Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu has expanded on his criticism of the Marvel series Moon Knight.
"Alright Arthur Harrow needs to fire his Mandarin teacher," Liu wrote on Twitter about a scene in the show that saw Ethan Hawke's villainous cult leader speaking the language to one of his followers.
"I think there's maybe a misconception that Marvel is this kind of monolithic, all-powerful single organism with infinite resources," Liu told GQ, when asked if, in light of the Moon Knight scene, Shang-Chi was a one-off act of representation. "I think that it's easy to allocate the blame to Marvel as a whole. If you really break it down, there was a translator that probably shouldn't have been a translator. There were probably a couple of people in the decision-making process that should have raised a flag that didn't."
He continued: "I have full appreciation for the fact that Mandarin is not an easy language. I didn't want to make it into a big political thing. I just wanted to make fun of it because the sound that came out of that man's mouth did not resemble Mandarin in any way, shape or form."
Moon Knight has wrapped up its six-episode run on Disney Plus, and so far there's been no word on a potential Moon Knight season 2. Shang-Chi, meanwhile, is confirmed to be returning for a sequel.
"I guess I wasn't the most surprised, given everything that had happened," Liu has said of the sequel news. "I'm so relieved to hear that [director Destin Daniel Cretton] was confirmed to come back, again not a surprise, but it's just so good to feel the engine turning again, and to be like, okay, great, we get to tell more story and delve deeper into the characters, and hopefully provide more of those badass fight sequences."
Shang-Chi 2 doesn't yet have a release date, but in the meantime, check out our ultimate guide to Marvel Phase 4 for everything else the MCU has in store for us – and catch up on the MCU on Disney Plus.
