Success seems to be completely different from individual to individual. There isn’t a single customary for what success is. For me, a kind of requirements is watching each single film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe as quickly because it comes out.
That will not be considered one of your success metrics, however I’m about to inject just a little MCU into your fascinated with private growth, entrepreneurship or profession success anyway. You guessed it—we’re doing one other Marvel film for SUCCESS Film Rewind this week.
It’s a superb one, too: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It’s a traditional hero’s journey story that may make Joseph Campbell smile from ear to ear. You don’t should have seen it to know the SUCCESS Film Maxims (trademark pending) we’ll talk about immediately, however I extremely advocate making time to see it.
That is SUCCESS Film Rewind, the one podcast the place we belief you to search for Joseph Campbell’s tackle the hero’s journey with out us having to clarify it. Let’s dive in.
Let your journey be a pleasure trip.
The scene is present-day San Francisco, and our hero Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) is working as a valet along with his shut pal Katy (Awkwafina). Valet parking just isn’t Shang-Chi’s ardour, largely as a result of he’s on the run from an historical felony empire based by his father referred to as the Ten Rings.
Whereas Shang-Chi is ambivalent about his life dwelling in a storage and dealing as a valet, his pal Katy is much less so. She likes to drive the quick vehicles and have enjoyable, and she or he brings some levity to Shang-Chi’s complete scenario (though she doesn’t but find out about it). Katy and Shang-Chi type of assist one another in dwelling within the second and having enjoyable.
Early within the film, we see Katy and Shang-Chi getting drinks with some extra historically profitable associates, and considered one of them implies that whereas they’re the neatest individuals the pal is aware of, the duo has did not “develop up” and are losing their potential.
In some methods, she has a degree—it’s obvious that there’s little long-term planning occurring in Katy and Shang-Chi’s lives at this level. However there’s a stability to strike right here, and it’s a stability many people pursue all through our lives. Katy likes the enjoyment rides she will be able to take at work, and though she and Shang-Chi are going to do one thing really nice on this movie, they deserve the enjoyment they’ve all through their journey, these early phases included.
That’s our first SUCCESS Film Maxim for this week: Let your journey be a pleasure trip. I used to be going to qualify that with one thing about letting your journey embrace a pleasure trip, however that finally wasn’t fairly proper. A pleasure trip is once you take a cool automobile and exit and have enjoyable with it, and we should always all be doing that. No matter your journey is, be joyful in it and contemplate your self on a journey towards your pleasure.
Don’t mortgage your life to repay another person’s stability sheet.
We later be taught that Katy’s associates will not be the one individuals who suppose she’s not dwelling as much as her potential. There’s additionally her achievement-oriented household.
Now we have this fascinating parallel with Katy and Shang-Chi: Katy is struggling to stay as much as being adequate in the best way her dad and mom need her to be, and Shang-Chi is operating from one thing he was skilled by his father to be superb at (being an murderer).
They find yourself in an analogous time and place working as a workforce, and so they’re each preventing off greater than historical assassins. They’re additionally pushing in opposition to the present created by their households. Each single considered one of us—legendary immortal ancestors or not—is the product of millenia of people that eked out an existence and survived and reproduced to finally result in us, proper now.
That’s a tricky present to push in opposition to, particularly when your needs are at odds with these of your extra speedy ancestors. That leads us to our second SUCCESS Film Maxim for this movie: Don’t mortgage your life to repay another person’s stability sheet.
Your life is yours, and what you wish to do with it is your determination. That additionally signifies that failure to behave—whether or not it’s out of worry that you simply received’t stay as much as another person’s requirements or not—solely impacts you and is, finally, your accountability.
In a manner, letting worry of failure hold you from pushing ahead and dwelling the life your dad and mom prescribed for you even once you don’t wish to are each methods of mortgaging your life for another person’s stability sheet. Don’t try this. Do you in the best way solely you’ll be able to.
You’ve obtained to maintain it shifting to remain within the pocket.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings revives this wacky character named Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley). He’s type of enjoyable to look at, and Marvel followers will bear in mind him from Iron Man 3.
With out spoiling an excessive amount of of the plot, I’ll simply let you know that Slattery leads our heros via this extraordinarily harmful forest in a legendary realm. Earlier than they enter the forest, Slattery tells them this: “It’s all about staying proper within the pocket or the forest eats us.”
I like that, and it’s our third Maxim for the week: You’ve obtained to maintain it shifting to remain within the pocket.
In soccer and music, the “pocket” is that this form of shifting goal that modifications because the quarterback and/or tempo transfer and shift. This one hits house when you consider Katy’s journey all through the movie—she’s not staying within the pocket as a result of she’s standing nonetheless. In case you stand nonetheless, you’re not going to be within the pocket (the place you need or must be in to succeed) for very lengthy.
That goes for all of us. In actual life, most targets are shifting targets. Conditions change, and your plans ought to change accordingly. In any other case, the pocket will elude you.
That’s the place I’ll depart it for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, however belief me after I let you know that there’s extra to this movie than what we mentioned right here. We didn’t even get to speak in regards to the faceless, six-legged, four-winged legendary creature named Morris (extra on that within the audio model). I hope to see you subsequent week, however I additionally hope you’ll take the time to see this film earlier than we come again with one other nice film dialogue. Have a fantastic week, Rewinders.
Alex Stevens invented motivational media criticism and reinvents the style each week on SUCCESS Film Rewind. Alex can also be a lawyer, artistic guide, and artist, typically all of sudden. Alex lives along with his household in Dallas, Texas.