pressing those two on this idea constantly.
CRETTON: There was a praying mantis in the comics.
CALLAHAM: Right. And I just thought, okay, and then he'll bring them to Ta Lo
and they'll fight the Fu dogs, it'll be great.
To everyone else's credit, they literally never took me seriously,
not once, despite me arguing for it.
So, I just wanted to say, rest in peace to my giant praying mantises.
(CRETTON LAUGHING)
CALLAHAM: We'll get them in there somewhere.
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
(IN ENGLISH) Let me pass.
We cannot do that.
(ALL GRUNT)
CALLAHAM: We should also probably talk about
the designs on those rings a little bit.
I remember this conversation happening really early
in terms of The Ten Rings fighting with more traditional weapons
that have been modernised, which was a pretty cool idea.
Burn it down.
(ALL GRUNTING)
(GROANING)
- (COMMANDS IN MANDARIN) - (FIGHTERS YELLING)
CRETTON: Yeah, The Ten Rings, if you watch closely
throughout the opening montage,
they were fighting with these hook swords
thousands of years ago. We would see the hook swords
evolve and become these modern versions of the hook swords.
Stop him!
(BOTH GRUNTING)
(BREATHING HEAVILY)
CRETTON: This moment, I really love going from...
In the sound design, going from the intensity of that battle
to this really quiet standoff between father and son
that really is modelled after
a lot of classic Western standoffs.
This is really the first moment in the movie
where Shang-Chi and Dad
talk about the source of their pain.
And we hear for the first time
what Wenwu really thinks of his son
and where his frustration comes.
...when they came for her, and you did nothing.
You stood at a window and watched her die!
(BREATHING SHAKILY)
(SHANG-CHI GRUNTS)
(GRUNTING)
(BOTH GRUNTING)
She was gone...
CRETTON: There's a lot of incredible work done here
from our sound team at Skywalker.
Our supervising sound editors, Katy Wood and J.R. Grubbs,
and our rerecording mixers, Onnalee Blank and Lora,
they worked tireless hours
to create the sound design for this movie,
and some of my favourite moments of the movie
are when they chose to use silence to
really assist these emotional beats.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
CRETTON: They really did some incredible work in Ta Lo because,
basically, every sound in Ta Lo was created.
They never used any background source
that was real birds or regular
animals that you might hear.
Everything was created for the...
It's supposed to take place in another dimension.
So, every sound that you hear in the third act of this movie was
hand-sourced and edited and crafted
by somebody at Skywalker Sound.
(GRUNTING)
(RATTLING)
(GRUNTS)
(RATTLING)
CRETTON: This is one of my favourite sounds of the movie.
It's the sound of all these flapping scales
as Wenwu punches them.
(SCREECHING)
- (WENWU PUNCHES) - (RATTLING)
(BOTH GRUNTING)
(ALL GRUNTING)
(DISTANT SCREECHING)
(GASPS)
(SCREECHING)
CRETTON: Here come our little... What did we call these things?
CALLAHAM: Soul Suckers.
(BOTH CHUCKLE)
CRETTON: They're...
I'm not sure what they're...
I mean, they became the army
of the Dweller-in-Darkness.
The Dweller-in-Darkness' minions.
CALLAHAM: They're pretty gross, Destin.
CRETTON: Yeah.
CALLAHAM: That, especially. That effect, right?
I don't think I was prepared for...
CRETTON: There's something really gross about
a flesh-coloured octopus demon.
(CALLAHAM LAUGHS)
CALLAHAM: Yeah. They have faces, too,
which I'm not sure if I remembered.
CRETTON: I love Florian's delivery of this line. It's just so perfect.
It's the first time that we really see Razor Fist's humanity.
We see that Razor Fist is also a vulnerable person
who is capable of,
one, cracking a joke, and two,
being scared and switching sides.
RAZOR FIST: To the lake! Let's go! Let's go!
Hey, where's your brother?
I was hoping you knew.
CALLAHAM: How'd you do this?
CRETTON: All of this started as an experiment.
We initially wanted to shoot Shang-Chi in a pool underwater.
But we knew it would just...
We didn't really have the time, and it would be a real pain
because Simu would have to hold his breath for a long time.
So it started as an experiment where
we put him on a harness
and shot him in extra slow-mo on a stage,
and Bill and Reg did some really incredible lighting
that made it feel like we're underwater and we shot it at a really high speed.
So, he was in extra slow-mo, blew wind on him,
and we tried it as a test to see if it could look like
it was actually shot underwater.
And it looked really good.
