Marvel began their cinematic universe, further known as the MCU, in 2008 with “Iron Man.” Since then, the franchise has been commercially successful and gained a huge following over the following thirteen years.

While receiving a ton of praise, there has been talk about representation in the MCU. The superheroes were mostly men, the few women having their priorities still focused on men, and overwhelmingly white.

In 2018, “Blank Panther” was the second most grossing film, making the MCU 700 million dollars in the United States. Black Panther is seen as the first black superhero and is the MCU’s first BIPOC lead superhero.

The movie was released at the start of Black History Month and received so much positive feedback on its honoring of black “imagination, creation and liberation,” as seen by Manohla Dargis.

With so much time and money spent on this movie, why was so little effort put into promoting the MCU’s newest movie: “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”?

It’s easy to say that COVID and quarantine affected tons of businesses, especially the movie business as it’s nearly impossible to film a movie without being in close contact with other people. But the pandemic didn’t affect advertising for any of the new shows like “WandaVision” or movies like “Black Widow.”

The MCU has always had a ton of promo and everyone would talk about the movies and get excited to go to the midnight premiere, maybe dress up as their favorite character, stick around for the end credit scene. A whole community has gathered around this franchise.

Why did Disney set up “Shang-Chi” to fail?

“Shang-Chi” was released on Sept. 3. The movie made 112 million dollars in the US, making it the lowest grossing movie in the MCU under “The Incredible Hulk” from 2008 making 135 million US dollars.

The movie follows the MCU’s first Asian lead and martial artist, Shang-Chi, as he confronts his past when he’s drawn to the mysterious Ten Rings organization.

Even with its release, Disney CEO Bob Chapek called the movie an “interesting experiment” as its release was exclusively theatrical when over the last year movie theater attendance went down because of quarantine.

These comments even got backlash from the lead actor, Simu Liu, “We are not an experiment. We are the underdog; the underestimated.”
Why would Disney want to put more challenges on a movie that many were worried wouldn’t do well?

The movie was not given nearly as much promotional backing in comparison to other Marvel films or shows.

Destin Daniel, the director of the movie, only did one big interview with Empire. The other big actors like Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh also didn’t do very much press for this movie.

And there is no shortage of people finding issues with the lack of promotion the movie got, finding cause in racism.

“We, asians, get our first ever asian-led marvel film and @marvel isn’t doing anything to promote it. Tweeting a poster isn’t enough. Please promote Shang-Chi like you promoted Black Widow,” said one Twitter user, @widcwfilms.

It is extremely weird for Marvel to barely do any promotion for this movie.

I think “Black Panther” came out at just the right time for Marvel to capitalize on Black History Month and Marvel couldn’t find a big enough reason to promote “Shang-Chi.” As if having more representation isn’t important enough.