It’s been a whirlwind weekend for everyone who attended San Diego Comic Con, but no one could have predicted how much SDCC 2019 would mean for Simu Liu, and the Asian pop culture community.
At Marvel Studios’ presentation, the actor was announced to star as the MCU’s first Asian American hero, Shang-Chi, in the upcoming film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, alongside Tony Leung as the Mandarin and Awkwafina in an unconfirmed role.
After the presentation, Liu, who’s most well known for his work in the comedy, Kim’s Convenience, took to Twitter to reveal just how he secured the coveted role, retweeting some very old Tweets that he had directed towards Marvel, in a rather humorous way.
His first retweet was from a post he had made in July 2014, asking when Marvel would get around to making a film centered on an Asian-American superhero. After his casting reveal, Liu responded to his 2014 tweet with “LOL”.
The actor then proceeded to retweet a tweet from 2018, which came hot on the heels of the reveal that the hero, Shang-Chi, may be featured in the MCU. His responded to the tweet on Saturday night with “Well shit” and retweeted the 2018 tweet with the rather witty comment to Marvel, “Thanks for getting back to me.”
Judging from the dates of Liu’s tweets and the known fact that the actor had often mentioned that he’d play a superhero one day, it’s evident that Liu made his intentions clear to the Universe, the Marvel Universe that is, and the Universe responded in kind. It’s not everyday that simply asking to be cast for a role on Twitter would lead to such positive results.
Now that Marvel is clearly looking at diversity and ethnic representation in the MCU, perhaps its time for Marvel to consider a South Asian superhero, most notably, Kamala Khan a.k.a Ms. Marvel.
Following Liu’s methods, there’s a small chance that maybe I could play the role of Ms. Marvel in a live-action film. What do you think?
Joining the MCU will be a major turning point for Liu’s career and no doubt will result in him carrying the responsibilities of doing justice to the Asian American hero.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is set to release on February 12, 2021.