So that's how we ended up shooting the entire thing.
So all of this, all that lighting right there was...
Reg had this rig that he put above Shang-Chi, above Simu,
and it was actual... Like, basically an aquarium of water
that light was shining through onto Simu.
CALLAHAM: Oh, cool.
CRETTON: And so all of those reflections
were actual reflections from real water.
CALLAHAM: And then, the bubbles and the water effects were
from that same award-winning water team?
CRETTON: Different award-winning water team.
CALLAHAM: Oh, wow.
CRETTON: Most of the VFX in the third act,
almost all of the VFX in the third act were done by Weta,
who some of you may know did
all of VFX for The Lord of the Rings,
and many other amazing movies.
We were very, very lucky to have them for this section of the movie.
One member of their team was known as
the best dragon guy in the business.
CALLAHAM: Oh! Good timing.
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
CALLAHAM: And here's our... I love the moss. I keep saying I love...
I just like telling you things I like about your movie.
But I really like the moss...
The algae or the moss or the growth on the Great Protector's horns.
Just these little details...
CRETTON: It's amazing with character development
in a VFX process, how much back and forth
and meticulous notes it takes to get to a place.
Like, how much moss should be on that dragon?
There was a point where there was so much moss on that dragon
that she looked like a green dragon.
And we're like... She looked sick. (CHUCKLES)
- CALLAHAM: I remember that part. - (CRETTON LAUGHING)
CALLAHAM: I feel like this is a part of the process
that would be really interesting for people to see at some point.
But they present hundreds of versions of these things,
the weapons and the costumes and stuff.
Some of them are so minorly different from one another
that you can't even tell.
And trying to make the right call, it seems impossible at times.
She's not back there, Dad.
Get out of my way, boy.
CRETTON: It's extra impossible when you're someone like me
who has never made a movie of this size,
even remotely close to this size,
and then being presented with options
from some of the best artists in the world,
and every option looks pretty amazing.
And it's really hard for me
not to just say "Great" every single time.
The result of that would be
a movie that isn't cohesive. And so, that's the challenge.
Everything is going to look great.
The challenge is trying to keep everything
looking like it belongs in the same movie.
CALLAHAM: Right.
I do remember of one of those meetings when we were looking at
the dragon jacket that Simu wears,
that Shang-Chi wears in this sequence.
And there was different piping and different...
These costumes all have to be designed in a way
that the actors can get in and out of them,
which doesn't sound like much, but they don't have
front zippers and whatnot visibly.
And you and I were staring at those for a while.
I couldn't even tell the difference at some point, and I do remember Kevin
just standing up at one point, pointing to one, and he's like, "This.
"But the red needs to be two ticks brighter."
(CRETTON CHUCKLES)
CALLAHAM: And we're like, "Great!" And he was right.
And it was one of those many moments
where you and I were like, "This is a guy who
"has been doing this, knows how to do this,
"can see these things in ways that we can't."
I thought it was so cool.
CRETTON: Kevin is really cool.
These flashbacks, I guess we never...
The way that the flashback turned out in the final cut of the movie
of the movie was actually something that
was pushed to a certain extent in the scriptwriting phase,
but was pushed even more in the editing phase.
There was always
the plan to have callbacks to the flashbacks with Shang-Chi
when he's underwater with the dragon.
But because of that element being introduced
in the scriptwriting phase,
we were able to play with it even more
and tease out the flashbacks throughout the movie
so they almost became a parallel storyline
to Shang-Chi's present-day story.
That moment
when Wenwu punches Shang-Chi to the ground...
This whole father-son fight
was the brainchild of
two really important members of Brad Allan's team,
Junchang and Chris Cowan, who we've talked about before.
They together choreographed
the first Wenwu versus Li fight.
And they also choreographed
the father versus son fights,
which were very important to keep together
because if you look at both fights back to back,
there's a lot of set-ups and payoffs between the two,
and this final fight here was...
There were a lot of inspirations, too,
taken from Chinese and Asian anime...
You'll definitely see some references
pulled from Dragon Ball Z, which is
one of our childhood favourites,
including mine.
You might see a reference pulled from
the Kamehameha of Dragon Ball Z.
(LI'S VOICE ECHOES LOUDLY)
(SCREECHES)
(SCREECHES LOUDLY)
CRETTON: And here's the Dweller-in-Darkness.
CALLAHAM: Also gross.
(CRETTON LAUGHS)
(ROARING)
CRETTON: Character-wise, what I love about the Dweller-in-Darkness is...
Not just that it's a big, scary monster.
It is the...
The physical representation of Wenwu's blindness.
And when he looks at that thing straight in the face
and they
meet eye-to-eye,
except I guess the Dweller doesn't have eyes,
but when they're looking directly at each other,
I think Wenwu is finally
looking at all the stupid mistakes he made,
and realising that everything he has been chasing has been wrong.
CALLAHAM: And it's a moment where the flashbacks works so well.
It's very affecting as a father to think about running back in your head
all the moments that you had with your kid.
(SCREECHES)
(RINGS HUM)
(ROARING)
CRETTON: What I love about Wenwu's ending is
he doesn't really have time to change.
In my mind, he doesn't have a big character
change that happens...
He just changes, just enough,
to do one selfless act and...
It's headed for the village!
(CREATURES CHITTERING)
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)
CRETTON: That's it. I don't know. To me, him giving up those rings
is the first time that Wenwu did
a truly selfless act since his wife died.
That shot right there
was a shot that...
With Shang-Chi running and jumping onto the dragon,
was one of the first shots that we saw from Weta,
and it was actually just an experiment
to see how the dragon moves
and how Shang-Chi might move alongside the dragon.
And it never made into the movie until late, late in the game.
We were trying to figure out how to get Shang-Chi onto that dragon.
And Kevin brought up that experimental shot
that was given to us from Weta that he always liked
and we went and revisited it
and asked them to
finalise it and it made it in the movie and it's pretty iconic.
CALLAHAM: Again, Simu running really well.
CRETTON: Yeah, Simu's really good at running.
CALLAHAM: He looks fast, man. It'd like to know what his 40-10 is.
(CRETTON CHUCKLES)
CRETTON: I love this shot, too.
(GROWLING)
- (SCREECHING) - (BOTH GRUNTING)
(GUANG BO SPEAKING MANDARIN)
CRETTON: I always wondered
what it was like directing these
really VFX-heavy moments in a movie.
And I always thought I would...
As a director, I would just sit back and let other people do all the work.
But it's much more
collaborative and involved than I expected,
and way harder than I anticipated.
Trying to tell all of
the A, B, C, stories that are happening throughout this entire sequence
was something that was
really a crazy puzzle piece to put together.
It really is a testament to the team that we had
to be able to overly communicate with all of these bits and pieces
that fit together to create this third act.
CALLAHAM: It's so complicated. It's incredible.
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)
(PAINED SCREECHING)
Holy shit.
CRETTON: That shot of Nora was shot...
Right now we're about a week from the premiere.
That shot
was shot in England with Nora about a month ago.
CALLAHAM: Oh, really? CRETTON: Yeah.
(BOTH CHUCKLING)
CALLAHAM: The way that you steal these things
and get them into the movie, it's incredible.
(SPEAKING MANDARIN)
(SHANG-CHI GRUNTING)
CRETTON: So, some beautiful Weta...
Weta work right here.
Everything in that is created 100% by Weta.
CALLAHAM: The work here is so amazing.
I mean, for me to watch it now...
Because this on the page, this is just words,
the scale of what you're seeing is so enormous
and you can't imagine it in your head when you're writing it.
But the way that they were able to capture that scale of...
The enormity of this sequence is pretty mind-boggling.
There's this dragon and this demon,
both of them are enormous, and you've got
the water and the weather pattern that you're seeing right here.
But then, simultaneously,
you're still able to focus on
Shang-Chi and Xialing and the story that they're telling
inside of this incredibly huge moment.
It's really well done.
CRETTON: One of things I love about that final moment
is the way that our composer, Joel P. West...
He created these themes that have been woven throughout the movie.
There's a clear Wenwu theme, there's a clear theme for Li.
And the way that both of those themes
come together and interact with Shang-Chi
as he's falling toward the Dweller-in-Darkness.
And using a combination of his mom's power
with his dad's rings
to destroy the beast and save the world.
The way that those themes come together
to create one melody is really beautiful.
So proud to have the work that Joel did for this movie.
YING NAN:...our sisters and brothers.
And though we will always hold on to their memories...
CRETTON: This was one of one of the last scenes that we shot
when we were leaving this set.
This village of Ta Lo
was a physical set that was built out
in the countryside outside of Sydney.
And this was one of the last nights that we were there,
and it really was a very sombre and special night
for all of us to remember.
Loved ones that
we all remembered who have passed on.
(SOMBRE TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYING)
(MUSIC SWELLING)
KATY: I seriously thought we were going to die.
And I'd only learned how to shoot a bow,
like, a day earlier,
CALLAHAM: That's a great cut.
...killing all these Soul Suckers with Shaun's auntie,
who's this awesome, magical kung fu goddess.
And I'm hanging on to The Great Protector
with my sister at this point,
trying not to get eaten by the Mega Soul Sucker.
Oh, the Mega Soul Sucker was such a nasty bitch.
CALLAHAM: This is another example of
that tone that Destin set up so beautifully
at the beginning of the movie showing
friends hang out at a bar, doing normal things.
The way that you intercut here
between this giant, literally universe-hinging set piece
and then back to, they're still people, they still have their friends,
they still live in the real world.
I love that. I love the way
it both amplifies and undercuts
the enormity of what they've just been through, which is super fun.
And these two just being like, "Bullshit."
(CRETTON CHUCKLES)
She's back at my dad's compound,
shutting down his operations.
CALLAHAM: It has a man-on-the-ground feeling
that we haven't seen
or I don't remember seeing in any MCU movie up until now.
You know, Spider-Man does that pretty well,
but this is an even more comedic version of that.
Of just what happens when you save the world
and you come home and no one knows.
CRETTON: I really love the way Stephanie plays
this moment right here.
When you watch her reaction
when Wong comes in. (CHUCKLES)
It's really funny.
Yeah, I know, sir. I'm a huge fan...
Do you have the rings?
SHANG-CHI: Uh... Yeah, yes.
CRETTON: Benedict is such a force when he came into this scene.
It's like, he walks into a set,
he looks at everything, he just starts circling it
like a shark, like, what's he going to do?
And he's looking at the props
and he felt the weight of each of their chairs
and was like, "Okay, I know what I'm going to do."
But he waits for the take,
and then he comes in without them knowing.
When he walked in,
he just grabbed both of their chairs and ripped it apart.
(LAUGHS)
So their reactions were completely not acted.
They had no idea he was going to just scoop them out.
CALLAHAM: Had he been told to pound that drink, or did he do that?
CRETTON: That was also improvised.
CALLAHAM: It's amazing.
CRETTON: Yeah, he does...
I mean, I love improvisation on set,
and he's the perfect actor
'cause he's just always looking for a way
to disrupt a scene in the best way.
CALLAHAM: Talk about these credits.
Where did the idea for this come from?
CRETTON: The ideas for these credits came from the theme of the movie,
which was rooted in the spirit of Mom,
and Mom's spirit is rooted in water.
So we talked to Perception, who did our credits,
and we talked to them about what we could do
with animating water that we haven't really seen before.
And really loved what they pitched us,
- and this is where we landed. - CALLAHAM: That's really neat.
There's like a gentleness to it
because the music is soft in a way.
CRETTON: I mean, I love the song.
I love the song that plays over the end credits.
It's an Anderson.Paak song, who's one of my favourite artists,
and it's a song he hasn't released yet,
or will be releasing with the album of our movie.
And I heard an early draft of the song
and just fell in love with it,
so I'm so happy that it's in the end of our movie.
Okay. What about this scene?
CALLAHAM: Holograms.
Finally.
CRETTON: We always... From the beginning,
we knew that we wanted to keep the legend
of The Ten Rings alive at the end of our movie.
So we wanted to end this movie
with a clear question that we know will be answered
at some point in the future.
CALLAHAM: Which is where do they come from?
CRETTON: Where do they come from? Who are they talking to?
- What exactly do they do? - CALLAHAM: In the comics,
the finger rings come from a spaceship.
And I do you remember talking a lot about what we wanted to reveal,
and whether we were going to keep any element of that origin story or not.
And we had the freedom to do what we wanted to do,
because we were changing the rings.
But we had written a lot of versions
of how Wenwu came upon them, where did he get them?
And they were always designed to be intentionally nebulous,
so that this could happen.
CRETTON: Yeah, who knows what's going to happen with those rings?
Welcome to the circus.
(CRETTON CHUCKLES)
CRETTON: Who knows?
I know this is a lot to take in,
but you're gonna have to start getting used to that.
From now on, the trajectory of your lives
will be like nothing you've ever experienced before.
And there's no going back.
You both have a long journey ahead of you.
Go home, get some rest.
Yeah. That's a good idea.
Yeah. Yeah, we probably should do that.
Or...
(HOTEL CALIFORNIA BY EAGLES PLAYING)
ALL: (SINGING) Welcome to the Hotel California
CRETTON: You know, I have wanted to have
Hotel California in one of my movies
since I was in high school.
CALLAHAM: Congratulations.
It's a big moment.
CRETTON: I have not been able to afford it
until finally working on a Marvel movie.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
CALLAHAM: That's great. That's great.
It's very critical, though.
It's not just a fun needle drop.
You've got a real story around it. It's paid off.
CRETTON: We had to... CALLAHAM: I'm not going to ask
how much it cost you, but...
CRETTON: We had to make it critical in order to justify
the amount of money that we paid to put it in the movie.
(CALLAHAM CHUCKLES)
CALLAHAM: I have a bad habit of writing needle drops into movies,
and the one I've tried every time is I really want
Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone) by Cinderella to end up
in a movie I've written at some point, but it gets cut immediately.
CRETTON: Can you sing it for us?
CALLAHAM: On the first rewrite every time.
I don't sing well. You know the song, come on.
It's about how you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
- CRETTON: Yeah... - (BOTH LAUGH)
CALLAHAM: It's a theme that works in almost every movie ever made.
CRETTON: That's what I figured.
(SONG PLAYING) What a nice surprise
Bring your alibis
CALLAHAM: This is a very accomplished film, Destin.
Well done.
CRETTON: Thank you. I thought... CALLAHAM: Did you ever think...
CRETTON: Did I ever think that I would make a movie like this?
CALLAHAM: When you were making Short Term 12,
did you look down the path of the future
and think, "Someday I'm gonna make a giant..."
Were there superhero movies?
Were they happening in the way that they're happening now
at the time that you jumped in?
Probably not, right?
CRETTON: I mean, I think Christopher Nolan's Batman
- was going on around that time. - CALLAHAM: But the Marvel thing
probably was just a couple Iron Mans at that point, maybe.
CRETTON: Yeah, Marvel was never the end goal of mine
until I saw the announcement that this character was
going to be introduced to the MCU.
And it was... I don't know, something sparked.
And it wasn't an obvious "I have to do this movie, "
but it was a "I really have to be part of this conversation."
And coming in to talk to Jonathan Schwartz,
our producer, really got me excited
that they were taking the character seriously,
and that they were wanting to do something
that was really special and significant and respectful
to the Asian and Asian American community.
And then hearing that, Dave,
you were on the project, connected to the project,
was also really exciting to me.
CALLAHAM: I felt the same way. I love...
Working collaboratively is, I think...
I don't know any other way at this point, but I just...
It just makes everything a lot more fun
and I was very eager for them to
bring me a director that I could spitball with,
and I was a little bit alone in the room with Jonathan,
and we were both smashing our heads against the wall quite a bit
before you came in,
and you came in and so much to say and so many ideas.
Every major theme and concept in this movie
came in the day you walked in it.
So, it was just so fun to be able
to help make that a reality.
And I felt the same way that you did, by the way,
when they first talked to me about this project.
I was really nervous.
I was like, "Oh, boy, I want to do it but I don't want to mess it up, "
and I didn't know which of those things was stronger for quite some time.
There's so much baggage
that comes with Asian American representation in Western filmmaking,
so, I'm really glad we were crazy enough to try.
CRETTON: I should also take a moment to talk about Brad Allan
and the incredible work that he did on this movie.
We're all devastated
to hear that we lost Brad Allan
before he was able to see this movie,
and he was such an integral part
of every aspect of this movie, that the things that he contributed to,
not only in the choreography and the fight sequences,
but the questions that he posed in the room were vital to
really big story structure
and character development,
that happened even in scenes
that have nothing to do with fight choreography.
It was... It's still really,
really hard to even process
the fact that he's not with us any more.
But, I mean, for anybody watching this movie,
his fingerprints are everywhere throughout this movie,
and I feel so privileged and honoured
to have been able to work with him
and hope that that this movie is something
that he would have really been proud of.
CALLAHAM: Give a little shout-out to Allana here if you want.
CRETTON: Oh, yeah.
Allana drew that.
(DOOR SLIDES OPEN)
They're waiting.
CRETTON: Yeah.
CALLAHAM: Unbelievable, really.
CRETTON: Yeah, Allana Williams.
You basically asked her any question about anything
and she'll have the answer in about three minutes.
Turns out she also is a really amazing artist,
and so she sketched out that drawing of Li
that Xialing was looking at.
CALLAHAM: That always makes me insane.
When you find out that someone who's really talented
in one thing that you already know about also has incredible talents elsewhere.
That's really hard for me to deal with.
(HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYING)
(ALL GRUNTING SYNCHRONOUSLY)
CALLAHAM: The Ten Rings will return.
CRETTON: Ten Rings will return.